Mobile marketing is one of the hottest new forms of marketing communication. It is especially exciting because everyone has their mobile close to hand 24/7. What’s more, advanced smart phone technology has made it easier to get creative with design, improve customer interaction and integrate additional marketing channels such as email and social media.
But before you create your first campaign, you must decide whether to use a text-in method or a text-out method of mobile marketing.
Text-in campaigns – ‘pull’ marketing
A text-in campaign is a ‘pull’ marketing method because you are ‘pulling’ customers in with a great offer, promoting them to get in touch with your brand. If you don’t have any customer phone numbers, are unsure of the quality of your mobile database, or would only like communicate with interested customers then a text-in campaign is for you.
How it works:
1. Create your offer, exclusive guest list, or other service that customers will have to text-in to receive and set up your mobile campaign.
2. Promote your offer with a SMS keyword and shortcode for customers to text in
3. Interested customers text in the keyword to the shortcode to receive the offer
4. Customers receive a text message confirmation back and the option to click through to a mobile-friendly web page
5. Customers can view the web page for additional details and features (maps, polls, etc)
Once your campaign is complete you can use reporting and analytics to see how successful your campaign was.
Text-in campaigns are particularly effective because they create customer interaction and two-way communication. This means that you only pay to interact with responsive customers–rather than pushing out costly mass marketing messages. Also with every respondent you are growing your database organically with genuinely interested and opted-in customers. Evently makes data management simple with live data feeds of respondents and and an exportable database.
Text-out campaigns – ‘push’ marketing
A text-out campaign is a ‘push’ marketing method because you are texting-out or ‘pushing’ messages to subscribers. This is a great way of communicating with your customers once you have a squeaky clean opted-in list of subscribers.
How it works:
1. Dream up your campaign offer
2. Draft your offer in a text message with the option to link through to a mobile-friendly web page and unsubscribe information
3. Send your message to your clean, opted-in list of customers
4. Customers can respond by taking up your offer, or clicking through to the web page for more information and additional features (e.g. maps, polls etc.)
One of the great qualities of text-out campaigns is quick turnaround for campaign response. Most people will read your message within minutes of receiving it, so you won’t have to wait long to know if your campaign was successful. Text-out campaigns are best measured by how many people clicked to open the URL or actually took up the offer. It is also important to keep an eye on your unsubscription rate. Unusually high unsubscriptions indicate your offer was not relevant, your communications are unwanted, or you are sending messages too frequently.
With the right database and offer, text-out campaigns can be very effective, but they must be used with care.