Whats people thoughts on SMS Marketing?

I am interested to learn as well - please share your experience with SMS Marketing.

Curious, before I put in my "2 cents" and answer the question...why would you think it's an annoying nuisance?

If you are getting special offers from a business where you opted in with your mobile number, I can't see the problem.

I would love to get offers from, say, my local café!

I would like to know if anyone has actually jumped in feet first as well

I have been meaning to run some test but i never have the time and thanks to low ball local SEO types business owners tend to look at you like a snake oil salesman. So you have to get past that before you get anywhere sheesh

What has anyone found to be better? QR codes to get the number or QR code to a squeeze for email. I can guess but I would like to know what others are doing?

Its a good way to market offline products generally i wont prefer to do sms marketing of online services btu for local market services its a very good way to do marekting

It's the future... well part of!

Think back to 200 years ago when if you wanted to connect and engage with your prospects you would have had to write down a letter using Quill and ink and have it delivered using horse and cart. It would have taken weeks/months sometimes years to create that connection let alone make a sale and now thanks to mobile you can reach Anyone, Anywhere and Anytime almost instantly.

Like it or not mobile will be the future... however in agreeance with OP - it may not be exactly as we use it today. Technology will improve, people will change and marketers will refine their practices.

Quite a remarkable opportunity when you look at it like that.

I have had a client here in the UK do it in a not so great way. I helped him redo everything as he was getting no results and wasting a bunch of money. I told him to allow people to opt-in and opt-out freely and only send messages to those wanting the messages.

He would also send bulk messages here and there and the messages seemed very spammy, they need to be personal and have an identity to them otherwise people just delete them.

We are selling strictly text marketing and it has been the easiest to sell for us. We will actually give a mobile site away to help close a sale. Although there hasn't been a need so far.
We actually install a kiosk Ipad at the business. We get a lot more opt ins that way as compared to texting in. The stats are like 5 times as many.
I know on the forum the rage is all about mobile sites, and apps. However we have found Customers can see more value in collecting data and then sending coupons and offers. The reason is they get that. Just our experience.

Wow this is giving me some things to think about The overall theme I am getting here is make it easy to get in and easy to get out and send short relevant information? Now what about the response rate? Does this type of marketing get people through the door?

I've been doing it for 11 months and I have a dozen or so big clients and it's working really well. I'm using a white label so I didn't need to design a platform, I found this to be the best bang for my buck. It's a great business to get into while it's still in the beginning phases.

I was thinking more of the side of using it for my business rather than starting my own business on it. I have got a small mid to up market restaurant and was thinking of maybe texting out offers when we have our quiet nights to try and get customers in, does that sound a good idea??? And the right sort of thing to use it for???

Yeah textMo I am the same as you, does anyone have any first hand experience with any company, because there is a lot and they all seem to do the same??

Marketingmobile I sent you a PM.

@imsolutionsgroup I have heard just a slight variation of the 3 ways as you mentioned above which means there must be more than just 3 ways if we have varying ways. LOL

What I have heard and tell business owners every day:

There is really 3 ways to grow a business.

1. Get existing customers coming back more frequently.
2. Get your existing customers to buy more from you each time they come.
3. Get more new customers.

For those of you who work with restaurants and bars. What type of incentives are you using?

drawings have worked well for my clients. free haircut drawing per month, or free large pizza per week, etc. that way you are not giving away the farm for every subscriber.

I am not sure if I would call it "the future" so much as "the right now" - Provide value and it is NOT a nuicence. I get texts from my local craft beer store a few times a week with a discount and any specialty beers that are coming in. I can stop it any time, but I choose to get most of these texts (even though many just don't apply to me) because I find value in knowing what is going on.

Would I scan a QR in a store that I want to get a discount at? Perhaps.

Now... would I want to be texted about IM stuff. Absolutely not - THAT would be annoying to me. Perhaps some would like it.

Provide real value to a person and it will work and it is not annoying.

With changing laws about sms sending its difficult to market using sms services. But tehre is still scope to get specific niche sms marketing.

Think what I am going to do is put a section at the bottom of every bill that people can write their mobile number to receive offers from us.

Has anyone got first hand with any of these UK SMS companies???

People can write their number down on a piece of paper, you can collect the data and upload the list to your platfom, but essentially you will need to do what they call in the industry a "Hand Set Verifier". You need to send them an initial text with a statement and to opt-in text YES or NO. They need to say yes for them to be added to your main list in your keyword.

From my numbers doing it this way it's a pretty low ratio. People need to be aware they are receiving texts, they need to know they will be getting one OR make them opt in on the spot, there's several ways to do that and this method yields the best results and the best return.

Remember guys if you do it HTTP it's crap, and the carriers in the main countries will be cracking down on that since it's less regulated. When it comes to premium SMPP service it is highly regulated in Europe and North America. IN Asia and the middle east it's disgusting, people get spammed badly and probably receive 2-3 texts a day. This is why the 1st world countries are regulating it so it doesn't get to that. In China this was a SIGNIFICANT issue in 2000 with text spam. You have some cock suckers in the US and probably Canada who spam and sell lists. I don't want to name names but I know when I signed up with AVID and I provided my number, after that I received spam texts, phone calls that I won a Carribean cruise etc... I am not saying it's Avid, but really strange how I never received spammy texts or random phone calls until I submitted my number with them. Could have been trumpia as well but no way for me to know for sure.

Remember also, there is a reason Avid focuses on reseller because they know the market is still a little weak with Mobile and businesses using this SMS technology, they rather the little guys go run around and find business and burn cash instead of them. That is reseller, that is white label. So before you get into these you need to really understand Mobile, the Market and especially the price plan with your company.

Has anyone had any experience with Text Local, Esendex or Text Marketer????

Mobile marketing is the good way for marketing your product,lot of advantages are there in the mobile marketing..with the use of mobile marketing we can easily contact the people..it is the good way to take the business to success..

SMS marketing has its pros and cons, just like any other industry.

SMS marketing is simpler and less expensive than the same web-based marketing content. Easy to work with, unobtrusive, easy to share(messages can easily be forwarded). SMS remains one of the simplest and most effective methods of mobile marketing.

On the other hand, SMS messages being limited to around 160 characters; it is often difficult to create an effective message within such short character limits. SMS marketing is often regarded as spam message. While consumers are accustomed to receiving a certain amount of spam messages on their e-mails, a mobile phone is very personal and therefore, spam is not tolerated. Unfortunately with bulk SMS marketing, service interruption occasionally occurs, therefore prone to failure of delivery.

Just like pretty much ANY marketing tactic, your company's success with SMS marketing will depend on execution, content, and target audience.

Mobile Marketing is great for generating local sales traffic. Look at the growth of contactless payments but these, currently, are for small amounts. QR code generation in the PoS hardware is the future with readers already available in many apps

Definitely the future for communication, there's been a drop off when it comes to P2P SMS texting, but over the years there's been a significant increase in B2C messaging so mobile will continue to be a big player in this environment.

Thanks for all you help and advice guys! Really helped!

I have had a look at a few companies and decided to go with Text Marketer. They seem the cheapest and have some good articles/blog posts on mobile marketing if any is interested Bulk SMS Gateway and Marketing Blog

MM-

SMS Marketing is going to part of the future of marketing, but at the same time sms marketing is used right now.

SMS Marketing is a very powerful marketing tool that can be used to directly send a marketing message to an individual consumer. One of the challenges with SMS marketing is getting the consumer to engage in the first places. When trying to get your target audience to opt in you have to create a value that is worth them taking the time to text in.

When thinking about of SMS marketing it acts as part of the marketing process. As we move forward with mobile marketing it is going to become a more experienced based type of marketing. Consumers are becoming part of of marketing campaigns, they are using their mobile devices to engage and participate on a whole new level.

I was recently at a conference where the keynote speaker made millions on mobile marketing. You see shows like American Idol us it all the time where you text to vote for your favorite person. Big companies are now collecting data from users and finding better ways to market to them. Like how Google sends you targeted ads, Facebook and other big companies are starting to do that using mobile ads. The space in my opinion still has a lot of room to grow. I personally feel that sending text message ads are not as effective as other more innovative ad. It is like email marketing, unless your subscribers really care about your company/product they will not read the emails you send them.

I don't like receiving marketing text messages because they usually start with one or two a week and then I keep getting messages more and more often.

There are few factors that now a days Mobile Marketing increasing daily basis. When we are new on Internet, there is trend of email marketing. It is really effective. When you login to your inbox, you got 1-2 emails daily basis from different companies. Because that time usage of internet increasing. Now a days, every body know that mobile usage is increasing day by day. So companies are trying to use those things which are mostly used..

It is annoying when you receive sms from business you did not opt-in and when it's on daily basis. Also sms like news... is crap.

But if it's from a opt-in, you get real deals from a local business, it's fantastic and worth 10X a mailing list.

My thoughts are that it is great if the person has opted in and wants to receive SMS from your business. Some of the bigger companies (e.g. Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, etc.) are doing just this to create repeat customers and giving out discounts this way. This question definitely gets me thinking about using SMS in my business, I just don't know how at this point.