Mobile Marketing Tips - Best Text Marketing

Tips on Interactive Marketing Using SMS Text Messages

If you are looking for tips on interactive marketing using SMS text messages, you are in the right place! In this article, we’ll cover information and tips on interactive marketing using SMS text messages to help those businesses and organizations that are looking for a new and more effective way to market to their customers.

If you are looking to expand or grow your business through an effective means of marketing to reach out to your customers and build your clientele list, you might want to consider using a text message marketing campaign to do so. There are a lot of reasons to use mass text messaging to reach out to existing and potential customers as a way to spread the word about new promotions, discounts and other events and happenings. To effectively use text marketing, it is pretty easy. However, keeping in mind these tips on interactive marketing using SMS text messages is a great way to get started with this new and innovative method of marketing. Keep reading to learn more about how you can use text marketing to effectively build your company or business.

Tips on Interactive Marketing Using SMS Text Messages:

To get the most out of your mobile marketing campaign, you need to know how to use it properly to get the biggest return on your marketing investment. First, let’s get a clear understanding of how an interactive text marketing campaign using SMS messaging works and how you can make it work for your business. To start, you will need to establish a list of opted-in contacts (individuals that have agreed to receive text messages). From there, you can create your message within the allotted number of characters and send your contacts information about promotions, discounts, upcoming events for your company, appointment reminds and more. There are tons of possibilities when it comes to using your text marketing service. However, there are a couple of ways you can use the service more effectively to see a bigger return from your customers.

First, know your audience. You will likely already know the type of customer or text message recipient that has signed-up for your service since it must be done on an opt-in basis in order to stay compliant with the Mobile Marketing Association. If you are able to appropriate your text marketing messages so they are eye-catching, short and easy to remember, as well as directed to the type of customer you are looking to attract to your business, you are likely to see this marketing method as more effective. Because text messaging can be a very personalized method of communication, don’t be afraid to make your messages seem very personalized. As soon as you’re text marketing campaign appears to be like SPAM, your message will get immediately trashed and the recipient will not even remember what it said. Make sure you are writing the message in a fun way they will want to read and remember what it says.

Next, choose your keyword for SMS wisely. This is the word your text marketing participants will be using to opt-in to your text marketing service. For example, if you run a pizza parlor and you want to offer customers 10 percent off on their next pizza to get them to opt-in to your text marketing campaign, you can choose something like Pizza or Pepperoni as your keyword. This is a keyword that relates directly to your business and it also easy to remember when your customers are interested in opting-in to receive text marketing messages from you. Also, along these same lines remember that it is important to keep it short. Because those character spaces are valuable parts of your message, make sure your keyword is short, simple, catchy and easy to remember.

Lastly, another important tip on interactive marketing with text messaging to remember is to publicize the fact that you have text marketing available and want to use it to reach out to your customers. Let your customers know that you have a text marketing campaign that they can opt-in to in order to receive discounts on awesome products and services, promotion and event information and more!

You can do this by putting up flyers in your store, posters, radio ads, commercials on TV, banner ads on the web and even do a blurb about it on your own website online. Let your customers know about your short code and how they can use that code, along with your keyword to opt-in to your text marketing service. These are all effective ways you can build your business using an interactive method of marketing like SMS messaging.

Viral Marketing With SMS Text Messaging

Viral marketing with SMS text messaging is a relatively new method of marketing and advertising that many businesses and organizations are using to draw attention to new promotions, sales and causes as a way to bring in more business and attention to that business or organization.

For any business or organization, it is important to reach out to customers through effective marketing techniques. As technology continues to expand to online and text message communication, more and more text marketing companies are popping up to offer SMS technology that can be used to reach out to potential customers through an opt-in basis. The viral marketing with SMS text messaging is becoming such an effective way to communicate with customers and potential customers since text messaging is one of the most used methods of communication. If you have an online or store front business, restaurant, organization, religious institution, school, etc. that you feel might be able to benefit from using a text messaging service, continue reading to learn more about how it all works.

How Text Message Marketing Works:

Text message marketing is a convenient way to reach out to a large number of potential customers in a matter of minutes. Business owners can send text messages with promotions, coupon codes and event happenings. Just about everyone, regardless of age, uses text messaging and mobile communication in this day and age. With text message marketing, you can reach out to your customer base and anyone else who might be interested in your business or organization.

You have to first notify your customers, acquaintances and anyone else who might be interested in receiving text marketing from you about your new service. From there, you can let them know the keyword to text in to your short code (like a phone number, but shorter) so they can receive messages from your mobile marketing campaign. This is called the opt-in message. To stay in federal compliance with the Mobile Marketing Association, you can only send messages to those individuals who want to receive them and thereby sign up for the service. If you send out messages to phone numbers that you’ve purchased or received from a third party interest, this is called spamming and it can get you in a mess of legal trouble.

Once you’ve gotten your list of contacts acquired through an opt-in basis, you can then send this list of contacts messages about upcoming promotions and events. This is a great way to get those individuals to opt into your service in the first place. You might want to offer a 10 percent off coupon to those who will opt-in to your text marketing campaign. Your customers will enjoy getting 10 percent off on your products and services, and you will get to increase the number of people who patronize your business. They will then be able to spread the word about your awesome deals by forwarding that text message to their friends or spreading word about your business via word of mouth. There are lots of ways that text marketing can spread to encourage new business. For any new business or business that is looking to drum up business, trying viral marketing with SMS text messaging is a great way to continually build that regular clientele and increase your profits.

When you are looking at the viral aspect of text message marketing, one of the best ways to connect your website to your text marketing campaign is to encourage your website followers or blog readers to sign up for your text messages to receive more information about on-going promotions, deals, sales, etc. via your website. This takes care of the opt-in requirement that is part of the sign up and text marketing or SMS solicitation process.

You can use your text message marketing in a variety of ways whether it be for promotional and marketing purposes, or simply as a reminder to your customers or website/blog followers about an upcoming event, meeting or appointment. These are all helpful tools that you can use in a text marketing campaign as a way to mass text message a group of individuals without having to spend hours trying to manage your contacts in your own mobile phone. You can use your online text message marketing account to group your recipients into one group or multiple groups depending on if you have different messages going to different people. Either way, text marketing can be customized to fit your own mobile marketing needs, and for a low monthly price that is affordable and often considered one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Check out your text message marketing options online today to find an text message marketing company that will suit your marketing needs.

Sending Bulk Text Messages From a Computer

There are a few ways to go about sending bulk text messages from a computer. There are also many reasons to consider cashing in on the effectiveness of sending bulk text messages from a computer. As long as you have Internet access, you can send bulk text messages.

Some businesses and those interested in text marketing will greatly benefit from sending bulk text messages from a computer. There are also ways to send free bulk text messages from a computer, which is helpful when a mobile phone owner does not have a large texting plan, but needs to send out a large announcement to a group of family and friends. Because there are a variety of reasons for sending bulk text messages from a computer, there are also a variety of ways to go about doing so. It all depends on how much you are willing to spend and how many messages you plan to send out on what basis.

Sending Bulk Text Messages From a Computer:

Before you starting sending these messages, it is a good idea to get an understanding of how bulk SMS messages work and how the technology works to send your messages in bulk from a computer. By sending the message from any method using a computer, it typically relies on the Internet Protocol such as a network like the Internet to send the messages to the gateway for the SMS message to be received by the recipients’ mobile phones. There are a few different ways to send bulk text messages from a computer, but it simply depends on how you want to go about doing so dependent on your ability to pay for the software or a service. There are also some free options regarding sending bulk text messages from a computer.

Reasons to Send Bulk Text Messages From a Computer:

There are many reasons to considering sending bulk text messages. Fortunately this doesn’t just have to happen from your mobile phone. For many, it is easier to write out the message using a computer, adding the contacts that way and then sending the mass text message. Some will employ the usage of text message marketing companies. By signing up for a service with text message marketing, you can send bulk text messages using either your phone or on a computer to notify customers and potential customers about upcoming events, promotions and discounts for your online or store front business. There are many reasons to send bulk text messages including also simply needing to send a lot of messages to a lot of contacts at one time without having to worry about using up your monthly text allotment.

Ways to Send Bulk Text Messages From a Computer:

Email, text marketing and software specifically designed for your computer to send bulk text messages directly from your computer are all easy-to-use ways that are also relatively inexpensive to send these messages. Some programs work directly with your email. Similar to sending a regular email, you can use your email client or web-based email to send out bulk text messages from your computer. Another way to send these bulk messages is to sign up with a text marketing service. This is especially helpful if that is your intent to send a lot of messages to your customers and clients with marketing information like promotions and discounts about your products and services. The text marketing provider will have all of the tools you need to manage contact lists as well as your messages. Typically text message marketing works well either from a mobile phone or from your computer if you are signed into your text marketing account online. There are also now software companies that provide a software package that you can purchase and send out your bulk text messages that way.

Depending on why you want to send bulk text messages, what information the messages will contain, how much you want to pay for the service and how often you will use it, are all dependent factors on which way you should go about sending bulk text messages from a computer.

Create a Free Mobile Website Using Google Sites

You can now create a free mobile website using Google Sites. This is a great tool where you can literally get your new free mobile website up and running in a matter of minutes. Google sites offer a free tool that is great for text message marketing promotions.

There is no cost and no worries when it comes to creating a free mobile website using Google Sites. Not only is it fast and easy to do, but it is also free! That price in unbeatable especially compared to the benefits you can get out of the little time you put into creating a free mobile site. If you are looking to mobilize your business through text message marketing, using a free Google Site is one of the best ways to take that SMS marketing concept a step further.

If you already have an account with a text message marketing provider and are looking to enhance your marketing efforts even more, now might be the time to consider creating a free mobile website using Google Sites. It works by offering a couple different types of templates including restaurant, local business, lead generation, social eCommerce and custom for the layout and color of the website. The idea behind the functionality of mobile sites like Google sites works as a simple business card style landing page of a website. The idea continues to make it simple but informative so it can include more information about the business, promotions, sales and more than can be included just in the SMS message being sent through your mobile marketing campaign. It works when you insert the URL to the landing page in that mass text message to be sent to your customers and potential customers.

From there, you customers can click on the URL directly in the text message and be directed (if the phone has Internet access) to the website URL for your mobile landing page. On this landing page, the free mobile website will do its job by offering the customer even more information about your business like location, time, event promotional information and more.

Using one of the many Google Sites mobile landing page templates, users can build a professional landing page in literally minutes at no cost! These templates are not only free, but they are also easy to use and don’t require the user to have any sort of coding skills like HTML or CSS. Depending on your business type or objective, you can use the various types of templates to design your landing page. This makes it easy to build upon and design a custom mobile template so you have a place for your customers and potential customers to go to find out more information about your business. With just a simple text message alone, you only get 145 characters to give info about your business to your customers. However, with the mobile site concept, you can set up this landing page with more detailed information for your customers so they can make a more informed decision about checking out your business. Look at it as a way to further market and promote your business without having to pay anything extra.

The combination of the text marketing and the mobile site is a great way to expand and build your business through one of the most effective types of marketing campaigns. The best part is that it is cheap! And so easy to use that you won’t have to spend hours on this marketing venture. All you have to do is select the template design, insert the pertinent information you want your customers to know about your business and then send out the message with the URL via bulk text message to your customers, and watch the profits increase and your client base grow!

Shared vs. Dedicated Short Codes

What Is a Short Code?

If you’ve seen American Idol, then you’ve seen short codes—the program uses them for audience voting. A short code is a short name for a “Common Short Code” (CSC), a 5- or 6-digit code that is used as a mobile marketing address either specifically by one mobile carrier or in common with all of the major mobile carriers. It is a quick easy way for a customer to respond to an advertiser. The ranges that are available are 20000 to 99999 and 222222 to 899999, but this does not mean that all numbers are available within these ranges (see below).

Short codes can be distributed through direct mail, newspaper ads, posters, subway and bus placards, on websites, and in television and radio advertising. In any of these cases, the short code is included and to respond, the customer or potential customer is asked to send an SMS text message to the identified number.

The purpose of sending the number can be many things. Replying to the short code could:

trigger a donation to a charity
enter the sender into a context
represent the sender’s vote in a competition
be a response to a poll
be part of a game
make a mobile payment.

The person who wishes to respond enters the short code as the address, and then composes the text message, often a keyword that communicates to the advertiser what the person’s interest or desire is. There may be a programmed automatic response, follow-up, or confirmation sent in reply.

When a customer responds to a short code, the advertiser has a golden opportunity to invite the customer to opt-in for other communications: emails, SMS alerts of sales, ecoupons, newsletters, or loyalty programs.

Short codes can be randomly generated or selected by the owner to create some connection to his or her brand. The second type is also referred to as a “vanity short code.” They are provided on a first-come, first-served basis, like domain names, but also like domain names, the use of them may be terminated or the contract may expire without renewal, and they may return to availability. If you want to see how vanity short codes work, go to this website, which keeps a list and see how various companies have made creative use of the digits: http://usshortcodeswhois.com/

What Is a Shared Short Code?

A shared short code is one that belongs to the mobile marketing company that multiple subscribers use. Because there are multiple subscribers, responses must include a keyword prior to the action word—the keyword is what directs the response to you rather than another sharer of the code. Shared short codes are cheaper and quicker to set up, but the requirement for users to add a keyword to the action word makes them clunkier to use than dedicated short codes. The shared nature of the shared short code makes it less brandable. You may have to lease your keywords, and if a customer also has connections with another merchant using the same shared short code, wires can get crossed. And if you switch service providers, you have to start over. The limitations and low cost make shared short code best for small businesses .

What Is a Dedicated Short Code?

A dedicated short code is one of which you are the sole user, making it more brandable. You are also the sole payer, which makes it expensive, ranging from $500 per month to $1000 per month in many cases, with the low end being for random and the high end being for select/vanity short codes. There may also be a monthly hosting fee, and on top of that there’s the fee for the short code, and the fact that it can take up to 10 weeks to set up.

However, if you have a dedicated short code, the likelihood of people responding to someone else in error is diminished. In addition, your choice of keywords is not limited by what others have chosen, and you don’t need to have a keyword prior to the action word.

Keywords for SMS Short Codes

When trying to choose the best keywords for SMS short codes, it is best to adhere to a few guidelines to choose the best keywords that will work for you. Text message marketing is a great way to advertise, so finding the best keywords for SMS short codes is a great way to get started.

When looking for more information on keywords for SMS short codes, it is important to know exactly what short codes are and how they are used especially in text message marketing.

Short Codes: These are also referred to as short number that are different from normal telephone numbers in that they are shorter. However, they are like telephone numbers in that they are unique to each operator at the technological level. With messaging short codes, they are shorter than a typical phone number because they are designed to be easily read and remembered. When the short codes are used for SMS messaging in a text marketing service, you will send this short code along with a keyword to your customers. They will then opt in or out of receiving these marketing messages from you by responding to your short code number using the keyword. This is why it is just as important to know the keyword as it is to know the short code.

Next, it is also important to know what keywords are and the purpose of using keywords when it comes to text message marketing. There are a few things to consider when choosing the best keywords to go along with your service.

Keywords: When it comes to text message marketing, keywords are a valuable asset to have to make sure that potential customers recognize your business and your marketing efforts. Choosing the best keywords for your SMS short codes is reliant on finding a word that accurately describes your business or marketing effort. You will want to keep this keyword, short, easy to spell, descriptive and accurate to your business. For example, if you own a pizza parlor and want to market new promotions, coupons, store happenings and more, you can set your keyword to be “pizza” or something pizza related like “pepperoni.” Something to that effect would work as very successful keyword. However, it is also important to know that you cannot have the same keywords as another person using the same short code. So, if you are signed up with a text marketing service, you should know that your keyword choices might be limited. However, simply check with your text message marketing provider and determine which keyword options you have available to find the best keywords for SMS short codes.

There is also the option to get more than one keyword. This is a good idea if you wish to change your first keyword if you find that it is not effective in gathering the attention of more customers, or if you would like to have several different mobile marketing campaigns running at the same time.

Using Short Codes and Keywords for Text Message Marketing:

Now that you understand the basics of these two concepts, it is important to learn how you integrate them together to be used with a text message marketing system. When you are choosing the right keywords for SMS short codes, you will use these short codes and your keyword to generate customers and a distribution list of people that will want to see your messages sent to them. They will use the keywords for the SMS short codes to opt in for your service. If they have opted in to receive your messages, this means you can legally send them messages about your business for marketing purposes. These messages can contain information about upcoming events, sales, promotions and more. Just simply adhere to the terms and conditions set forth by your text message marketing provider and you are guaranteed to have a successful marketing experience through SMS message marketing.

Mobile Coupons

Mobile coupons are a great way to use SMS text marketing to promote your business, bring in new customers and keep those customers coming back for great deals with your business. Mobile coupons are a great tool for any kind of business including online and store front operations.

Many business owners are always looking for new ways to market their business whether they have an online business, a store front business or both. Marketing with radio ads, commercials, billboards, newspaper ads, etc. can get pretty expensive and may not be the most effective form of marketing. This is why many businesses are turning to the web to get their business name out there. However, some businesses are even taking this new technological form of marketing a step further to reach to text marketing. There are text marketing companies popping up all over the Internet and offer text marketing services to businesses of all sizes and types. Through text marketing, businesses can easily send out mass mobile coupons to customers and potential customers to help bring in business.

How Text Marketing and Mobile Coupons Work:

When companies first sign up with a text marketing company, they can set up a keyword to use in their text marketing efforts. By collecting contacts through an opt-in basis, you can then send out a mass text message with the mobile coupons and information about the business, up to 140 characters. This is a great way to send out mobile coupons each day, week or month depending on your preference. Also depending on how many contacts you plan to send out these mobile coupons and other mobile marketing campaigns, you will choose the size of your text marketing plan accordingly.

Once your list of contacts has opted in to receive these messages, you can regularly send them mobile coupons, discount offers, promotional information and more through your text message marketing plan. In order to continue to add to your customer list, you can inform customers and potential customers about signing up to receive these mobile coupons. They can even sign up on your website or if they visit your store front property. Let your customers know how regularly you will be sending out these mobile coupons so they can get the best deals on your products and services.

The Benefits of Mobile Coupons:

Right now in this economy, just about every business is looking for great ways to save money marketing. It is a tried and true marketing strategy to offer customer discount and deals on products and services. With mobile coupons and the savings business men and women get from text marketing, this is a great way to send out mobile coupons and reap the rewards of not paying an arm and a leg for an effective marketing strategy. This is also an effective way to support your customers by showing your appreciation for their continued business to your store or online enterprise. Traditional forms of advertising are becoming less and less effective. Many consumers are becoming desensitized to typical marketing like newspaper and magazine ads as well as radio and TV commercial advertisements. In addition to those methods being more expensive than a monthly fee to a text marketing company, they also do not allow you the flexibility that comes with sending out mobile coupons via text message. Just about everyone has a cell phone these days and rely on text messaging as an effective and reliable form of communication. This means your customers are checking their text messages regularly and will enjoy getting mobile coupons from you to save money when they shop with your business either online or in person.

When you are choosing a text message marketing company, be sure to check pricing as some companies do charge more than others for the same service. This is a great way to actually save money when it comes to marketing your business. The best part about SMS message marketing is that just about any business can benefit from sending out mobile coupons as way to save customers money on their products and services, but also get more customers to come in and make a purchase, which is great for the business and overall profits. The customer base has also been known to grow through the SMS marketing efforts as well. Be sure to shop around for the best online marketing companies to decide which company will work best for your company.

Mobile Marketing Campaigns

A mobile marketing campaign is a marketing campaign that is conveyed to the customer or potential customer via SMS (Short Message Service), also known as text messages, on their mobile phones. A mobile marketing campaign can serve as a means to build a marketing database, bringing in new customers/potential customers; it can be designed to provide you with a better means of reaching the particular audience that your product or service is meant for; or it can be created to increase sales, perhaps by taking advantage of the immediacy of text message marketing or of the location-targeting capabilities. Mobile marketing campaigns, in other words, are not just one thing, but can be many different customer approaches that take place through the medium of communication on mobile devices.

Types of Mobile Marketing Campaigns

Mobile marketing campaigns can work in a variety of ways. For example, you could design a campaign that focused on providing your opt-in customers with a mobile coupon. This could be a general coupon (10 percent off) or coupons geared to your customer’s history, or coupons designed to move a certain line of merchandise. A mobile coupon campaign could be done to increase sales or as part of a customer loyalty program.

Mobile marketing campaigns can also take a more interactive approach, using for example, texting contests or voting. Texting contests, also known as text sweepstakes or text to win, are a competition that can reward a person who fulfills some criteria (answering a trivia question correctly first) or a random selection of those who respond. Text voting allows users to give feedback on anything topic that you can think of which might be of interest to them and tie to your brand. You can give instant polling feedback to those who vote, and/or reward those who vote for the winning whatever-it-is. Both text contexts and text voting can build brand perception and engage customers in a bit of fun, while increasing the feeling that they are important to you.

Mobile marketing campaigns can also be very straightforward, alerting customers to sales, drops in price on items they have ordered in the past, or news about topics that they have selected when they opted in. Mobile marketing campaigns can function in other ways as well.

Mobile Marketing Campaign Strategies

Here are some tips of strategies to use in mobile marketing campaigns:

• What do you want to accomplish? Clarify your goals before you being, rather than just doing something because it seems cool or fun.

• Use double opt-in to sign people up. Research shows that you’ll benefit by having both a higher response rate and fewer complaints.

• Don’t send a high number of text messages, and give people an idea of what to expect from you. “Opt-in to receive a weekly coupon on Friday for our weekend sales” is clearer than “Sign up for free coupons sent to your mobile device.”

• Include an opt-out route in every communication.

• Keep your messages useful—base them on what you know about your customers (they like pretzels with mustard; they always come in on a Wednesday; they wear size M) and timely.

Free SMS Marketing Tips

What are the best approaches to incorporating SMS into your marketing plan? This article offers a variety of free SMS marketing tips to help you get started in making text messaging a part of your marketing strategy.

Tip 1: Sign Up Yourself

Before you set up your campaign, sign up for SMS marketing from companies that have shown their tech savvy. You can learn an enormous amount from being on the receiving end. Take the time to consider frequency, content, added-content (such as images, audio, or multimedia), customer control, and use of special features like coupons, loyalty programs, surveys, etc. You’ll bring a lot of first-hand knowledge to your own SMS advertising campaign this way.

Tip 2: Fit Your SMS Marketing to Your Business

Each niche works to evolve practices that work for it. The customer who has already signed up with other clothing stores, restaurants, travel companies, hotels, healthcare providers, or drug stores, may have some built-in expectations from their contact with others in the industry, and you want to be aware of them.

On the other hand, even banner headlines on web pages have been around long enough that there are “rules” for the best way to take advantage of their possibilities, but in the younger field of text message marketing, the wisdom is still evolving. For this reason, your research prior to starting your SMS marketing campaign should not only include research on what your competition is doing, but brainstorming about what your unique product or service and practices can mean for your use of SMS messages. It also suggests that you may want to research beyond your marketing niche: someone in another field may have a great idea that hasn’t yet become common knowledge.

An important consideration will be whether you only want to send messages to customers or want to both send messages to and receive messages from customers. This will govern the type of content you design and the type (and scope) of plan that will best serve your needs.

Tip 3: Consider a range of uses of SMS

SMS marketing messages can include

notices of sales, specials, and promotions
coupons
alerts for appointments, completed orders, etc.
store locators
contests
surveys
votes
contests
information
sign-ups

Tip 4: Shop for Providers Who Meet Your Needs

Providers offer different programs and different capabilities for SMS marketers. Choosing the right provider can both save you money and ensure that you have the features you need to mount the campaign that’s most appropriate for your business.

Consider features. Providers may offer more or fewer image formats, such as BMP, GIF, and JPG. They may offer more or fewer types of audio file, such as MIDI, MP3, and WAV.

The type and quality of analytics available to track the results of your campaign is a key item. Having data without the proper means to analyze it prevents you from making the most of your efforts: every campaign should be a learning experience as well as a money-maker, and analytics are the key to this.

If your business is small or just starting, you may do better with a provider who has plans for individuals as well as businesses. This can allow you to start up with a reasonable amount of SMS messages per month, so you avoid paying for more than you actually need. The ability to work without a contract that ties you to particular parameters, and a range of plans to meet anticipated future needs are other things to look for in an SMS provider.

Some providers focus on a particular industry and have already designed solutions for niche markets, such as bar and restaurant owners, real estate offices, etc. If your needs mesh with the product(s) offered, you may want to go with a tailored solution.

Building Your SMS Database

One of the first steps in starting an SMS text message marketing program is to create a database. This article includes helpful tips on building your SMS database. Find out how to build your SMS database via customers, referral systems, and other professional services.

One of the hottest new marketing trends is to use text messaging. SMS text messaging is a good way to let customers — and potential customers — know about deals and opportunities. SMS messaging has so much potential because the messages are sent to cell phones. That means that your customers are likely to have them with them wherever they go. Additionally, SMS marketing messages are attention grabbing; customers are notified when a message comes in. However, it can be difficult to know how to get a list of customers who can receive your SMS marketing messages. Happily, there are some things you can do to build your SMS database.

Adding Names to Your SMS Database

One of the most important things you can do is to begin building a database that can be used to send out text messages. This is helpful because your SMS database will provide you with a way to reach hundreds — or even thousands — of people at once. This is a very efficient way to get the word out about special promotions and deals, and encourage people to come into your place of business. Here are 3 strategies you can employ to help you build you SMS database:

Ask your customers for their numbers: One of the things you can do is ask your customers for their mobile phone numbers. You will need to let customers know that they are getting something that is value-added. Let customers know that you will be sending out occasional SMS text messages about exclusive deals and discounts. You can also provide them with some sort of extra when they do sign up. An immediate discount on something, or offering a gift or prize, is a great way to encourage sign ups. You will need to make it easy for customers to sign up. Be sure that customers can easily provide you with their cell phone number. You can do this by using a web site, or by having a sign up sheet. In any case, you will need to effectively communicate the advantages of receiving these text messages, and make it easy for customers to follow through. Once you do have their numbers, though, you will need to be careful not to spam customers with too many SMS marketing messages.
Set up a referral system: Another way to build your SMS database is to set up a referral system. Use your current customers to help you find new customers. Offer a special discount to customers who refer someone else, and offer a discount to the person who was referred. If you make it worth their while, your own customers will aid you in building your SMS database. Make sure you have some way of tracking referrals so that you can accurately reward those who help you out.
Professional services: In addition to building your own SMS database, it is also possible to expand your possibilities using a different list. There are some professional services out there that can help you by providing a list of subscribers to a certain service. This offers you instant access to a SMS database. However, it will likely cost more than building your database all on your own. But, in some cases, it can be worth it.

Building a good SMS database might take some time. You need to be prepared to cultivate your customer base, and offer worthwhile rewards for those who participate in receiving text messages about your business. While purchasing a list from someone, or subscribing to a text message marketing service, can help you build your database faster. Many businesses use a combination of the two techniques to get names for their databases. Whatever you decide, though, the important thing is to build a database of customers interested in receiving your messages — and responding to them.