In the previous four posts (see part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4) in this series we looked at how to set up and deliver an SMS marketing campaign with TextMagic, and how to interact with your customers when they responded. In this final post we’re going to look at some ideas for maximising your return on investment (ROI) from any SMS campaign.

The first thing we need to say is that the investment doesn’t really need to be very much, at least in cash terms. There are no fees for joining TextMagic or starting a campaign – you just pay for the text messages you send. So, if your campaign involves sending a single text to a thousand people on your marketing list, you’ll pay for a thousand texts.

How much you pay will vary depending on the country or countries your recipients are in. We price messages in TextMagic credits (for example, a single text sent to a phone in the UK costs 0.8 credits right now). You can find out how much credits cost on our SMS pricing page – as you’ll see, the first thing you can do to maximise your ROI is to buy credits in bulk, as we offer discounts of more than 30% on large purchases.

So what else can you do to maximise our ROI when you run a campaign? We’ve looked at quite a few tips in the previous posts, but here’s a summary and some useful bits of extra information:

1. Use a high-quality list. This is probably the number one piece of advice we’d offer. A good list won’t guarantee the success of an SMS campaign (or any sort of direct marketing campaign), but it’s the essential foundation you need. Probably the most valuable list you can use is also the cheapest – your database of existing customers. However, if you don’t have a customer list, or you want to expand your customer base with new leads, you can buy a list that includes mobile numbers and demographic information from many list brokers.

2. Base your campaign on a specific, interesting offer. SMS marketing works best when you have something concrete to offer – a competition with a decent prize, a sale on your most popular products, a new product you want to pitch to your customers, and so on. The best way of thinking about this is that you should want to run an SMS campaign because you have a great story to tell your customers. If you decide to run a campaign and then cast around for something to say, things might be harder. You might still have some success, but probably not on the same scale as if you’re offering something brilliant to an interested, targeted audience.

3. Write the message carefully. There’s not much point in having a great offer and a great audience if the message you send is weak or ineffective. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to spend some time carefully putting together the message you are going to use as part of your SMS marketing campaign. Standard SMS messages are 160 characters in length. You can fit an awful lot of information into those 160 characters if you think carefully about it. The main thing is to make your offer clear, focus on a key benefit, and ensure that your customer knows what he or she has to do to take advantage of the offer. Because SMS messages are sent as plain text, you can’t use any fancy fonts or decoration to drive your message home. The only thing you can do is use capital letters to emphasise certain words. This can work very well, but make sure you only do it sparingly or the effect will be lost and you will send your customers a message that looks like spam and is difficult to read. One final tip: before you send your message to your customer list, send it to your own phone so you can see what it looks like. Is it easy to read? Is the offer obvious?

4. Build loyalty with fast responses. If you’re offering your customers a chance to reply to your SMS marketing messages, make sure that you are polite, efficient and professional when you deal with their responses. Ideally, you should have a workflow in place that is designed to deal with common responses and questions. That way you can ensure consistency even if you are dealing with hundreds of customers and using multiple customer service representatives at your end. TextMagic offers you a robust, flexible and fast system for working with your customers via the medium of SMS. However, it will only ever be as good as the quality of customer care you put into it.

5. Think seriously about testing. A very popular way of increasing ROI in any kind of marketing campaign is to perform a split test. Let’s say for example that you have a list of 20,000 potential customers. You can start off by sending your message to just 200 of them. At the same time you can send a similar message with a slightly different offer to another 200. Which message and offer holds the best response? By using a small portion of your list to test the best approach you can be sure that when it comes to contacting everyone, you have a message and an offer that work. Testing does not have to be time-consuming or expensive, but in the long run it can deliver very substantial returns.

6. Make it part of a larger campaign. One of the beauties of using TextMagic to run an SMS marketing campaign is that you can design and run the project very quickly, sometimes in less than a couple of hours. However, you might find that you get more long-term value from TextMagic if you use it as one part of a larger marketing campaign. Basically, the secret of success is planning. Running a single isolated SMS campaign might deliver rewards, but in the long run you will probably achieve greater things if you embed it in a carefully strategised marketing campaign that encompasses several media over a considerable period of time. At the end of the day, it’s about deciding what is right for your business – an off-the-cuff, quick campaign that is very responsive to market demands, or something more long-term and considered.

So that’s it for our series on SMS marketing with TextMagic. We really hope you found it useful. If you have any questions, comments, ideas, or examples from your own experience, we’d love to hear them. We think SMS marketing is going to be an essential tool for millions of businesses over the next decade – and we want to help yours make the most of it.

Now that we’ve established the basics of running an SMS marketing campaign with TextMagic (see previous posts) we can examine in detail how you go about sending your messages.

There are going to be quite a few screenshots in this post, all of them taken from the TextMagic control panel. As such, you might find things a bit easier if you actually have your control panel open while you read and explore the tools as we discuss them. If you don’t yet have a TextMagic account, you can create one using the links on our homepage (remember it’s free to sign up – you don’t have to pay for anything until you purchase credits to send messages).

OK, so we’re going to send a marketing message to a list of recipients I’ve created. Because I want to use this list more than once without having to re-enter the numbers every time, I’ve created a group called “example marketing list”. I can see it in my group manager, which I get to by clicking the “groups” link in the left hand nav of my TextMagic control panel or the top nav of one of the contacts pages:

You’ll notice that to the right of the name of each group are three links. “Send” is a quick way of sending an SMS to everyone in the group – handy if you need to get out a message in a hurry, in response to fast-moving events. “Delete” is obvious. “Edit” allows you to rename the group, edit its description and, crucially, add and remove numbers from it.

(Top tip: it’s useful to give your groups meaningful names and descriptions: “Mac users aged 25 to 30″ is more useful than “List 1″. Why? Because if you’re smart about your SMS marketing you’ll have a number of groups, tightly defined by market segment. It’s useful to be able to tell them apart.)

What happens if you click “Send”? You get taken automatically to the main message sending screen, which will look a bit like this (with my annotations):

You’ll see that the system has automatically inserted the name of your group, in square brackets, into the recipients box. You could have done this manually if you came to the screen another way, and you can also insert more groups (in square brackets) or individual numbers (not bracketed) – remember to separate them with commas.

Now it’s time to write our message. We can write a single, simple message from scratch, with no personalisation. That’s what I’ve done here: “Hello – be sure to check out TextMagic.com!”. However, that’s not very interesting and not very flexible, especially if you’re running a large number of simultaneous SMS marketing campaigns and you need to target different audiences very precisely.

The “template” and “tag” options, shown in the top right of the screenshot above, help us manage things more effectively. You can use the template tool to choose from a number of templates that you have pre-designed and stored in the system (visit the “templates” link in the left-hand nav to see how it works). Tagging is even smarter, as you can see here:

As you’ve probably figured out, you can use tags to send a personalised message to each member of the group. When the tag variable is inserted, it looks like this:

(Note that if you’re using tag information when sending to members of a group, the members also have to be listed separately, with their name data, in your “contacts” list and attached to groups from there – they’ll show up on the group’s edit page. You can enter mobile numbers directly into groups from the edit page, but you can’t insert name data this way.)

OK, so we’ve learned how to plan and set up a campaign, source lists, manage groups and create targeted, personalised messages by segment. But a good SMS marketing campaign is a two-way conversation: in the next post we’ll look at how you can use TextMagic to let your customers contact you via text message.

In our last post we looked at some of the opportunities your business could exploit by running an SMS marketing campaign through TextMagic. Today we’re going to look in more detail at how to start planning a campaign.

Understand the possibilities
First, it’s important to understand the various ways TextMagic allows you to send text messages to potential customers (we’ll talk about receiving messages in a later post in the series). Take a look at this screenshot from the TextMagic control panel, the interface you’ll see once you’ve signed up and logged into TextMagic:

The four menu items that are important to us here are “new message”, “scheduled”, “groups” and “templates”. You can use the simple “new message” system to send a text message to any mobile phone, as long as you know the number, and it’s in one of the 200+ countries to which TextMagic can send SMS messages.

The “scheduled” option allows you to control the time at which messages are sent to users or groups of users. This is useful because it allows you to send a series of regular messages to customers without being in front of your computer all the time. It also means you can schedule SMS sendings to customers outside your timezone without having to stay up all night! In addition, if you’re dealing with a large and diverse user base, sending all messages manually could be very time-consuming: scheduling allows you to automate some of the process, delivering increased ROI for time spent by yourself or your staff.

You can use scheduling alongside the “groups” option to create a powerful SMS marketing strategy. The chances are, like most businesses, your customers fall into several sub-segments of the same market. The groups function allows you divide up and store individuals’ phone numbers within the TextMagic system, so you don’t have to spend ages cutting and pasting from an Excel file every time you want to send different messages to different types of customer.

Finally, “templates” is another tool to help you save time. You can store the messages you use most often as reusable templates in your TextMagic control panel. Again, these saves you having to write a message from scratch every time you want to send one, or having to keep a separate document with the various messages you use. The templates function has a couple of other cool features, as you can see from this screenshot:

That’s right – templates can contain custom fields that access data from your groups and insert it into individual messages to add personalisation.

Some thoughts about lists
OK, so now we know a little about the potential TextMagic’s SMS tools offer us: we can send personalised text messages at scheduled times to tightly-defined audiences and audience segments.

But where do we find at audience to send our messages to? In this section we’re going to give some thought to the tricky business of developing a list: a database of customers with known mobile numbers.

The most valuable type of list for most businesses is usually one made up of previous customers. Why? Because they have an existing relationship with the business and its product. SMS is the perfect tool for encouraging past customers to become repeat customers. In addition, you may have some existing data about individual customers, allowing you to using the TextMagic groups function to subdivide them by need, interest or their past relationship with your company.

Of course, you may not have a list of previous customers (if not, start keeping one right away!). For example, you might have launched an entirely new business. In a situation like this it’s possible to buy a list from an individual or business known as a list broker. Most list brokers can put together long lists of customers with known mobile numbers who have an interest in your product or service. Crucially, many will also be able to provide specifically targeted SMS lists, so you can be reasonably sure you are sending your marketing messages to individuals who are happy to receive your messages.

A list bought from a broker is “cold”, and you will probably get a lower conversion rate than if you’re sending messages to a list of “warm” previous customers. However, the the great benefit of using a list is that it helps to grow your customer base.

One more thing: when you’re sending SMS marketing messages to prospects, be sure to comply with local laws and regulations in both your own country and your recipients’ countries. Usually this means offering recipients a simple way to stop receiving messages, but it’s worth checking on the particular rules you need to comply with before you launch your campaign.

In part 3, we’ll look at the nuts and bolts of writing and sending an SMS marketing message.

If you’re running a busy events company, you know that one of the biggest challenges presented to your business is keeping your clients fully briefed on the project they’ve commissioned. That’s why Welsh corporate entertainment company Bounceamania made the move to using the TextMagic SMS service – and hasn’t looked back.

‘TextMagic makes it so easy to keep in contact with our clients at every stage of the process,’ says Andrew Morgan, Director of Bounceamania. ‘Our services at an event are often just part of a complex mixture of different suppliers. By using TextMagic business SMS services, we make sure that the client is fully briefed at every step of the process, without interrupting their workflow with phone calls, or leaving it to chance that they’ve read their emails.’

Using SMS for new business communication

Bounceamania start the TextMagic SMS integration into their customer care system at the very beginning – when sending out quotations. Andrew says, ‘Using TextMagic business SMS messages to follow up quotations is an effective way to provide a courtesy check that the email has arrived with the right person – without putting undue pressure on the potential client by calling them direct. Furthermore, getting hold of people on the phone can be time-consuming and difficult ,and we’ve found that using SMS messages as quotation follow-ups gets an instant response – saving us and the client time whilst helping us provide a first-class service.’

Providing up-to-the-minute information to event clients via SMS

When it comes to signed contracts, Bounceamania has found that the TextMagic SMS service is the perfect addition to their communications hub. ‘We use TextMagic to ensure that clients receive key information, direct to their phone, which is particularly important when it’s time sensitive,’ says Andrew. ‘That includes information such as time of arrival on site and the contact name and details of the person who will be our onsite representative. Whilst we use TextMagic for many other key notifications, it particularly comes into its own on event days, as we need a failsafe method of getting information quickly to the client, wherever they are. SMS messages are less of a distraction than telephone calls, and also take away the need for the client to write down information. It’s the perfect way to communicate with people on site when time is at a premium and accuracy a must.’

TextMagic SMS – it’s a hit with clients too

Bounceamania isn’t alone in finding that TextMagic business SMS has simplified and improved its business communications – its clients have been coming forward to shower praise on the way they use SMS to convey information. ‘All of the clients we’ve used TextMagic SMS to communicate with have commented on how it’s really made a difference to the quality of our operations. It’s really given us the reputation of ‘going that extra mile’ for our customers – and it’s cost-effective and easy to use, as well. Even large corporate clients such as Amazon have been really impressed by our TextMagic service – which can only help to further our reputation in the corporate market.’

Andrew summarises, ‘I’d recommend TextMagic SMS to any company looking to find a way to improve its customer communications. With just a small change to the way you do business, using TextMagic makes a huge difference to how customers perceive your service – and it shows you really care about doing a good job.’

Bounceamania:  Wister, Crossgates, Llandrindod Wells, Powys. LD1 6RP
Office: 01597 851 999   Sales: 0208 123 7677   Fax: 01597 851 111
Email: sales@corporatefun.net    Web: www.corporatefun.net

Winning new business can often be about being ‘the early bird’ – reacting quickly to new business leads and enquiries before your competitors do. That’s why marketing agency Magnetic Marketing Ltd turned to the TextMagic SMS messaging service – with the business benefits quickly becoming clear.

Dez Futak, owner of Magnetic Marketing said, “When you’re in business, it’s vital that you can respond to leads straight away. Getting in contact quickly with a potential new customer can make the difference between winning the business and losing it to another competitor agency. TextMagic gives me the ability to prioritise new business enquiries, wherever I am – and that’s key to the survival and growth of my business.’

TextMagic SMS prioritises new business leads

Magnetic Marketing of Basingstoke in Hampshire, which has been using the TextMagic SMS messaging service for around two months, has taken advantage of the Email to SMS functionality to drive enquiries from the website feedback form directly to staff mobiles via text message.  By prioritising the enquiries by transforming them into text messages, TextMagic separates out the high-importance messages from the rest of the emails received by the business each day – meaning that potential customers can be called back straight away, no matter whether staff are in the office or out on business. It’s a simple yet savvy way for a small business to seize new opportunities – helping busy staff who may be covering several different areas of responsibility to prioritise incoming messages and ensure that they never ‘drop the ball’ when it comes to new leads.

Business SMS offers a great return on investment

Dez Futak knows when he’s found an SMS messaging system that works and delivers cost-effective benefits – which is why he’s planning to offer the TextMagic service as a lead management function for his own clients. “As a marketing agency, it’s our job to advise our clients on how best to get more business, using online marketing, video distribution, social media and viral marketing. However, marketing your business is only half the story; there has to be great process in place to convert those leads generated by your marketing into sales. That’s why we’re looking to use TextMagic SMS messaging to streamline our clients’ response systems, in just the same way as we at Magnetic Marketing use it – to ensure that their business marketing spend delivers the best possible return on investment by driving those sales leads direct to the right person to deal with it, wherever they might be.”

There’s more to come, though – for Dez feels that there’s much more in the TextMagic suite of SMS messaging products which will be of value to his business. “I’m probably only using about 20% of the functionality that TextMagic offers as a service, so I’m keen to investigate other ways in which it can help my business. I love the fact that the SMS messaging service is scalable and there’s no risk – I only pay for what I use, with no contracts or commitment. That makes it the perfect choice to roll out to clients as a really cost-effective way of managing their incoming leads.”

TextMagic SMS - a vital part of any business marketing strategy

As a marketing expert, Dez Futak understands what makes a good brand work. ‘TextMagic is a brand which delivers what it promises, clearly, simply and flexibly. It provides something quite unique which can offer benefit to nearly every business – and not only that, it’s got a great buzz about it. That’s exactly the kind of business partner I like to work with, which is why Magnetic Marketing is excited to be associated with TextMagic. If you’re serious about generating new business for your company, then you can’t do better than by doing it with TextMagic.’

About Magnetic Marketing
Magnetic Marketing is a UK-based marketing agency specialising in using video, social media, iPhone application and email follow-up services to help local businesses connect seamlessly with new customers. For more information, visit www.magneticmarketing.co.uk or call 0845 80 555 80

If you’re in the property rental and management business, keeping in touch with – and on track of – your tenants can be one of the most challenging parts of the job. So when Oak Estates of Sheffield discovered the TextMagic suite of business SMS services, it dramatically changed the way the business operates for the better.

‘I wouldn’t know what to do without TextMagic’, said Diana Maratty of Oak Estates. ‘The text messaging service has brought amazing changes to the way we work. I estimate that TextMagic directly saves our business at least 15 man hours per week, so it saves us the cost of employing a part-time member of staff.’

So how exactly has the TextMagic business SMS service become such an integral part of how this successful Sheffield-based letting and property management agency operates  – and how can this huge increase in efficiency be replicated in other property management businesses?

Text Messaging Increases Response to Late Payment Requests

Diana Maratty explains, ‘We started using TextMagic SMS services in conjunction with our Total Letting Solutions software about eighteen months ago. At first, we used the service to chase up late rental payments from our tenants. As we manage over 250 different properties, chasing overdue rent was taking a lot of our staffing resource – and it’s vital to our business and to the owners of the properties we manage that rents are collected on time. Changing rental reminders from postal letter or emails to text messaging immediately decreased the amount of outstanding debt owing to us.’

So what’s the secret behind why TextMagic business SMS is so much more efficient at chasing late payments than email or letter? ‘Most of our tenants are young professionals or students and always have their phones at hand. Text messaging gets a far better response than other methods of communication. Immediately after sending a late payment text alert, tenants would be on the phone to sort out their outstanding rental payment. Not only has it improved our cashflow,  it’s significantly reduced the amount of time we have to spend chasing late payments.’

Property Maintenance Management is simplified via business SMS services

As soon as Oak Estates realised the value of TextMagic business SMS services in communicating with their tenants, they expanded its usage to include alerts for regular house inspections. ‘We’re legally bound to give tenants 24 hours’ notice before entering their properties to carry out maintenance or inspections. By using TextMagic text messaging to communicate with our tenants, we can not only gain access to the properties faster to carry out general maintenance and checks, but also respond quickly to urgent issues.’

The letting agency now uses TextMagic business SMS to keep in contact with key contacts in every part of their business – including maintenance contractors and landlords. ‘By text messaging job alerts, we can get contractors to our properties to carry out maintenances and repairs much more quickly – and that’s appreciated by our tenants and our landlords. We also keep our landlords up to date with essential information about their property via TextMagic, making communication much quicker and more streamlined.’

Business SMS saves letting agencies time, effort and money

Diana Marratty is adamant that the TextMagic business SMS system has revolutionised the way Oak Estates operates as a business. ‘Every letting agency, property management business and landlord needs TextMagic. It’s entirely changed the way we operate for the better – and knowing how TextMagic text messaging has improved our business efficiency, we could never go back.’

For more information on Oak Estates and its range of properties available in the Sheffield area for professional and student lets, visit www.oakestates.net or call 0114 258 5981.