With ever increasing awareness of the environment and pressures upon businesses to demonstrate their ‘green credentials’, we take a look at the environmental benefits of using bulk SMS text messaging as a business communication and marketing tool.

 The commercial benefits of utilising SMS marketing to deliver targeted and relevant messages to both customer base and prospects are well documented. It costs far less than print advertising and, according to the Mobile Marketing Association, delivers 5 times the response rate of direct mail.

What’s more, the use of text messages as reminders has been proven to increase customer retention – ‘Your MOT is due on…’ – whilst businesses and service providers from hairdressers to dentists have seen improved attendance rates for appointments as a result of using such reminders.

So, with all these benefits, text messaging and bulk SMS are good for your business. Better still, they are also good for the environment.

How environmentally friendly is SMS marketing?

The obvious answer is that SMS marketing saves on paper and saving paper saves trees. Did you know that to produce 10,000 sheets of standard A4 paper takes 2.5 mature trees? But that’s not the half of it.
Even if the trees are from sustainable sources, the chain of events from felling those trees to a letter or nice glossy leaflet landing on a customer’s doormat leaves a huge carbon footprint. There are chemicals used in paper manufacture and contained in the inks or toners utilised for printing, plus there’s the discharge or wastage associated with these processes. And if the customer simply throws away the communication unread, rather than recycle it, it is most likely destined for landfill.

It is difficult to exactly quantify the benefits, but SMS marketing has the lowest carbon footprint of all types of mass advertising, and, anecdotal evidence suggests it is 50 times more environmentally friendly than printed methods.

Could SMS marketing replace print for all communications?

It is unlikely that all businesses would ever reach a point where they would not use traditional print advertising and communication in some form. But SMS marketing and the use of text messages as reminders reduces the reliance upon such methods and in this ever-more digitally focused world, can’t be beaten for targeting and speed of communication.

Moreover, if someone responds to a mobile marketing message and requests further information, any printed material you send out as a result of this request is a better use of resource, as it’s in direct response to a request and hence will most likely be retained and acted upon.

How can I start using SMS marketing to make my business communication greener?

A Google search for ‘SMS Marketing’ reveals a multitude of products and services available on numerous platforms and at a wide range of costs. It can all be a bit confusing.

TextMagic makes it simple. We have a number of tools that can be implemented quickly and easily, with highly competitive prices that make your marketing budget go further. Examples are Email to SMS, which provides the ease of combining your SMS marketing with your existing email client and TextMagic Online, which provides the simplicity of a highly functional, easy to use web-based texting software product, meaning you can implement your marketing communications from any computer – not just in the office.

TextMagic’s software solutions are designed to be intuitive to use and efficient to conduct your business communications from – meaning that your TextMagic SMS marketing not only gives you a greater opportunity of engaging with your customers, but frees up more time to spend managing the other areas of your business. Why not try it out today? All businesses can benefit from a free trial - so you can experience the power of SMS marketing without spending a penny.

If you’re in the property rental and management business, keeping in touch with – and on track of – your tenants can be one of the most challenging parts of the job. So when Oak Estates of Sheffield discovered the TextMagic suite of business SMS services, it dramatically changed the way the business operates for the better.

‘I wouldn’t know what to do without TextMagic’, said Diana Maratty of Oak Estates. ‘The text messaging service has brought amazing changes to the way we work. I estimate that TextMagic directly saves our business at least 15 man hours per week, so it saves us the cost of employing a part-time member of staff.’

So how exactly has the TextMagic business SMS service become such an integral part of how this successful Sheffield-based letting and property management agency operates  – and how can this huge increase in efficiency be replicated in other property management businesses?

Text Messaging Increases Response to Late Payment Requests

Diana Maratty explains, ‘We started using TextMagic business SMS in conjunction with our Total Letting Solutions software about eighteen months ago. At first, we used the service to chase up late rental payments from our tenants. As we manage over 250 different properties, chasing overdue rent was taking a lot of our staffing resource – and it’s vital to our business and to the owners of the properties we manage that rents are collected on time. Changing rental reminders from postal letter or emails to text messaging immediately decreased the amount of outstanding debt owing to us.’

So what’s the secret behind why TextMagic business SMS is so much more efficient at chasing late payments than email or letter? ‘Most of our tenants are young professionals or students and always have their phones at hand. Text messaging gets a far better response than other methods of communication. Immediately after sending a late payment text alert, tenants would be on the phone to sort out their outstanding rental payment. Not only has it improved our cashflow,  it’s significantly reduced the amount of time we have to spend chasing late payments.’

Property Maintenance Management is simplified via business SMS services

As soon as Oak Estates realised the value of TextMagic business SMS services in communicating with their tenants, they expanded its usage to include alerts for regular house inspections. ‘We’re legally bound to give tenants 24 hours’ notice before entering their properties to carry out maintenance or inspections. By using TextMagic text messaging to communicate with our tenants, we can not only gain access to the properties faster to carry out general maintenance and checks, but also respond quickly to urgent issues.’

The letting agency now uses TextMagic business SMS to keep in contact with key contacts in every part of their business – including maintenance contractors and landlords. ‘By text messaging job alerts, we can get contractors to our properties to carry out maintenances and repairs much more quickly – and that’s appreciated by our tenants and our landlords. We also keep our landlords up to date with essential information about their property via TextMagic, making communication much quicker and more streamlined.’

Business SMS saves letting agencies time, effort and money

Diana Marratty is adamant that the TextMagic business SMS system has revolutionised the way Oak Estates operates as a business. ‘Every letting agency, property management business and landlord needs TextMagic. It’s entirely changed the way we operate for the better – and knowing how TextMagic text messaging has improved our business efficiency, we could never go back.’

For more information on Oak Estates and its range of properties available in the Sheffield area for professional and student lets, visit www.oakestates.net or call 0114 258 5981.

Unhappy with the response rate on your email marketing campaigns? Now’s the time to change to SMS marketing, the clever alternative to email

 
 

Any company using emails to communicate with its customers will be all too familiar with the issues and frustrations which this style of communication can create. Email marketing has been part of business strategy for many years and due to misuse via selling of data lists, has gone from a convenient and effective method of communicating with a customer base to a strategy which is now largely mistrusted by customers and suffers from poor penetration rates.

So what’s the right alternative to email that will get through to your customers? The answer is SMS.

88% of emails are spam – business SMS gets the message through

It was recently estimated that a huge 88% of emails sent are spam. Unsurprisingly, this means that many of your email messages to your customer base will remain unopened or be sent directly to the junk email folder – not great news for building relationships with your clients. Furthermore, if you have vital information to share with your customers, such as delays on delivery times or the re-arrangement of appointments, how do you get past the problem that your email may never even be opened by your customer?

That’s where the real beauty of business SMS messaging as email alternatives shines through, acting as a lifesaver to your marketing and customer communications.

Four mobile phones sold for every computer – that’s why SMS marketing wins

According to the GSM Association, there are now four mobile phones sold for every one personal computer. Mobile phones invariably stay with their owner 24/7 – which compared to the relatively short time people spend in front of their computers checking their email, just can’t be beaten. Additionally, business SMS messaging services haven’t been affected by the spam issues which the email marketing landscape struggles with, meaning that consumers have a far higher level of trust in SMS messages than they do in email. That’s why an SMS marketing campaign sent to customers as an email alternative will invariably be opened and read – and is most likely to be read at the time of delivery. The latest statistics from market research experts Frost & Sullivan state that the open rate for SMS messages is over 98% - that’s impressive, particularly when you consider you’re likely to get less than a 30% open rate from marketing emails. Business SMS has another benefit over email – you can choose when you want the customer to read your message.

SMS marketing is effective from any computer in the world

There's a vast choice of different ways in which a business can take advantage of SMS technology as part of its marketing strategy. The TextMagic Messenger is a simple and cost-effective way of sending business SMS messages from a Mac or PC and the interface is available in 11 different languages – ideal for today’s businesses operating over many different territories. You don’t even need to be tied to an office computer, as TextMagic Online offers great two-way SMS functionality from a web-based application – meaning that your business communications are truly mobile and you can connect and communicate with your customers wherever you are.

But don’t just take our word for how invaluable SMS messaging is to business – Mrs Rimmer of land and property specialists Rostons Ltd agrees. ‘Our clients have commented on how useful it is to receive a text and it has put us at the forefront of our industry by using a service like this.’

Business SMS messaging delivers an unparalleled penetration rate over email marketing, enabling your business to communicate more effectively with your customer base and build that all-important confidence factor. If you’re serious about getting your marketing messages in front of your customers, then look for an alternative to email - SMS marketing is the only logical option.

Like many business owners these days, Mr. Alan Hopgood, the Southend-On-Sea franchisee of the Kendlebell Personal Telephone Answering Service, is constantly seeking new ways to streamline day-to-day operations in order to save time and money. With over 200 clients using his Kendlebell answering service, Mr. Hopgood needed a way to simplify and secure the process by which clients were notified about their incoming calls and messages.

"The majority of our customers like to receive both an email and a text message to ensure that they aren't missing any crucial communication coming through the Kendlebell answering service," states Mr. Hopgood. "We needed a belt and braces approach that would allow us to send SMS texts and emails simultaneously."

Mr. Hopgood discovered TextMagic while researching his options on the Internet.

"Prior to using TextMagic's Email to SMS service, we had to manually send an email and then re-send the same message by SMS text using 2SMS or BlueSMS. TextMagic has simplified this greatly as we can now relay both types of messages with just one click from our screens. We simply added clients' TextMagic to their list of email addresses."

What surprised you about utilizing SMS messaging as a business tool?

"How easy it was to integrate into our business process. TextMagic also allows clients to reply to our text messages which was not possible using conventional web-based text messaging systems. We have been using the TextMagic service for over 18 months now and we are very pleased with its advantages."

Kendlebell (Southend) Ltd. has been the leader in the telephone answering services field for over 12 years, delivering a level of highly personal service to each and every customer. With over 20 locations, Kendlebell is the single largest provider of Personal Telephone Answering Services in the UK and Ireland. For more information on the Southend-On-Sea location, please visit http://www.take-your-message.co.uk.