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Keep up to date with current news and highlights from the SMS industry

Tip of the Week: Test and learn with Bulk SMS

Tip-of-the-weekTest marketing can be an expensive exercise through traditional channels and can take months to get results.  SMS however, is a cost effective channel whereby A/B testing is quick and easy to set-up – results can be instantaneous.

The mobile phone remains the most personal item that we carry around with us at all times – it’s not like a newspaper or TV, our mobile phones have nearly 100% of our attention.

A single SMS is only 160 characters long – it therefore may not even cross your mind to focus on getting the content right. The reality is that the more creative and legitimate the content is, the better it performs.

By simply changing the creative content or timings of your SMS activity can quickly make a radical difference to the end results. When planning your A/B tests, consider as many of the elements below as possible;

Call to action - The creative copy in your messages that invites the receiver to respond.
Offer – Want to let people know about a sale or promotion? Try different pricing/discounts techniques to find out what makes your audience bite.
Know your audience - by understanding your demographic you won’t offend. If you’re sending an SMS to the elderly don’t use modern day “text talk” or you could choose to test Voice SMS.
Hyperlink –Are you trying to drive people to your website?  Then why not think about including a hyperlink in your text, directing the receiver to a webpage. This is becoming increasingly more popular and is definitely worth testing if your target audience have smart phones.
Timings - Look at the times that you send SMS, whether it is insurance renewals, car servicing, and hair appointments etc.  Start identifying success patterns – think about when your customer would like to receive the messages.
The right SMS provider – Make sure that your SMS supplier delivers your messages quickly, so the messages are received when you want them to land. Do your research when choosing an SMS provider because some aggregators have message delays, making messages land at unsocial hours or not at all.
Once you have established what works and what doesn’t keep testing again. Consumer behaviour changes and will continue to change therefore so should your SMS messages.
Remember with Bulk SMS you can send hundreds and thousands of fully personalised messages in seconds and get results in minutes. Every cell can have different offers, copy and targeting combinations, allowing you to A/B test (or even A/B/C/D test) multiple variants simultaneously.
Posted by Hannah
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Tip of the week: Increase your email newsletter subscribers with SMS Short Codes

Tip-of-the-weekWhilst the character limitation on text messages will prevent you from sending a full newsletter to your customers in this format, SMS can still be used to help increase your subscribers.

Increase your newsletter sign ups by getting your customers to text a specific Keyword (e.g. NEWS) to an SMS Short Code, in order for them to subscribe.  You can advertise the SMS Short Code in your promotional materials. It will then be possible to notify them via text message when newsletters are released. You could even send a hyperlink to direct them to the online version of the newsletter itself.

This will help ensure customers are always up to date with the latest news and developments within your business.

Posted by Hannah
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Top 10 Mobile Industry Facts and Figures

GraphAs the mobile industry continues to grow – and mobile phones become an ever more essential tool within today’s personal and business environments – a recent report published in MobiThinking has outlined specific facts and figures to demonstrate exactly how much this is the case.

We’ve picked our top ten!

1. 87% of the global population are mobile subscribers (5.9 billion people).

2. Mobile phone sales increased in 2011, with the sales smartphones highly significant in this regard. Nokia remains the number one handset manufacturer. Android is the most popular smartphone operating system and Samsung is the leading smartphone hardware producer.

3. Up to 1.2 billion of the world’s total mobile users access the internet through their phones (mobile broadband). Asia is the clear leader in this regard, with South Korea and Japan accounting for the highest mobile broadband penetration, with 91% and 88% respectively.

4. 8.49% of global website hits are made through mobile devices.

5. Up to 480.6 million users sent emails through their mobile phones in 2010. That figure is expected to quadruple by 2015.

6. In 2010, up to 6.9 trillion SMS messages were sent, as MMS accounted for 249 billion that year. Despite rumours of a crisis, SMS traffic was expected to reach 8 trillion in 2011.

7. The worldwide mobile messaging market was predicted to be worth over US$200 billion (£125,40bn) in 2011 – with SMS representing $127 billion (£79,63bn) of this. Reports forecast that the mobile messaging industry will grow to $334.7 billion (£209,88bn) by 2015.

8. It is expected that in 2015 there will be 1.6 trillion users of mobile instant messaging (IM).

9. 45% of mobile users in UK, France and Germany noticed mobile adverts in 2010, while 29% responded to them. Out of this group, 47% of Brits made a purchase.

10. 40% of people in the UK admitted to being more likely to respond to opt-in SMS, which is the most effective form of mobile ads in Britain. 21% said the same in France and 27% of Germans confessed to preferring mobile Web ads instead.

Posted by Hannah
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