In today's world, direct marketers frequently talk about getting the right message to the right person at the right time using the appropriate channel. The fact is, very few marketers are really living up to this ideal. But it is possible. Your marketing database provides the ideal framework to make this vision a reality, using one, or a blend, of several different approaches.

Promotion History

Are you using your marketing database to manage and track your promotion history? Promotion history impacts many areas of your marketing: list fatigue, previous list inclusion and exclusion, suppressions, ROI reporting, response profiling, testing, multi-channel marketing, cadence optimization, and managing chronic non-responders.

If you want to optimize your database marketing efforts, you must be serious about tracking and using your promotion history. Ultimately, effective promotion history management will result in increased response rates, improved ROI, and reduction of wasted dollars on non-performing campaigns. Your promotion history is important and is a valuable data asset. It plays a key role in your database marketing efforts and can improve your marketing performance in a variety of ways if properly applied.

Touch Tracking

If you do not know who, how often, and which channel (s) you are using to market to your customers, it is nearly inevitable that you will over-market to them. And this will likely affect your best customers. There are consequences to this fatigue. Your customers may tune you out, and if you saturate them with overwhelming, non-relevant communication, they may globally opt-out from all of your marketing communications. In the worst of cases, they may even take to social media saying how much they used to like your company and products, but they now complain for the world to see.

This is an easy fate to avoid. Use your marketing database to track each and every marketing touch. When building a campaign, use your touch history to suppress customers who may be at risk of over-marketing. Effective management of promotion and touch history will ensure happier, more loyal customers and help you strengthen relationships with your best customers.

Precise Selections

Precisely select your campaign recipients. Choose from a wide range of selects, including selects based on various RFM parameters, purchasing trends, demographic & lifestyle selects, or predictive model segments. Your marketing database provides you the framework to execute each of these or combinations of these to properly refine your selects.

Segment Testing

You probably have ideas about different offers, creative, or content. You can use your marketing database to build segments for each of these, with corresponding control groups, to try out and test your ideas. This tool provides the framework to ponder, test, execute, measure, and improve.

Preference Capture

Often, marketers capture information from customers on communication channel preferences or product offer preferences, only to find there is no easy way to manage this information and act on it. Use your marketing database to capture, maintain, and act on this valuable information. Your customers are telling you what they want, how they want it, and when they want it. Use this tool to personalize and meet their needs.

Automated List Outputs

Perhaps you have a true and tried list pull that you want to use repeatedly. The applications for this type of list output are virtually unlimited. Maybe you want to send your customers a birthday email, a text message to brand new customers, or an automatic upsell offer for customers purchasing a specific product or series of products. Whatever the case, use your marketing database to automatically, easily, and efficiently output these lists in an ideally timed manner.

To learn more, visit Dovetail at http://www.dovetaildatabase.com .

Source by Jeff Barela

The death of email marketing has been greatly exaggerated.

I'm sure you've heard the discussions about the imminent declination of email and the rise of social media. But independent marketing studies suggest that's just not the case. Let's see what the data tells us.

· 2012 ExactTarget Survey – 66% prefer email as the # 1 marketing communication channel.

· 2012 EmailVision Study – 89.2% of marketing managers say email remains as important or more important to their overall marketing strategy compared with two years ago.

· A Merkle Study – 74% of online adults prefer to receive corporate communications via email instead of social media, direct mail, text messaging, or phone.

In reality, the outlook for email marketing – with a twist – is stronger and more popular than ever. Integration is the twist. In a Strong Mail Marketing Trends Survey, 68% of business leaders intend to integrate email marketing with social media. And the marketing spend for email marketing (60%) and social media (55%), shows business leaders intend to pursue an integrated approach.

The New Email Marketing Strategy

Employing email by integrating it with social media, search, and content marketing results in smarter email marketing. Because email covers all parts of the buying cycle and champions permission marketing, it's powerful and effective. With its opt-in feature, emails go to a target audience willing to receive them. On its own, email encourages interactivity. But combined with social media, search and content marketing, email marketing optimizes results.

Integrating Email Marketing with Social Media

Social media connect prospects, customers, and businesses. Once that's done, relationships develop offline via email or phone. Email remains the preferred method because it's fast, effective and efficient. With integration, both channels reinforce each other as social media informs email marketing. Respond to prospects' questions on social media sites in a personal, engaging and focused way. This deepens and broadens your social network. And it nurtures your brand. Include links in your email to your social media sites to increase your followers. Also, gently suggest customers refer your business by sharing your email. Integrating email with social media improves effectiveness more than when employing each channel independently.

Integrating Email Marketing with Search

The superiority of email lies in its ability to address every part of the buying cycle. And it embarrasses permission marketing, which has replaced interruption marketing. Integration with search gives you several benefits. Newsletters or eZines are an excellent way to extend reach and build awareness. Adding relevant keywords to your emails increases prospects' likelihood of finding your newsletters. You can also drive more prospects from search engines to your website by posting newsletters to your site. Keyword-rich emails also help increase the chances of your emails going viral. Combining email with search provides customers with marketing they want. As Jay Baer would say, email has "Youtility". This helps improve your leads and grow your business.

Integrating Email Marketing with Content Marketing

This one's a no-brainer. You can use email as content, as a content delivery tool and as a way to drive conversions. Let's take email as content first. Do not write about your products and services. Instead, focus on solving customer problems or discuss ground-breaking industry news and trends that affect your clients. Email buildings trust by publishing relevant information. Email also serves as an effective delivery tool. You can attach value-added content like product brochures, case studies, and videos. Finally, email can drive prospects and clients to landing pages. This advances conversions. Integrating email with content makes it easier for prospects and clients to access, digest and act on information you published.

Email Marketing Outlook

Due to the exploding growth of mobile devices, email marketing may reach a tipping point by 2015. Today, email has many benefits, but its future lies in integrating with other marketing channels. As business leaders purse the integration of email marketing with other channels suggests email is here to stay. Obviously, your competitors think so – judging by where they're spending their money.

Questions for the Savvy Marketer

Does your marketing plan take a holistic approach? Are you integrating email best practices into your marketing efforts? Are you increasing your leads and growing your business as effectively as you could? If you do not have a limitless budget, consider integrating smarter email marketing with your other marketing channels. If your lead generation needs a reboot, email might be a good place to start.

Source by Alex M Milo

Do you need a newsletter template? What is important for setting up newsletter marketing?

Writing and publishing a successful newsletter is perhaps the most competitive and lucrative of all the different areas of online as well as offline marketing.

A few years ago, there were 1500 different newsletters in this country. Today there are well over 10,000, with new ones being started all the time. One thing to remember is that for every new newsletter that begins, some disappear just as quickly as they are started – lack of operating capital and marketing know-how being the main causes of failure.

Do you need a newsletter template? Not necessarily, but it might be helpful. There are places online where one can obtain a template template for free. Just plug "newsletter template" into a search engine, such as Google. Having a template for your newsletter gives you a tool to get started more easily.

However, there are more important things to consider when marketing with a newsletter. To have a successful newsletter, you have to specialize. The best thing you can do is provide new information on a subject not already covered by an established newsletter.

Regardless of the frustrations involved in launching your own newsletter, never forget this: There are people from all walks of life, in all parts of this country, many of them with no writing ability whatever, who are making incredible profits with simple two, four , and six-page newsletters! You can be one of those success stories, too!

Your first step should be to subscribe to as many different newsletters and publications as you can afford. Sign up for every list you come across on the internet, in order to be on the newsletter subscriber list. Analyze and study how the others are doing it. Attend as many workshops and seminars on your subject as possible. Learn from the pros. Learn how the successful newsletter publishers are doing it, and why they are making money. Adapt their success methods to your own newsletter, but determine to recognize where they are weak, and to make yours better in every way.

Plan your newsletter before launching it. Know the basic premise for its being, your editorial position, the layout, art work, type styles, subscription price (if any), distribution methods, and every other detail necessary to make it look, sound, and feel like the end result you have envisioned.

Lay out what your start-up needs will be; detail the length of time it's going to take to become established, and what will be involved in becoming established. Set a date as a mile stone of accomplishment for each phase of your development: A date for breaking even, a date for attaining a certain paid subscription figure, and a monetary goal for each of your first five years in business. All this must be done before publishing your first issue.

Most newsletter publishers do all the work themselves, and are impatient to get that first issue into print. As a result, they neglect to devote the proper amount of time to market research and distribution. Do not start your newsletter with out first having accomplished this task!

Market research is simply determining who the people are who will be interested in reading your newsletter, and buying what you have to offer and the kind of information these people want to see in your newsletter as a reason for continuing to buy it. You have to determine what it is that they want from your newsletter and what information you can provide that will cause them to buy from you not just now, but in the future. Your ultimate goal is to make life long customers from your subscribers.

Source by Angela Edwards

When looking for quality prints for your brochures, posters, calendars, flyers, letterheads and even business cards, then you need to find a company that can effectively handle the digital printing project on your behalf. All these printed products are important because they will be representing your brand and company out there in the market and you want them to paint the best image for your brand. A few helpful tips will make it easy for you to choose a digital printing company you can trust.

1. Choose a company that can handle any project size to cater to your large and small consignments depending on your current needs. It should offer you good turnaround and high quality regardless of how big your printing project is.

2. Find out how easy it is for you to make online enquiries and place printing orders. A company with a pleasant online presence and great customer service will give you an easy time going through the process and getting prints you truly deserve.

3. A company that has in-house designer will be more advantageous because you can have your designs handled professionally even when you have no idea what is best for your products. You should get assistance when you are not very sure of what to choose or what you are looking for.

4. The company you choose should be innovative enough to offer you print solutions that are adaptable in your business environment. It should offer ongoing support recommendations and consultation to help evolve the business.

5. Check how technically competent the printing company is in terms of machines and personnel. It should have good organized printing process to deliver the best of services to you.

6. Ask to see samples of previously done work to help you gauge the quality of work you are about to get. It also helps to find out what your printing options are to make sure that you are not limited to an option you might not like on your products.

7. Choose a company that has experience in digital printing. Experience is important because it could mean that the company can handle other projects and services such as data management and marketing campaigns. Find out what other services you can enjoy from the company because they could be important to you in the future.

8. Check out the reputation of your service provider. You can go through client feedback and reviews on the company to find out how good it is in offering the printing services.

9. If possible, ask about the financial stability of the company just to be sure that it will not go out of business before completing your printing project. You should work with a company you can fully trust with your needs and financial stability is important.

10. Consider the printing charges. Even though you should never compromise quality because of the price, you want to ensure that you don’t end up being overcharged. Some companies offer discounts for bulk printing so check around and choose what you find most affordable.

Source by Jovia D’Souza

Transactional SMS allows immediate two-way communication via mobile devices such as mobile phones and PDAs. With a 97% delivery and read rate, SMS messaging is increasingly gaining recognition as the perfect customer communication tool.

In order to receive transactional SMS messages such as requests for information, alerts, or other types of notifications-the subscriber must give permission, or “opt in.” Permission can be granted by phone, in writing, through a website, or, of course, an SMS. In order to avoid big trouble with cell phone carriers, SMS marketers must obtain permission prior to transmitting commercial or even transactional messages. There are no exceptions here.

Transactional SMS may be defined in a variety of applications. For example, an airline might send SMS alerts when a flight is canceled or delayed. An individual may use them to receive stock quotes, health tips, or to vote their preferences in contests.

In addition, many companies now utilize this popular communication tool to boost sales. An auto dealership’s service department could generate substantial add-on revenues by sending scheduled SMS notifications for services such as oil changes. Transactional SMS payment reminders are an extremely popular and cost-effective method of communication used in Europe and Asia.

AbsoluteROI, a multi-channel marketing services company, recently conducted a case study with a payday lender that integrated transactional SMS messaging. AROI’s triggering platform was set to pull from the database the mobile numbers of borrowers in good standing and sent them a real-time transactional message directing those borrowers to a website where they could fill out an application for a second loan. In 41 weeks of testing the transactional SMS campaign, it produced the following results:

o 132,726 texts sent

o 18,255 visits to the application website

o 2,065 loans funded

During the testing period, $110,628 net revenue was generated, with the lender incurring a $13,272 cost to send the text messages. Overall, the lender realized a 833% return on investment. Staggering compared to traditional methods.

Cell phone messaging can be applied, implemented, or integrated into almost any business that communicates with their customers. The ability to obtain opt-in mobile numbers and meet FCC and carrier compliance requirements is the key to a successful transactional SMS program.

For more mobile marketing information, please text TIPS to 22741

Source by Robert Sg Lee

The demands put on telecommunications signalling system keep changing. Signalling is a very vital part of telecommunications and has a number of characteristics that it needs to exhibit. A signalling system must be able to cope with large numbers of calls or requests at one time without becoming noticeably slower. At the same time, the cost of running the signalling system must not detract from a carrier’s ability to make money.

The system must be reliable and always be available for use. As components or individual messages can fail, the system as a whole must contain devices and procedures for recovering from problem areas.

One deficiency of early signalling systems based on tones was that it was very hard to adapt them to new requirements. This problem ran on into Signalling System #6 which was also a computer protocol but designed for absolute bandwidth efficiency; it was not easily capable of extension. Thus Signalling System #7 was born.

Between PABXs we often use DPNSS which stands for Digital Private Network Signalling System. This protocol is used on digital trunk lines for connecting two PABXs. It supports a limited set of inter-networking facilities based on the ISDN protocol. This protocol has been defined by BT

A subscriber and telephone company notify each other of call status with audible tones and an exchange of electrical current. This exchange of information is called supervisory signaling. There are three different types of supervisory signaling:

On Hook – When the handset rests on the cradle, the circuit is on hook. The switch prevents current from flowing through the telephone. Regardless of the signaling type, a circuit goes on hook when the handset is placed on the telephone cradle and the switch hook is toggled to an open state. This prevents the current from flowing through the telephone. Only the ringer is active when the telephone is in this position.

On Hook – When the handset is removed from the telephone cradle, the circuit is off hook. The switch hook toggles to a closed state, causing circuit current to flow through the electrical loop. The current notifies the telephone company equipment that someone is requesting to place a telephone call. When the telephone network senses the off-hook connection by the flow of current, it provides a signal in the form of a dial tone to indicate that it is ready.

Ringing – When a subscriber makes a call, the telephone sends voltage to the ringer to notify the other subscriber of an inbound call. The telephone company also sends a ringback tone to the caller alerting the caller that it is sending ringing voltage to the recipient telephone. Although the ringback tone sounds similar to ringing, it is a call-progress tone and not part of supervisory signaling.

The Digital Subscriber Signalling System No.1 (DSS1) is a suite of protocols that provides the means for users to invoke the full range of services and capabilities available from the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN).

The Q.931 standard defines a protocol that takes care of these services. This protocol is located at the third, that is, at the network layer of the OSI protocol stack. All the above mentioned signalling is achieved through the D-channel defined by the ISDN standard. Q.931 will use this channel for setting up the wanted connection. As stated in the OSI reference model, higher protocol layers depend on the services provided by lower layers. Thus Q.931 is requesting services from the data-link layer which resides at layer two. The Q.921 standard defines a protocol that can be called a Data-Link Service Provider (DLSP). Q.931 is thus the data-link service user (DLSU). Q.921 is also better known as LAPD, as in Link Access Protocol D-channel. Service requests that come from the above layers are packed in LAPD frames and are sent through the network. All Q.931 messages are built up by a certain message body.

Signalling System Number 7 (SS7) is a set of signalling protocols developed for telephony in 1975, which is used to set up, maintain and tear down telephone calls. It is also used for a number of other functions and features such as:

Local Number Portability

Number Translation

SMS (Short Message Service)

Prepaid Billing

It is referred to by a number of abbreviations such as CCSS7 (Common Channel Signalling System 7) and C7 (CCITT number 7), The International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee.

The SS#7 model uses the concept of layers to separate the different functions, however, the structure predates the adoption of the OSI model and there are only 4 layers. Circuit and Non-circuit components are shown, including the overlap where ISUP uses both. There are other non-circuit related top protocols such as MAP (Mobile application Part) By being open ended, SS#7 can be extended for new requirements.

Source by David W Christie

Email marketing is one of the ways to boost your business. Social media has become a platform for promoting trade, and email marketing help in that. Email marketing can be used to improve your services and app. “Email marketing is using the specific tools to send your advertising emails to a group of people.” Its one of the easiest ways to make money. Marketers can send a targeted message to the intended group. Data regarding customer needs, products are, and then emails are sent to the specific customers. By email, the business can promote their services, offers and what new they have to offer. Transactional email, Direct email, Mobile email are the ways by which email marketing is done.

This is the cost-effective way, and it is cheaper as compared to others. Target customers are easy to reach within no time and as they are aware of the new things what business has to offer for them. Subscribers get the latest news and offer from the advertiser.

INSIGHTS ON THE TOOLS

There are various tools which help in marketing and making business an edge in the market.

Let’s take a view at some of them

CAMPAIGN MONITOR is a template builder tool, and it assures that email can be read easily on mobile, so that customer or client miss no email. Like Google, Yahoo or any other email platform its uses the same interface so that the things don’t get complex. You can upload HTML template and can format and edit when in need. Autoresponder can set only, and data segmentation ensures, that the email gets deliver only to the intended clients. Basic and Unlimited are the two packages which this tool offer.

VERTICAL RESPONSE helps to connect email campaigns to social sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. It helps to communicate with a large number of audience. With the help of email building wizard, you can build your advertising drive and by freeform HTML customize it to make your list for company. You can use only text no images, and other statistics are required. Up to 4,000 emails can be sent per month.

BENCHMARK key feature is that it offers multiple templates for greetings, promotions and many other events. You can use HTML AND CSS to give it a personalized look. With the built-in spam filter, you can check for objectionable material in your templates. They even have a community where you can provide your views and design. Packages are there and start with 600 emails and increases further.

CAMPAIGNER tool has a lot to offer. It has more than 500 templates which are categorized as industry types and need. Contact management tool is one of the efficient features which it provides, where you can import your contact from the list. Un-subscribed email is automatically removed. In a way, this tool simplifies everything and give more than marketing. You can give a try with the free 30-day trial offer.

MIL CHIMP allows you to take surveys and send it to people to know the opinion of them. Use of survey techniques in social media makes the most out of your advertising techniques. You have the option to customize your list and know who has received the mail or not and will also come to understand that which campaign has received the maximum clicks. It offers the free subscription for 2000 subscribers.

GET RESPONSE This tool lets you efficiently maintain your contact list. You can edit your contact list. This tool track and lets you know who have subscribed, unsubscribed and clicked on links. It also gives you a report in pie and chart form and informs you about the mail it got delivered or not. Different packages are offered depending on the need.

LEAD PAGES helps you to create interactive landing pages for your sites where you have a choice to choose from 50 templates. They are in sync with best email providers. Business can make a mark within no time. Various packages are there for customers. Lead pages can efficiently transform your business quickly.

MAD MIMI Saves your time; you can clone your previous ad campaigns and make the changes according to your need. Old drives can be used in a way and if delete you can undo it also. The detailing features provide you with the information about the number of emails opened, shared, and how many people clicked on the link. By integrating with Google Analytics, it provides the statistics and clicks targeting.

CONSTANT CONTACT Offers you several templates and lets you customize your own. It gives you the detailed report regarding the links and emails. Share on social media like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn can boost your business and gives your site the heavy traffic.

TOUT APP is the best regarding functionality and features. It has a large variety of templates to choose from. Integration with CRM gives you the details of every email, how they are proceeding. It provides the transparency, and produce reports on which emails have been clicked, deleted, attachment seen or not. In short, it gives the detailing of each activity going on. This helps you to track your business and changes can be made accordingly as it keeps you aware of every situation.

Email marketing is one of the efficient marketing techniques to promote your services. Effective marketing can give you the higher sales for the business. In this competitive era, the company should be at the prominent methods to attract the audience and make a profit. Sending manual emails to a group of people is a complex task, and it is time-consuming. To save your time and get the desired result email marketing can help you to reach the heights. For any business to succeed the market should be analyzed considering the loss also. It’s not necessary that by adopting email marketing, you will always get the positive result.

By proper study and the knowledge of audience can make your business flourish in the market. So opt for this services and let your business boom in the market.

Source by Anjali Shukla

Custom boxes can play an important role for you if you are an uprising business. They can be used to showcase your business’ personality, show your base of clients what you are all about. They can also magnify your product; you can elaborate what your costumers are purchasing. This can be valuable to your business because people usually don’t buy products that they aren’t familiar with. They can prevent a dispute with your costumers because they are the safest way to transport goods. No customer wants to see his delivered product being damaged and I doubt that you want that as well. Spending a little extra on packaging can go a long way for you, save you from inconvenience and satisfy your costumers. Special packaging is a huge plus, and you shouldn’t even question whether you should start doing it.

It benefits the product

Spending slightly more on packaging can prevent damaging your product. Shipments can get messy, so if you are interested in keeping your clients you have to deliver quality products whenever they order. You are confident that your product is good, right? Show that through your custom boxes. Depicting quality through the packaging isn’t something new, and if you aren’t already doing it, you are late for the party. You can advertise both your company and your product, so spend some time designing a box that you are certain it shows your firm’s personality. Introduce it to your costumers and see how they respond. If they like it, keep using it. If they don’t then spend more time designing. Or hire a designer and take that weight off your shoulders. It’s important that your product’s quality is perfectly showcased on your packaging. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time.

It benefits your costumers

If your product is as good as you say it is, use the packaging to show that. Clients usually don’t like bland, simple packages and neither, should you? Don’t settle for less when you could have it all. Shipping your product using custom boxes costs just a little more money, practically you won’t even feel it. It benefits, however, you will. It shows your costumers that you care about your product just as much as they do. You will begin to feel the differences right away. Several simple adjustments can bring you closer to your consumers and can build you a long lasting relationship with them. Bringing in new consumers is important, but keeping your current group of clients is equally as important. So, spend that little extra cash on the packaging. Do not hesitate. If you show everyone that you care about your current client base more than your competitor, everyone will soon want to be part of your little business family.

It benefits you

Custom boxes can’t be that one thing that puts your business above all your competitors, but it can be pretty important. If you have something that benefits your clients and your product, it’s next to impossible for that thing to fail to benefit you. Start using customized packaging and satisfy your clients. After all, if you are expecting your business to succeed, you MUST put the clients first. If you do that, then the profit will come eventually. The value of using customized packaging is much higher than you thought.

Source by Nudrat Naheed

As the business industry becomes more competitive, traders and entrepreneurs are searching for new methods to reach out to customers. Moreover with globalization being the mantra of the age, every brand wants to reach out to broader range of potential customers in order to improve their sales traffic better. In order to achieve the benefits of promotion and marketing, mobile is the latest device that is growing in popularity with its SMS service. The concept of bulk SMS has successfully addressed the fancy of people that makes it easier and flexible for traders to stay in touch with potential customers.

Although there is no doubt about the benefits of bulk SMS, it is equally true that this technology needs to be used properly in order to attract the attention of customers. However, most commonly it is seen that many traders indulge in common mistakes which hampers the effect of bulk SMS marketing badly. Before you also start availing the service of bulk SMS, it is suggested that you stay informed about the mistakes to avoid in bulk SMS marketing in order to get maximum benefits:

Insufficient call to action: The first mistake that most traders do is that they fail to influence the customers with a proper call to action. If your message does not click well with potential clients, they will not feel any urge to consider it. Here, when preparing a marketing message for bulk SMS, make sure that it's catchy and direct with a slight nudge.

Do not try to force customers: Getting hold of numerous mobile numbers is no tough task. However the trick is to kick start the campaign with consent from customers. Instead of stealing numbers of mobile users and forwarding them with messages, it is better to keep your present customers updated and informed for better interaction. In most cases it is seen that traders forward promotional message in bulk to huge list of numbers. However they fail to get proper response in return as either their message gets considered as scams or gets deleted without making any impression among people.

Frequent forward of message: The third mistake that is broadly committed by traders is that they keep forwarding customers with too many messages at frequent interval. It has been observed that frequent promotional messages tend to make people irritated and disinterested, so making your marketing efforts a failure. Since it is suggested that you keep your customers updated about events, services and deals at proper interval so that it catches their interest spontaneously.

Maintain a proper time: It's true that bulk SMS service allows you to send messages at any time of the day. Banking on this fact, many traders forward marketing messages at odd hours such as early morning or midnight. Such messages mostly do not get enough attention from customers as they end up as junk in the inbox.

Make sure that you do not indulge in any of the above stated mistakes when availing bulk SMS for promotional purpose.

Source by Chandan C Kumar

If you have an organization, we suggest that you make SMS marketing an essential part of your marketing strategy. As a matter of fact, this strategy can help you engage customers while they are in the process of buying. Given below are some tips to help you with bulk SMS marketing. Read on.

1. SMS as your benchmark to cover up all bases

You can receive an SMS on your mobile no matter where you are in the world. This means a lot for your business. For instance, if you are targeting a broad demographic with your campaign, you can summarize your offer in just 160 characters and then add SMS broadcast.

This can save you money as the text messages are inexpensive and feature higher open rates.

2. Engagement of your customers with your business

To customers, SMS messages are personal. That’s the reason they read almost every message that lands on their mobile phones. Today’s generation is obsessed with mobile phones. So, with a simple request, you can get very high response rate. As a matter of fact, it’s important to keep your user list updated on a regular basis. This will save you a lot on administration costs.

3. Send offers to your customers through SMS

Actually, for trade stores and outlets, SMS is a powerful medium. With an SMS marketing campaign, you can make timely offers as timely offers get the highest response rates from customers. The beauty of these campaigns is that you get a very high response rate. This means that you will get a higher return on investment.

4. Use Direct Mail

Your conversion rate for the direct mail can be 4.4% on average. If you want to boost it, you can send your customers an SMS offering another incentive within 24 hours of the product delivery. This will encourage more customers to open your envelope.

5. Run customer surveys

The fact of the matter is that an SMS marketing campaign ran for a few hours can get you a lot more information and higher response rate than any other campaign. The reason is that a brief question with some MCQs doesn’t cost a lot of time to your customers. Therefore, running customer surveys through the SMS is a great idea.

6. Find out your Influencers

Finding your influencers is a great idea. Every customer is different. If you can make a list of your advocates, you can set aside more resources for them, such as inside tips, offers and so on.

7. Use SMS data

As soon as you have divided your audience into different groups based on their interest and engagement level, you can use the data in order to communicate with each of the group. You can engage with them through SMS and other media as well.

Source by Shalini Madhav