Like many small business today, Global Hair Limited, t/a Headrush Hair Salon considered using a texting service as a way to streamline customer communications and save money. With approximately 4,700 clients in their roster, the percentage of missed hair appointments was creating an increasing amount of spare time and costing the business hours of missed revenue. Headrush Hair Salon Global Hair Directors, Phil Saunders and Emma Fulgoney, began to look at different SMS services online and came across TextMagic which seemed the ideal choice due to ease and cost.

How has SMS messaging improved your hair salon business?

“TextMagic has improved our amount of no-show clients who may have forgotten the date and time of their appointment, therefore leaving a stylist in the salon with sometimes up to 2 1/2 hours of down time, which is clearly bad for business and profits.We calculate that our number of no-shows has been reduced by approximately 70% since we’ve been using TextMagic and we expect this number to improve further as we obtain more clients’ mobile numbers.”

SMS messaging takes customer service to the next level.

“TextMagic has also benefited our customers. Clients don’t want to miss their appointments either and text messaging helps them stay in touch and keep us updated. We also use the Email to SMS service to send our clients special messages on their birthdays as well as unique salon promotions.”

Acquired by Global Hair Ltd.in January 2009, Headrush Hair Salon is a high quality salon where customer satisfaction comes first. Their team of well-trained and experienced stylists cater to over 4,700 clients in the East Sussex area. For more information, please visit their website at www.headrushhair.co.uk.

For the last decade, the mobile revolution has been transforming communication and bringing people around the world together in ways they never could have imagined. However, while the world has been moving at an “Internet minute” for most of us, the visually impaired have been left fumbling around on their mobile keypads. Yes, mobile keypads are nifty and compact, but trying to create text messages on them when you are visually challenged can be both pain staking and time consuming.

Up until recently, this was the case for Barry Dickinson, who is visually impaired and who stumbled upon Textmagic’s Email to SMS service while searching the Internet for ways to embrace this mobile technology that seemed out of his realm.

What made you choose Textmagic?

“I browsed the web looking for a way to send and receive SMS texts from the computer, which was compatible with the talking screen reading software I use. I found other ways of sending texts, but not receiving them.Tetxmagic is very easy to use by blind people with screen reading software.”

How has SMS messaging improved your communication?

“Initially, I started using Textmagic to keep in touch with my children while they where out and about and I have since extended the service to include friends who don’t check their emails on a regular basis. Before Textmagic, blind people were excluded from the SMS text revolution. Textmagic now allows us to communicate with friends and family on equal terms and in their preferred format. Our kids can text home, just like their friends, rather than having to talk in from of their friends which isn’t COOL!”

As an oil exploration worker carrying out Seismic surveys around the world, TextMagic customer, Mr. Phillip’s career takes him out to sea for long periods of time and often without any mobile signals. In early 2007, while conducting a survey off the coast of Tanzania, Mr. Phillips found that keeping touch with friends and relatives was extremely challenging as well as nerve-wracking at the thought of not being able to communicate in the case of an emergency. Without a mobile signal, the lapse in time it took for a loved one to arrive home and login to their email account was critical.

The search for a reliable SMS solution.

In May of 2007, Mr. Phillips took his search online for a reliable SMS service that would allow him to send text messages from a remote area without a mobile signal. His search brought him to various types of services and after some thorough research, decided that the Textmagic Email to SMS service was the best solution. The service required no software installation and provided the technology that allowed SMS communications to be sent and received within seconds. Responses to Mr. Phillips’ urgent messages could come straight to his personal email account.

“I utilize TextMagic whenever I am on-board ship. Often times it’s weekly and TextMagic has become invaluable when I need to contact a person urgently.”

- Mr. Phillips, TextMagic Customer, United Kingdom

Are you experiencing similar challenges to your text messaging? We invite you to explore our many SMS products designed to meet all of your personal AND business communication needs.

Mobile phones have become the dominant mode of communication around the world and have introduced a broad spectrum of new ways in which people interact with eachother. Nowadays, companies can capture their targeted audience in a matter of seconds and friends can send urgent messages to eachother while on the road. But an often overlooked advantage of SMS technology is the efficiency in communication that it has brought to people with disabilities. For a hearing impaired person, SMS offers a way to communicate accurately and quickly and has subsequently become the most popular mobile solution for this demographic. And layering a service like TextMagic’s Email to SMS can enhance the solution by allowing consumers to create longer, more emotional texts.

As it turns out, SMS has also improved communications for people with disabilities other than hearing. In a recent post by news commentator, Patricia E. Bauer, she sites how a mother in the U.S. reported that texting has allowed her autistic son to communicate effectively for the first time ever. The fact that SMS could open the doors of communication and be more than just a convenient mobile tool validates the TextMagic business model. In a survey conducted over the last two months to TextMagic customers, we came across several visually impaired people who have incorporated our service into their everyday communication. We tend to take the physical ability to text for granted, however, it is extremely challenging for someone visually impaired to compose a text message on a tiny mobile keypad. Almost impossible to create one that is precise.

Prior to discovering the Email to SMS service, TetxMagic customer, Philip Congreave, had little success with text messaging.  “I used to try sending messages on my mobile but it was a very tedious process and very frustrating. Using TextMagic is similar to using an email program with Inbox, Outbox and Sent Items Folders and a Send/ Receive facility. Being able to use a full keyboard makes composing very easy.” Mr. Congreave suggested using TextMagic with a screen-reading program such as Thunder which reads the words in the edit window aloud.

We invite you to learn more ways SMS is helping people with disabilities connect in a whole new way and to share your own experiences.

SMS marketing is upon us. In fact, it’s been gaining traction for a few years now; however, many businesses are just starting to understand how powerful of a tool it can really be. Text messages have a 95% read rate and mobile phones have become an important medium of communication as messages are relayed within seconds. Nowadays, people take their mobile phones everywhere they go and as mobile communications continue to advance on a daily basis, companies have the opportunity to reach out to their customers in a whole new way. Understanding the power of SMS marketing and the creative principles of how it influences your clients is the key to making it successful.

With SMS marketing, businesses have the ability to interact with their customers more quickly than with  traditional marketing campaigns and to generate a significant number of call-to-actions. Take it a step further and imagine being able to send an SMS to a large targeted group of people with a single email! Services like Email to SMS give businesses the tool to implement text messaging campaigns that are efficient and effective into their overall marketing strategy.

Prior to embarking on an SMS campaign, companies should carefully consider the best way to approach their customers. Afterall, your customers have opted into your service and have given you their personal number because they expect your product and/or service to bring value to them. Don’t disappoint them! SMS communication must be personal. Be responsible with your messaging and make it count.

The following are some examples of industries harnessing the power of SMS marketing:

Real Estate – SMS marketing gives agents the ability to quickly and inexpensively market items like new property listings and lower pricing alerts to a targeted list of clients.

Restaurants & Entertainment – With SMS marketing, restaurants, bars and clubs have the opportunity to reach a huge amount of potential customers while they are literally out on the town and looking for immediate entertainment.

Sales & Promotions – Use SMS marketing to alert your customer base to immediate product discounts and special promotions. Text marketing can be a phenomenal tool for creating excitement and immediacy around special campaigns.

Want to share your SMS marketing success story? Post your comments and share your “best-practice” ideas.

We have introduced new Email to SMS Service settings. Now you have better control over Email to SMS Service.

Email to SMS content settings:

1. You can choose what exactly is sent as SMS: subject line, body or subject+body.
2. Enable/Disable Unicode characters in the message.
3. Limit your speding by allowing 1, 2 or 3 text messages per Email.

Email to SMS warning messages (optional):

1. Opt-in/Opt-out of all Email to SMS warnings
2. Failed delivery warning
3. Message too long warning

Email to SMS Security settings (optional):

1. Set subject line password
2. List your Email server IP number. Once you list your Email server IP number our Email server will accept Emails only from this IP. This way you can protect your account in a much more advanced way.

Manage your Email to SMS settings.