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.

With cell phone subscriptions expected to hit 5 billion this year, the mobile phone has become the most common form of global communication.Whether or not mobile users take advantage of SMS, IM or wildly-popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, they are able to connect with colleagues, friends and family at any given moment throughout the day.

But what if you worked in a place that prohibited devices like cell phones, Skype and tools like IM or Twitter?

By this, I don't mean an executive management memo warning employees about wasting valuable time on social networking sites. But rather, a protocol set in place to protect the security of the company.

Meet Bruce Daly. Mr. Daly is an IT consultant for a security agency in Canada and despite being 12 timezones a part from his family in Southeast Asia, he is prohibited from using his cell phone during work hours.

"My work is in a locked down environment that does not allow me to get IM, Skype, mobile service or access to any type of social networking sites that I would typically use."

Why choose TextMagic for your solution?

"TextMagic is allowed through the enterprise firewalls. I have the ability to send text messages via the Email to SMS service as well as receive replies with the SMS Messenger. For the locked down situation I find myself in during the day, TextMagic is a good fit for what I suspect is a rare situation."

Are you still using MagicMessage?

 If so you really ought to switch to using TextMagic Messenger.

MagicMessage has been in use by TextMagic customers since the start. It works well and has very few known bugs. It was written by Dan Houghton, the founder of TextMagic, so we are sad to see it go.  But go it must.  We have no intention of fixing the few known bugs it contains.  Nowadays all our efforts are invested in improving TextMagic Messenger.

So what improvements are there in TextMagic Messenger?

(TextMagic Messenger Mac screenshot)

One significant improvement is that sent messages are logged and can be accessed in the program along with their delivery status. In addition replies are returned to an inbox directly in the program.

Both the above features make the program self-contained.  All your text messages both sent and received are accessible directly in the program.  In this respect it resembles an email program e.g. Microsoft Outlook.

So what else is new?  Well if you send a text message greater than 160 characters it will generate linked messages.  This is different from MagicMessage and a significant improvement. When these linked messages arrive at the receiving mobile phone, then, assuming the mobile phone is modern, the various parts will be concatenated and displayed as a single message.

In addition TextMagic Messenger supports tags which allow you to personalise text messages when sending to a group, and also you can save standard messages as templates.

TextMagic Messenger accepts unicode, which means that you can send text messages in Russian, Arabic, Chinese or Japanese, etc.

TextMagic Messenger allows you to enter much more detail about your contacts.  You can separately specify title (Mr, Mrs, Dr, etc.), first and last name, company name, and email address for each contact.  And whatsmore there are 6 additional fields provided which you can name yourself and tailor to your own use.

Another improvement in TextMagic Messenger is that it allows very large group sends.  It does this by automatically creating and sending in batches of 500.

Finally TextMagic Messenger is available for both the PC and the Mac.

With all these improvements why are you still using MagicMessage?

Well, we are not stopping you from using MagicMessage BUT you should be aware of the following known problems:

1. If you send to a large group (over 50 say) and you get a connection error, then it is possible that your messages may still have been sent.  Do not press the send key again without first checking whether you messages have already been sent.  You can do this either by checking your balance or by logging on to your account and checking your sent message log.
2. Sometimes MagicMessage loses contacts from the phonebook.  Sometimes it loses all contacts. It was extremely difficult to track down this rare bug, and when we eventually worked out why, we had already decided to implement the new program.  If you use MagicMessage back up your phonebook.
3. MagicMessage knows nothing about the new credit based charging system which we introduced at the start of 2009. Under the new scheme UK texts cost 0.8 credits per SMS sent. MagicMessage incorrectly describes your balance as messages when they are now credits and also it doesn’t show the decimal places.

Switching to TextMagic Messenger.

If you are the only user of your account, then all you need do is install TextMagic Messenger. When you run it for the first time it will automatically import your MagicMessage phonebook.

If there are several users of your account in your office, you may wish to create a subaccount for each user.  The steps are as follows:

Firstly the main account holder...

1. Remove all secondary email addresses that are registered to your account.
2. Create a sub-account for each user.

And then each user will need to...

1. Respond to the email inviting them to create a subaccount
2. Invent a username and password for their subaccount.
3. Install a copy of TextMagic Messenger on their own PC.

How compelling and convincing are advertisements on the newspaper or well-designed billboards along the highway? How sure are companies that their product sales will beat the incurred cost in producing those marketing materials? What if those fails to charm potential buyers or, worse, denied of public's attention?

A car company may have spent thousands or millions of dollars for TV, print, radio advertisements, and other marketing schemes.  But more and more companies are realising one potent marketing strategy that can downsize their cost. They risk to venture on new yet cost-effective ways because they know the economic slump won't spare anyone, even the most stable companies. And the gear for the new strategy is perhaps what you’re holding right now— your mobile phone.

In the book Marketing Communications (2004), Tomi Ahonen (2003) was quoted as saying that the “mobile phone is the most personal, most addictive, most widely adopted, and most valued device today.” The book said a mobile phone has become a man’s personal accessory. And, in fact, it has turned into a necessity.

Thus, in using SMS, as medium in spreading the news about a product,  allows you entry to the personal space of your target audience, your buyer.

TextMagic Messenger, a special tool designed to send and receive messages directly to and from mobile phones, has helped companies in promoting their products.

Two ways are to customise and personalise.

Assuming that you have downloaded and run the TextMagic Messenger installer to your personal computer, you may begin sending your contacts with a format or template. Right-click the Template icon at the right side of the TextMagic Messenger window and click the word Create a new template.

You will need to fill out the name of the template and the message it will contain. Afterwards, click Save

After saving the template, you may use it in sending messages to your bulk of contacts.
If the message should be sent to a group of contacts, click Group, and right-click the name of the group click the New Message to Group. Again, right-click the message body, and choose Insert template. As you click the name of the template, the formatted message will appear. Then click Send.

If the message is personalised, just click New in the menu. Type the number and the message and then click Send. 

Simple, isn’t it? And easier.  We developed this tool most especially for business owners who have wanted effective yet economical way of reaching out to their market.