How to use SMS Marketing for your eatery or bar

by | Aug 4, 2014 |

The food industry is in an excellent position for utilizing SMS Marketing. If you own a restaurant/ take-out service or bar, you can get really creative and lure customers to your establishment in a blink. People are always looking for new and exciting places to enjoy a meal or have a drink. Eateries and bars, unlike corporate companies, rarely have a dedicated team of marketing experts to create campaigns around brand awareness and customer loyalty. And don’t forget employee communication! If your employees are on top of their schedules, it can help clear out misunderstandings about shifts and discourage absenteeism. Thus the question is: what can you do to get this buzz going? Well, the most successful and inexpensive method available to you, is without a doubt SMS Marketing. Eateries You can text customers your specials for the day. Just keep the timing in mind – you don’t want to send out your material too early or too late. There is currently a debate going on about the best time to send out a special, so experiment and see what works best for YOUR customers. If your customers are budget conscious, you might not get the best reaction by sending out a dinner special in the late afternoon (of the same day) – these customers might prefer a few days notice. Other customers might see it as the answer to what’s for dinner and jump immediately at the chance. Invite customers to make their reservations via SMS and remind them about their reservations Sent reminders to the wait staff on duty about when their shift starts Bars Use SMS...

How to build a basic SMS Marketing Strategy Part 2

by | Jun 27, 2014 |

In Part 1 we discussed the importance of acquiring and refining your SMS Marketing subscription list. Next, you have to tackle customer engagement and retention as part of your basic strategy. Engaging with your customers The hardest part – getting your customers’ contact details – is done. But you can’t breathe a sigh of relieve just yet. Now you actually have to deliver on your promises. Naturally, content is King, and the way you present this content is Queen. If consumers don’t like what you have to say or how you say it, they will lose interest fairly quickly. Keeping your SMS Marketing messages relevant and entertaining can be tricky. You only have a limit of about 160 characters after all, thus you have to make every word count. Tip: have a content strategy. Know beforehand what you want to say, how you want to say it and when. Retaining your contact list One of the biggest considerations in your SMS Marketing strategy, is frequency. Too many messages – your customers will unsubscribe. Too few messages – they forget about you. The best course of action you can take is to offer your customers a set option (preferably with their subscription) of message frequency. E.g. they can choose to receive a message twice a week, once a month etc. During an active campaign, you can sent more than one message a week. But if your campaign is over, you want to tone it down until you have something important to say again. Don’t send irrelevant stuff. Along with frequency, goes timing. Don’t send your messages out at inappropriate hours...

How to build a basic SMS Marketing Strategy Part 1

by | Jun 25, 2014 |

How does a basic SMS Marketing Strategy look? You have to focus on your four main areas: acquiring customers’ contact details, refinement, engagement and retention. Acquiring contact info You need a customer’s permission first in order to send them marketing material via mobile. This is a big undertaking. You need to have a unique and creative plan to do this. A few strategies that have proven useful to obtain mobile numbers, are: hosting competitions, giving away freebies or promising the subscriber exclusivity or something else of value. You have to give very careful thought the content of your messages and there should be no confusion as to the what, how and why of your offering. Once you have decided how you are going to lure your customers, the next step is to determine how to tell them about it. How are they going to receive your “invitation”? This is where your digital and more traditional forms of marketing comes to play. You can alert your customers to subscribe to your contact list by posting it on Facebook and Twitter, sending an email, or placing an advert on a billboard, pamphlets, business cards, corporate stationary etc. Tips: Keep the budget constraints in mind when choosing the channels for your SMS marketing strategy. Give yourself enough time to gather the info – if you rush it, you might get less numbers than you wished for. Refining your list Depending on your SMS Marketing goals, you most likely have more than one type of offering for your subscribers. The golden rule is to always give your customers options, because people’s needs differ....

Content is key for successful SMS Marketing

by | Jun 18, 2014 |

Knowing what to put in your text messages for your SMS Marketing campaign isn’t always easy. Some marketers are so focused on building their contact list, that when the time comes to actually start engaging, they don’t know what to say. How can you prevent this pitfall? It is very important not to write your content as an afterthought – it has to be part of your strategy from the very beginning. Start with rough drafts containing what you want to text during each phase of your strategy. It is much easier to tweak your messages as you go along if you have a draft to work from. It will help you to: Identify problem areas from the start. For example, there might be words or phrases that you can’t use from a legal standpoint. Keep everything tight. Say for instance you are rolling out a service/ product in phases. In each phase your customers will have access to more functions/ items. Now the last thing you want to do is send out a SMS during Phase 2 telling your customer things that are actually happening in Phase 4. The hardest part of content creation for SMS Marketing campaigns, is writing content that will engage the reader. You want your customers to line up to request your mobile communication instead of you pleading for their phone numbers. For this your texts have to evoke emotions (take note, positive emotions) in your customers as well as add some kind of value to their lives. For a consumer, giving away their mobile number is a very personal thing. And you can...

How to introduce your customers to SMS Marketing

by | Jun 4, 2014 |

When starting your SMS Marketing attempts for the first time, it is a good idea to gradually introduce your customers to your mobile communication. If you push too hard or market too aggressively, you will scare customers and end up with loads of opt-outs. The first step is to obtain your customers’ phone numbers – legally! They have to opt in to receive your text messages willingly and you also have to assure them that they can opt out any time they want. You can do this using various methods – the easiest of which is to reward them in exchange for their details with prizes, vouchers etc. Remember that you have to make it worth their while – you are invading their private space after all. Your customers will want to know what is in it for them. Ease your customers gently into the process by combining your SMS marketing with email. Send them an electronic mail containing the following valuable info. How to opt in to receive text messages. For example: text 1234 to a certain number Give them choices. Some customers only want to hear about your specials, while others might be interested in your newsletters as well. Thus, they can text 1235 to receive promotional material or 1236 to receive something else. Explain how the process will work. E.g. how many texts will they receive per week? On which days and during what times will they get it? What will the message contain? What do they need to do if they no longer wish to receive your mobile communication? Now, also drive your SMS Marketing...