Almost 2013, Why are SMS Campaigns Still Successful?

           SMS is old news! Now we have Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and all of the other social media sites. We have email, snail mail and all of the old school proven mediums in TV, Radio, and Print. Why are we still using SMS? Why do these campaigns still work? What attracts campaigns to use such an old medium? Do people really participate in these annoying text campaigns from these strange numbers? The answer is YES  and because THEY WORK!

           More than 5 BILLION texts are sent per day with 99% being opened and read with 94% in the first 3 minutes! Those numbers are completely staggering! Why wouldn't marketers take advantage of it?! Think about the cost of advertising in print, TV or Radio (not to mention the 1% ROI avg). How much do those Pay Per Click campaigns drain from your budget?! Content management across your social media circles for a really good campaign takes a team and that is REALLY expensive. Email and Snail Mail campaigns are useless, digital or otherwise, you can spot junk mail when you see it! What if there was a quick and easy way to get your message across to your desired audience? What if you could make it short and sweet just to get the point across and at the same time include a short link to more info and more access? What if that little link was 6 times more likely to get the recipient to click through than Email, Search, Facebook, or Online display ads?One that was ridiculously cheap and gave you the best ROI? Now imagine you can track it, interact with it, manage and optimize the campaign at any time from anywhere!

          UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES are afforded to SMS campaigns! The trick to SMS campaigns is keeping the interest of the recipient and avoiding that dreaded STOP reply that will terminate your connection! Think about your social media sites. By now you know that if you constantly bombard your followers with content that its consistently all about you or your business your getting dropped like a bad habit! You have to integrate attractive content with your marketing to keep their attention, by offering 3 times as much attractive content as you do your own marketing it makes the recipient 5 times more likely to look for your content! There's no reason not to follow the same paradigm for SMS! Attract your client with fun and interactive content, throw in a few discounts and sweepstakes, and with smart phones being what they are integrate a few good MMS (multimedia messages) and you got yourself a winner! 
       
              As long as there are 327.5 Million cell phones in the US, SMS will be here to stay! Think about the magic behind the medium, any other form of advertising you need the audience to come to you. If its print they have to open the paper, if its online they have to search or find the site where the ad is located, if its TV they have to turn on the TV, etc. SMS is genius because it is an open portal directly into your audience's pocket! (pun intended!)  So how do you get there? You can purchase a list of phone numbers from any one of a million places but that is an absolute NO NO! SMS will only work if the recipient wants to receive them! So how do you find the audience that wants to receive your content? OFFER IT TO YOUR CUSTOMERS DUH! Odds are you already have your desired audience in your store right now, on your site right now, viewing your ads on some other medium right now so how hard is it to promote a SMS campaign? Honestly its so cheap and so easy that if you can't figure it out you don't deserve to capitalize on it!

             Where do you start? There are two very popular agencies that make it very easy to get these campaigns up and running in minutes,  EXPRESSTEXT and SNAPGIANT, and they both let you try if for free! Where do you run it? EVERYWHERE and with BROAD STROKES! Start small but start BIG, put that 6 digit number on everything! If you want your name on it, your website or social media on it then you want that number there too! What kind of content or offers do you include in the campaign? That's up to you, just follow the very simple policy; KEEP IT SIMPLE! If your texts of more than approx 100 characters your done! If they want that much info they will come to you, include a link in the text for more info or more offers but keep the outgoing messages very simple. Make sure to include a call to action, whether its a sweepstakes, a discount, free stuff it needs to be interactive or it just won't work.

          As I sit here now, enjoying my quad venti macchiato, I just subscribed to Starbucks SMS campaign. I text the word GOLD to 697289 and within 30 seconds I got my welcome message, and it was opened and read. 60 seconds after that I was registered for their content. Not only do I get a free cup of coffee on my birthday, but I was able to link my Starbucks rewards card to my new profile. Linking promotions is the best tool in marketing REMEMBER THAT! Now my profile keeps track of my points for free stuff and even if it is lost I will never lose the points I accrued. Even the big guys don't get it right all the time; they promise no more than 3 messages a month-BAD IDEA! Like I said earlier you don't want to bombard the recipient but you don't want to lose your opportunity to maximize this gateway either! There is no doubt that they will utilize all three of those messages to be Starbuck Promotions so why not double the messages and include non-promotional content to keep their interest? Or better yet, why not include a way to "share" the content with their friends to further the promotion? This will be a tactic utilized in the near future but as of now noone has perfected it. Mark my words that will be the SMS marketing revolution!