Your Client Experience Determines Pricing – How Much are Your Bananas?

Your Client Experience Determines Pricing – How Much are Your Bananas?

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The Technology Issue | September 2009

The Technology Issue | September 2009

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SMS as an Email lists growth strategy

Understanding SMS and Mobil Marketing to Grow Your Email Lists

 Text capture via SMS allows marketers to quickly implement a list growth tool available anywhere a subscriber has their cell phone. By texting in information, such as email, you can set-up a perfect program for in-store or online promotions, webinars, and tradeshows. Based upon the couple of samples below here is how a program might work:

1. Customer receives a card or sees an in store display to learn about the program.
2. The customer sends a txt to a short code and then receives a text back to opt into the reward, specials, etc, program.
3. Customer is added to a marketing list with your ESP so you can continue marketing to then with special/ alerts via email or text.
4. By opting in via text customer receives a coupon or special for next time they are in the store for redemption.

There are many other use cases for using SMS to build your email lists and to keep your customers engaged.  Talk to your ESP or agency partner about how to get going.

Email and SMS for List Growth

You should be using SMS and Mobil marketing to grow Email lists. Consumers live on their mobile devices. More and more companies are using SMS as a way to make it easy for a consumer to opt into their email programs, and send them special offers via phone or traditional email. It’s immediate for the subscriber to opt-in using their cell phone and they can get a triggered confirmation SMS.  In the past the cost was prohibitive.  Now it is very economical to build your lists with SMS.  The subscriber does the work and there are no more collecting of business cards at trade shows and manually entering those names into a distribution list.  I’d look for B2C growth  with restaurant and retail chains. and a B2B no brainer is at trade shows.  SMS is much more effective and timely that the traditional, manual ways of collecting opt ins (response cards, fishbowl, etc.).

Email Value

It seems that every day I am asked “What is a good CPM?”.  When you are looking at ESP’s it’s about more that the cost, it’s about the value you will get from that vendor.  You typically get what you pay for, so a very low CPM will probably mean poor deliverability and/or poor customer support and service.  Look beyond the cost and evaluate how the ESP can impact your business.

Subscriber Acquisition

Do you know what is the best means to successfully acquire new subscribers?  Technologies are merging and how it is quite simple to acquire new names with IT having to create a landing page or having to hire some data entry person to enter names into an excel file. Aside from the website capture method where the subscriber enters their data and hits send, the next easiest method is to utilize SMS (txt messages) to join your list.

Talk to your agency about getting set up or call your email service provider.  The costs have come down a lot and it now more economical to use SMS over data entry.

Emails that Sell

Today, creating great emails that sell is not rocket science. It’s based between getting your emails get opened and read and those that get deleted right away. This reflects what your reader wants to learn about. Here are a few tips for creating emails that sell:

1. Know why your customers buy – Always ask yourself why customer buy from me rather than someone else. Create a great subject line – Remember that the subject line is the key to getting email opened.
2. Speak the language of your customer in the email – Talk directly to the person not to the computer screen.
3. Give them a reason to buy – Provide facts abut your product offer and knowing why they buy can help.
4. Create a strong call to action – Have a sense of urgency to click to buy. Make sure the links work and that your landing page does not confuse the customer.

The ExactTarget Blog

The ExactTarget Blog

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The ExactTarget Blog

The ExactTarget Blog

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Selecting a new ESP #2

I wanted to follow up on my previous post related to selecting a new ESP. ClickMail Marketing has just released a whitepaper that can help you navigate the ESP jungle. They offer the top 20 factors to consider when shopping for a top tier ESP. Click the link, download the whitepaper and let me know your thoughts.