Questions about SMS marketing, mobile website creation and such.

You should check out Avid Mobile (AvidMobile | SMS Reseller | SMS Gateway Provider | Mobile Marketing Platform), they have a full white label SMS solution and they will install it on your domain so that your clients can run their SMS campaigns from your website.

In terms of charging clients, I have found that it is best to put them on a monthly plan. Start at $49 and have it include 500 text messages. Then tier up plans from there. Also give them an option to purchase additional text messages above and beyond their plan. Avid Mobile will help you set this all up and help you with all the pricing.

As for the specifics of how to charge clients, I recommend using Intuit's GoPayment. Not only will you be able to swipe credit cards directly from your smartphone, you can then set up monthly recurring billing so that you don't have to worry about sending out invoices every month. Not only will this save you time, but clients appreciate it as well because they hate having to actually pay bills like the rest of us! Once a recurring payment is made a receipt is automatically e-mailed to your client so they can file it away for their accounting purposes.

Another great feature with Avid Mobile's white label reseller program is that they include a mobile website creator free of charge. Your clients will be able to login and change their mobile website at will. It also automatically creates a QR Code for your clients to use.

For full disclosure, I use Avid Mobile's white label program, but I am not getting paid or anything to recommend them. I used a couple other SMS systems previously and found that Avid's is far and away the best. Plus they host webinars once or twice a month to help with sales.

I hope this helps answer your questions!

I have done alot of research as of late about white label SMS Providers,,,there are so many out there, some of them were pretty ridiculous in their pricing and I had it narrowed to 3 that to me were better than the pack... Avid Mobile, Lime Cellular and txt180.

Txt180's pros were cost the price per text was ok (.02 per msg) and they just have a yearly fee ($295) plus the msg fee which is nice no monthly fees or minimums involved. And no commitment period.
The con is that they lack some of the features of the other platforms, they are txt only , no image coupons or integrated mobile sites etc.

Lime Cellular had the lowest per text rate (.015) and $9.95 per active account, and they have all of the extras, mobile web social plugins etc..., But they're lowest point of entry comes with a $600 deposit (it gets applied in months 7 and 8) , a $300 minimum per month and an 8 month commit.

Avid Mobile was impressive, I Spoke in depth with a VP of Business Development. The pros were that they have alot of marketing support since they've been in the game for over 5years. One thing that stuck out to me was that they were heavy into customer "retention" since a good number of customers will drop off and cancel after around 3 months if they see little value in the SMS campaign, mainly because the list wasn't built fast enough or with enough customers to market to. FYI ..These are stats that they have put together. Also they have no minimum amount of billing

But they have a setup fee and a monthly fee, these are not deposits they are not applied to any service costs, the lowest of which is $99 setup and $150 per month also with this lowest tier all of the urls are branded to avid (for web etc) and $29 addl per month for the app/web builder to provide mobile web to clients. If you want remove the branding then the monthly cost is increased.

As far as the pricing of the service goes, from what I've seen here on WF it seems like there's 2 different approaches people are saying that they're using, one is that they are letting the client do a self managed account charging less (sub $100) per month charges for x amount of txt's per month... or a managed account for the client where you are charging more (some here are charging $250mo) but actually managing the building of the clients list and promotions. I believe that the latter even though it costs the client more has more value since the client actually sees better ROI and keeps the service longer.

2 of the 3 providers I spoke with also said that most clients if left to themselves to run they're own campaigns generally forget to send the messages and are not very proactive in building their lists. Then they usually cancel seeing no value in it.

I've been looking at different white label solutions and this has been very helpful to me. Thanks.

One thing I would like to point out about Lime Cellular is that yes you have to pay $300 minimum per month. But the up side to this is, USE IT! You know you will be having to pay $300 a month, which is pretty easy to get. But to start off offer a few free trial accounts to a few BIG business you would like to land. Remember you have $300 to play with for free trials, since you will be paying it anyway. So might as well use it to land some big fish and then hit them up for referrals after you prove to them how good it is.

I am using Lime Cellular and it is great! If you have any questions pm me, and I will try to answer everything I can.

Tips on SMS Marketing:

a) Third Party Mobile Applications
b) Mobile-Friendly Business Website
c) SMS Marketing or Text Messaging Marketing
d) Mobile Commerce
e) Integration with Non-Mobile Marketing Strategies

Tips on Website Creation:

1) Landing pages and feature phone sites should be simple and quick, with a look and feel that’s good on all models. The user experience on smart phones is radically different than on feature phones so be aware you need to design for the limitations or extended capabilities of both phone types.
2) For all phone types keep content manageable, you’re limited by real estate and sometimes bandwidth, and keep content concise and design for the small screen. Feature key products or highly relevant content to maximize site usability.
3) Ensure that the overall size of a page is appropriate to the memory limitations of the device and customize content according to device requirements.
4) Keep text as text, don’t make text into images as it increases load speed. Remember the years when we used dial-up modem for the Internet, using phones today on carrier data networks can be a similar experience.
5) Optimize for the handsets using style sheets, and consider optimization in the design process.