To Use Mobile Messag

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Mobilize your marketing strategy this festive season 2

Why text messaging is still exciting 2

Features & Benefits of text messaging 3Retailers love text messaging 3

Consumers love text messaging as well! 4

What can I do with text messaging this festive season? 4

Try these ideas for Festive Sales & Marketing text message campaigns 4

Try out a Customer service program via text message 5

Where should I start with my text messaging program

this festive season? 5

1. Create and manage a Contact Distribution list 5

2. Prepare creative message copy 63. Measure text message campaign success 7

4. Use the correct tools to send & receive your text messages 7

Mobilize your marketing strategy this

festive season

The festive season is almost upon us, and retailers of all types and sizes are realizing

the potential of text messaging to play a key role in their marketing, sales, support andcustomer relationship management efforts.

This whitepaper will provide retailers with the information that they need to fuel both

new customer acquisition and retention over the festive period and boost their festive

sales. Most importantly, the ideas, techniques and tools that are presented here will

help you to get your text message program up and running in less than 5 minutes with

no software development.

Why text messaging is still exciting

There are more than 5 billion mobile phones in use today, and in 2012 there’ll be more

than 6 billion if the current growth rates persist . The proliferation of mobile technologies,

including the near-endless supply of iPhone, Android or other handset applicationsand the mobile web experience are exciting, but mask a very important and easily

forgotten fact: there is only one non-voice mobile technology that can enable you to

communicate with all mobile phones today - text messaging via the short message

service (SMS).

The mobile phone is a highly personal communication device that commands more

attention from its owner than any other communication device in use today. As such,

94% of all text messages are read and generate higher direct response rates than any

other media type, with average figures ranging between 15% and 45% .

Content

Copyright © 2010 Clickatell

1

1 http://www.wirelessintelligence.com/analysis/2010/07/global-mobile-connections-surpass-5-billion-milestone

2 http://www.buzzle.com/articles/why-sms-marketing-is-so-effective.html

2



FEATURES & BENEFITS OF TEXT MESSAGING

RETAILERS LOVE TEXT MESSAGING

Retailers of all shapes and sizes love text messaging for its ability to play a key role

in wowing their customers, whether through mobile marketing campaigns, direct

response sales, pre- and after-sales support and even customer loyalty program

management.

comScore released results that indicated increases in text message advertising for

consumer goods and services with a corresponding increase in response rate. Leading

sectors that were included in the results were:

More importantly, recent figures indicate that text messaging is showing a 26% year

on year growth; it has become a technological fixture, which means it is here to stay.

FEATURE

Ubiquity

Push messaging

Two-way communication

Mobile information storage

Short text messages

Support for multiple

message format or

character sets

Reporting

BENEFIT

SMS is the only communication channel that can

be used to deliver a message to more than 74%

of the world’s population, wherever they may be

at the time

SMS is capable of delivering the message to the

handset on demand, whereas other widely available

options require the launch of an application for an

information request to be made to a messaging

server

Non-intrusive mobile dialogue with customers is

possible

Messages are stored in mobile handset inboxes

and retrieved at any time, on demand

160 characters of concise, to-the-point

communication which anyone can read, use &

understand

Messages can be sent & received in rich or

localized language formats, including plain text,

binary, 16-bit or special language characters

Many mobile operators provide receipts for

message delivery to the handset, including date

& time stamps, making insightful reporting possible


3 http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2009/Key_Trends_in_Mobile_Content_

Usage_Mobile_Advertising

3

SECTOR

Food

Fashion/Clothing

Restaurants

TEXT MESSAGE ADVERTISING

RATE INCREASE

53%

38%

37%

AVERAGE

RESPONSE RATE

13%

More than 6%

More than 16%

http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2009/Key_Trends_in_Mobile_Content_Usage_Mobile_Advertising





CONSUMERS LOVE TEXT MESSAGING AS WELL

Text messaging provides consumers with real-time, relevant & concise communication

where and when they can act on it, enabling them to take advantage of offers that are

relevant to them and their interests and engage with trusted retailers in a safe and

personal way. This lays the foundation for a 1-on-1 relationship between the retailer

and the customer, thus fuelling customer trust and ultimately customer satisfaction.

What can I do with text messagingthis festive season?

TRY THESE IDEAS FOR FESTIVE SALES & MARKETING TEXT

MESSAGE CAMPAIGNS

The most widely deployed and successful text message campaigns have marketing

and sales objectives. Why not give a few of these campaign ideas a try this festive

season?

Promotional Coupons - Provide your customers with "25% off this festive season

when you present this coupon" to help them save! save! save! A unique code sent

to handsets will help you keep track of vouchers being used.

Up-selling and Cross-selling - If you've got your customers’ purchase history on

hand, determine which products or services they might be interested in this festive

season and provide them with last-minute discounts. Customers who previously bought

electrical appliances might be interested in a "l ast-minute special on the all new

XYZ clothes dryer, now only ... until Dec 24 2010." .

Viral Marketing - Give your current customers the chance to win by sending them a

specially coded message that they'll be able to forward to their friends. For every

referred purchase a friend makes, the referrer receives one point - the customer with

the highest score wins!

Otherwise, spread the joy this festive season with viral mobile content. Whether it's a joke, a prayer or a free give-away opportunity, your customers will appreciate it and

may just decide to forward it to their friends (tip: use something that applies to that

specific segment of your customer base).

Event Invites - Reconnect with customers by inviting them to your special event. While

the festivities are under way, provide them with an incentive to join your text message

distribution list. “ Text to win” and “ Subscribe for festive discounts” are only a few

ways to increase the holiday excitement.

Reminders - The festive season is often a busy period for many, and could result in

them forgetting their appointments or to pick up their orders. “ Mr XYZ, your vehic le

is ready for collection ... ” or “ Mrs ABC, your Christmas bubbly has arrived” is

something your customers will appreciate as they manage their busy schedules.

Sponsored Information - Providing value-added services will ensure that your

customers keep you in mind. “ Clear Sky, 66 F with a South-westerly breeze in the

CBD, brought to you by ... ” and “ XYZ Company Traffic Update: Traffic Jam on

North-bound A23” are good examples of information customers need on a regular

basis - information that they will appreciate.

Collections - Sending “ A simple festive reminder to pay your account” or “10%

off your next purchase if you pay your account before Dec 23 2010“ will inspire

customers to pay their accounts and even help your festive sales.




TRY OUT A CUSTOMER SERVICE PROGRAM VIA TEXT MESSAGE

Showing your customers you care about their product or service satisfaction after they

make a purchase with you, will increase their loyalty and more likely lead to future

purchases.

Send a message to customers that make a purchase, 1 hour after the purchase, to

thank them and let them know that you provide customer service via text message.

Your text message: “ Thank you for shopping at XYZ Retailer. If you

require further assistance with your purchase, text a short description

of your issue to thi s service number 24/7.”

Customers will be pleasantly delighted and will avail themselves of the simplicity of

making a service request.

Customer text message: "Bought Frank Sinatra DVD at Broadway store

on account 6757890 this morning, but no d iscs in box. What should I

do as I am 300 miles away now?"

Provide your customers with confirmation of their customer service request, further

contact details and an estimate of when they will first be contacted or the issue will be

resolved. They'll have the satisfaction of knowing that they can access your service

when and where it is easiest for them and clearly differentiate you from the competitionin the process.

Your reply text message: "Thank you for contacting XYZ Retailer. Your

service reference is 75HGR6. An agent will call you with in an hour to

assist."

Once you have contacted the customer, confirm the status of the service request and

thank them again for their purchase.

Your reply text message: "Service request 75HGR6 has been resolved

as attend to. If you requir e further assistance, reply to th is msg wit h

NO. Thank you for your custom, XYZ Retailer.”

Where should I start with my text

messaging program this festive

season?

With the endless possibilities suddenly open to your new text messaging program, as

you look deeper into how to make them a reality, it will be easy for you to become

overwhelmed by the technical gobbledygook and product-speak as you dig deeper,

so here’s our list of the 4 things you that will help you launch your own text message

program right now.

1. CREATE AND MANAGE A CONTACT DISTRIBUION LIST

Requiring customers to register online, complete surveys or provide profile data will

give you the information necessary to send targeted text messages this festive season.

Like Santa you'll be able to keep tabs on all your customers and provide them with

some offers on products or services they are likely to be interested in.

Increase your campaign response rate by ensuring that your target audience has an

interest in what you have to sell. Don’t send text messages to prospects that do not

know that they are joining your distribution list and don’t send unqualified offers to

customers that have a high likelihood of no interest in your other products, besides

those that they’ve previously purchased, as they will likely view these messages as

unsolicited SPAM.




But how do you get them to sign up to your distributi on list?

Advertise

Use your existing marketing material and advertising to promote your new mobile

offering. This will help you to retain existing customers and extend your brand by

attracting new customers.

Use a Mobile Keyword so that customers can simply text a predetermined phase, such

as “ JOIN” , followed by their details to a short code or two-way number. Include mobilesign up boxes on your website alongside email, giving visitors the opportunity to receive

information regarding previews, updates and special offers direct to their mobile.

“ Text your postal or ship ping address to receive free delivery” or “ Text your

name and age to ...” and “ Register now to receive monthly discoun ts on your

mobile phone” enables you to gather extensive information about your customers.

Offers

Give your current and prospective customers a reason to join your distribution list.

Discounts, coupons, access to VIP clubs and other special offers will help your customers

to achieve their goals this festive season: to save as much as they can.

Start a Mobile VIP Club that offers shoppers exclusive first notice of upcoming holiday

sales, hot stock arrivals or new deals via mobile only. Gather customers’ mobile numbers

by offering an in-store incentive, such as a discount on purchase or free gift when

signing up as a mobile subscriber.

Permission

When customers communicate with you, give them the option of joining your distribution

list and receiving text message offers and relevant information from you throughout

the year.

Tip: In most cases you are required by law to provide the recipients of your text

messages with the option and method to opt in and out of your mobile marketing

campaign. This helps you stay on the right side of the law and maintain a good

relationship with your audience.

Clickatell assists with keeping you legal, by enabling any recipient to a message

sent through the Clickatell gateway, to reply “STOP” and they will be removed

from your distribution list.

List Splitting

Create different distribution lists out of your customer and prospect lists, so that they

can be placed into specific or even multiple categories for better response rates and

less annoyance.

Contact lists could be organized according to 'Age Group', 'Gender', 'Location', 'Income',

'Last Product Bought', 'Last Purchase Date', etc. Marketing specific products to customers

who are more likely to buy them means that you will not only see sales increase, but

also increase customer satisfaction, since the advertising messages are relevant to

them.

2. PREPARE CREATIVE MESSAGE COPY

Your customers have given you their mobile numbers, but what will you say to them?

This is where you get to use your creative copywriting talents in order to craft a simple,

effective message. Certain mobile providers limit message size to 160 characters (with

spaces). Creating an effective festive text marketing message in only 160 characters

can be challenging.

Tip: Make sure you choose a messaging partner that offers message concatenation,

or else you will need to work within the 160-character constraints. Clickatell’s




Communicator 2 allows users to span text over 2 or 3 messages by selecting

the ‘Span Multiple SMS’ feature.

A Formula for Good Text Message Copywriting

Wondering how to craft your message to your customers? Use the tips below to create

messages that are appealing and rich in content that your customers will respond to!

Attention

“ Juicy turkeys still available!” can be a good way to grab the attention of a prospective

customer interested in food products, especially when they become hard to find. Use

the subject of the text message as close to the beginning of the message as possible.This will inform the customer what the message is about.

Tip: In certain countries and territories, the mobile network operators give you

the ability to send messages to your customers with your company or product

name as the sender ID. This could provide an additional way to grab the attention

of your customers via text message.

Interest

Promoting the benefits (not the features) of a product or service will ensure that

customers asking “What's in it for me?” get a clear answer. Seeing as space is limited

to convey the message, the right adjective might be all that is needed, e.g. "slimming",

"relaxing", "uplifting" .

Desire

Stimulate the desire in the customer to have or need the product or service by including

a "disc ount up to 25%" or "3 points earned" . Incentives such as these will make

your message memorable or even have it forwarded to friends or family who might

share an interest in what you have to offer.

Action

Don't forget to include a clear call to action. This could be something as simple as

“ Grab your copy in store today while stocks last“ , “ Visit the mobisite now” or

“ Reply to this text now and win!” Make sure your customers understand what you

want them to do, and, if you can, include a timeframe to create a sense of urgency.

3. MEASURE TEXT MESSAGE CAMPAIGN SUCCESS

Tracking the success of campaigns is a must for reporting purposes and is vital to

enable you to measure its success. Make sure you understand what it is that you want

to measure and how you can do so before you hit send.

Success and delivery metrics to take note of could include: how many recipients have

received your text message, how many responded and how many mobile numbers

were, in fact, invalid. You could also use the mobile number as a shared field to draw

product or revenue sales reports, since you will know to whom you sent the text

messages and could track sales activity on those accounts for a period after your text

message campaign.

4. USE THE CORRECT TOOLS TO SEND & RECEIVE YOUR TEXT

MESSAGES

Clickatell provides small, medium and large retail businesses with two easy-to-use

ways to spread the festive joy to customers far and wide via text message.

All of the Clickatell products offer the added benefit of on-demand messaging, so you

only need to buy as many message credits as are necessary to send to the number

of recipients on your distribution list. There are no recurring or hidden fees and even

10 free test message credits are assigned.

The key questions regarding your choice of text messaging tool relate to budget and

required response. Ask yourself what type of response you will require from your

respondents. Are you hoping to send a message and receive replies? If so, a two-way




number or Clickatell’s Communicator 2, which allows users to receive replies

directly into an inbox, would be just what you need.

If you hope to receive entries or answers in a ‘Text & Win’ promotion, a

premium rated or short code number might be better suited. If you are simply

looking to send a one-way communication to your prospect conveying

information, look at Clickatell’s Communicator 2.

Clickatell’s Communicator 2

This web-based (ASP), business text messaging

application is designed to facilitate fast and

effective personalized SMS text messaging

to existing client databases. It is the quickest

and easiest way to start a text-messaging

program in less than 5 minutes. No

programming is required and anyone that

has ever sent or received a text message

will quickly be able to use it.

An easy to use interface, combining data

management, message creation and mail merging,

enables users to type a single message, and broadcast it to many thousands

of recipients, with each message being personalized for the recipient. The

database can also be shared across multiple user environments.

Using the powerful address book you'll be able to create your own contacts

or upload them from existing databases. Clickatell's Communicator 2 simplifies

contact management. Create your own lists and add contacts to them to

simplify market segmentation.

Message customization allows you to use existing fields to personalize each

message or add your own custom fields. Further message personalization

is possible by setting a custom sender ID that can either be a number of a

product or company name.

Find out more about Clickatell’s Communicator 2 or SIGN UP NOW!

Clickatell’s SMS Gateway

Clickatell provides direct access to its core

mobile data delivery platform and

international SMS gateway through a

series of APIs (Application Pro-

gramming Interfaces). This product is

only suitable for application developers

or software engineers with advanced

messaging requirements and the skills

to do so.

Many organizations have messaging requirements, as well as a need to

integrate solutions with their existing databases and systems. For these

clients, out-of-the-box solutions are not ideal. Clickatell has therefore opened

its SMS gateway to organizations that simply wish to create their own

messaging system, interface or environment. In this way, clients are able to

SMS-enable any application or product, independent of the platform on which

they choose to develop. This connection is extremely simple and can be

done using generic skills, allowing the business to send high volume or single,

triggered mobile text messages to recipients.

Clickatell’s SMS gateway APIs allow developers to utilize generic skills in

developing, integrating and deploying mobile data solutions. Clickatell’s APIs

support several protocols, including SMPP, HTTP/s, SMTP (email to SMS

FTP, XML, Com Object, etc. Easy to use instructions make all the featur

of the Clickatell offering available to application developers and corporate

groups for SMS application building and legacy database integratio

Sample code and comprehensive integration specification documents a

provided for each protocol.

Find out more about Clickatell’s SMS Gateway or SIGN UP NOW

Why should you trust Clickatell wit

your text message program?

Clickatell -- the global leader in Personalized Priority Messaging through

mobile devices -- enables simpler, quicker and more verifiable delivery

high-value, just-in-time, individualized communications and associated mob

transactional services.

Over 13,000 application developers, enterprises and channel partners globa

rely on Clickatell’s industry leading gateway infrastructure, reliability, an

easy web and programming interfaces.

Operating for more than a decade, Clickatell supports large-scale, hig

frequency, mass-micro messaging to more than 222 countries and territori

through more than 869 wireless operator networks.

Copyright © 2010 Clicka

Questions? Speak to an Expert

right away!

Contact us at [email protected] or via telephone:

USA +1 800 578 0139

UK +44 800 014 8980

http://www.clickatell.com/products/communicator.php

https://communicator.clickatell.com/central/user/client/step1_new.php?prod_id=1

http://www.clickatell.com/products/sms_gateway.php

https://www.clickatell.com/central/user/client/step1_new.php?prod_id=2

https://www.clickatell.com/central/user/client/step1_new.php?prod_id=2

http://www.clickatell.com/products/sms_gateway.php

https://communicator.clickatell.com/central/user/client/step1_new.php?prod_id=1

http://www.clickatell.com/products/communicator.php

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To Use Mobile Messag