Charles Curle Design

3 Reasons To Start Your Mobile Marketing With Text Messaging

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:53:21 +0000

What do you think of when someone says “mobile marketing”?

Smartphone apps? A mobile website? QR codes?

While these may be the first thoughts that pop into your head, they may not be the best first steps in mobile marketing.

What about good old fashioned text messaging? You know, that technology I’m guessing you probably used at least within the last 60 minutes.

Why start with text messaging?

Here are three good reasons:

1. Cost-effectiveness

It’s not news that in many marketing departments these days money isn’t always easy to come by. Coming up with the budget for a mobile app, on one platform let alone two, is not always easy.

Creating a mobile website, depending on size, scope, and content management system, is not cheap either. Text messaging marketing can be extremely budget friendly, especially if you’re already printing signs for something or running traditional media. Just revise the creative to add a “text-in for this or that” call-to-action and you’ve just started a mobile marketing campaign.

Best of all, almost all SMS marketing providers charge based on the number of messages or subscribers in your database. The cost starts small and when it increases that means your campaign is working!

2. Biggest Audience

When marketing dollars are tight everyone likes to see “good numbers” at the end of the campaign. Because text messaging is available on essentially every phone and used by just about everybody (over 70% of adults), you’ll have the best opportunity to reach the most people and build the largest opt-in database.

Every other mobile marketing technology has an inherit “audience-limiter”. Mobile websites; must have an HTML-capable phone. Apps; must have a smartphone. QR codes; must have a smartphone and a QR reader installed. The more things your audience needs to participate, the smaller the numbers get. Start with the biggest audience and then target the more technology capable groups later.

3. It will “launch” the other ones

At the end of any text message marketing campaign there will be a database of mobile phone numbers (the people who texted-in). Launching a mobile app or website? Send out a text and tell them.

They’ve already had one mobile interaction with you so there’s a good chance they would be open to another. Instead of counting on the app store or mobile searches to drive traffic you can generate that initial burst of activity on your own. Think about it, it’s a lot easier to drive traffic to a new website when you already have a big email list of people who would be interested.

Ok, so you agree text messaging might be a good place to start mobile marketing.

But where do you start with text messaging?

Helpful ideas continue to come in threes –

1. Traditional media

As mentioned above, this is an easy one. Instead of telling your audience to “call now” or “visit our website”, have them send a text message. Maybe they’re entering to win something or getting an instant “show this message on your phone for something” coupon.

2. Events

Are you still using clipboards and sign up sheets to gather data at your events? Still putting out that plastic fish bowl for business cards? Try having your event attendees get out their phone and text to vote, answer a question, put a message up on a screen, sign a petition, win something, or get a discount. It’ll be more fun for you and your audience, and in the end you’ll get a valid mobile number instead of an email address you can’t read anyway.

3. In-store

Many businesses have more people passing through their doors everyday than visits to their website. Those people also have phones in their pockets and purses. Print out a sign and create a mobile loyalty club by having visitors text-in for a discount on their next visit. They’re in your location so you know they have an interest in your business. Give them an easy way to offer up their valuable mobile phone number so you can bring them back later.

This post was originally featured on Social Fresh, a site dedicated to social media and marketing education for business.

Eight Reasons Why Your Business Should Use SMS Marketing

admin — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 03:44:16 +0000

If you haven’t heard, SMS Marketing is big business. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent every year in the United States on text messaging campaigns. Businesses from Fortune 500 companies down to mom and pop shops have jumped on the SMS marketing bandwagon.

Not convinced yet? Here are eight reasons why your business should use SMS Marketing.

Text Messaging Is Affordable
SMS Marketing is very affordable. We’re talking about pennies per message. A small business can get started for as little as 10 to 20 dollars a month.
High ROI
We just said SMS marketing is affordable. But can you really get much out of 10 to 20 dollars a month? Absolutely. Let’s look at a quick example. Say you’re the owner of a local restaurant and you’ve collected a list of opt-in phone numbers of your patrons (more about opt-ins below). Now you want to send a message to 100 of your customers offering a free appetizer with any entrée. You’ve spent 20 dollars to accomplish all of this. Text message open rates are about 95% but let’s assume only 20 of those customers actually redeem that coupon. You’ve just drawn in 20 new reservations for 20 dollars.
Text Messages Arrive…Instantly
Forget email spam filters, postage and drawing visitors into your website. When you send a text message campaign to your marketing list it arrives in seconds.
Insanely High Open Rates
We just said text messages are opened 95% of the time. Compare that to email that is opened, at best, 25% of the time.
Permission Is Key
That phrase we mentioned earlier – opt-in – is what makes SMS marketing so effective. Consumers have to opt-in to join your text messaging list – they are telling you they want to hear from you. They do this by texting your keyword to a short / long code or by signing up via a web form. And if they ever want to stop receiving messages all they have to do is reply STOP and they’re automatically removed from your list.
It’s To The Point
A text message is limited to 160 characters. That means you need to say exactly what you need to say. Whatever you’re offering you get to the offer quickly. There’s a reason why over 95% of text messages are read and this is it.
Everyone Has A Mobile Phone And We Love To Text
Nearly every American has a mobile phone. We sent over 2 trillion text messages in 2010. If you aren’t sending text messages to your customers you better believe that your competitors are.
Text Messaging Is Green
Forget direct mail which gets tossed in the garbage. A text message is digital which means it’s green. Your SMS Marketing campaigns will drive sales and save the environment tool.

Text Message Marketing

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:22:44 +0000

SMS marketing is a huge growth area for businesses of all sizes, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s cheap (texts cost just a few pence, especially if bought in bulk), and it’s easy to track return on investment.

But most of all, SMS marketing is direct and personal. Look at it this way: If you send your customers a marketing email, it’s probably just one of dozens they’ll receive that day. Chances are that only a few of them will open your email, meaning you’d need to send it to thousands of potential customers to make the exercise worthwhile.

That’s not the case with SMS. Most people receive relatively few text messages from businesses (we’ll look at why in a moment), and it’s very hard to ignore a text when it arrives.
If you send 10,000 emails in a marketing campaign, only a few hundred will likely be read—even if you have a brilliant headline, great copy, and a must-have offer. But if you text 10,000 people, you can be pretty sure that nearly all your recipients will read your message. If your conversion rate for SMS marketing is close to your conversion rate for emails, that translates to 10 or 20 times as much business.

Interested? Before you start collecting customers’ mobile numbers for SMS marketing, you need three essentials in place: a great offer, the right technology, and most important—your customers’ trust.

Read the rest of the article

Facebook Marketing Articles

admin — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 23:08:34 +0000

Here is a list of great Facebook marketing articles.

What Should You See in a Social Media Report?

admin — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 22:58:33 +0000

What are the crucial metrics that should be measured on a Facebook Page. Is it simply the total amount of your fans? Does bigger always means better? Or are there another metrics which are as (or even more) important the the fan count? Here is a simple list of metrics which you should always follow in order to get a relevant measurment of your performance on Facebook:

1. Total number of fans

Yes, it is an important metrics to follow, although, not the only one. Having a good base of fans is always good for your brand.

2. Stable positive growth

Besides number of total fans, you should also take into consideration the daily/weekly/monthly growth of fans on your Page. Is it relatively stable or are there big ups and downs? Your fan base should be always steadily growing. Make sure you do not start losing fans. If that happens, try to identify why are your fans leaving you. Is it a wrong content on your Wall or simple loss of interest?

3. Regular postings on your Wall

Connecting with your fans on a regular basis allows you to give your fans daily information from your company. Make sure you post regularly and don’t spam your fans.

4.User wall posts and interactions

While analyzing your Page, you should always look into the number of user wall posts and also their interactions (likes and comments on your wall). This way, you are able find out if your Page is “alive”, if it has engaging fans, etc. Having tens of thousands of fans is nice, but they are worthless if they don’t interact with you.

5. Evolution of your Engagement Rate

Keep your audience interested by posting regular and engaging posts. If the total engagement on your Page drops, analyze your content to find out why.

6. Response rate

Facebook is all about communication. Fans expect you to talk with them. Make use of this platform and engage into conversations with your fans. They will appreaciate it.

QR Codes and Marketing

admin — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 22:00:52 +0000

QR Codes are exploding in use and is a technology that will change the way you market your products or services. QR stands for Quick Response and is a bar code that can be decoded by any smart phone with a QR reader.

QR Code sample

With a smart phone, you can scan a QR code and be taken to a website for a company or product detail page. QR codes are going to be the latest way to “window” shop. For example, say you get a flyer in the mail about a new product. You can scan the QR code on that flyer and it will take you to a detail page about that product or service.

How Can a Business use QR Codes?

Here are a few examples of where you can put QR codes:

Front or back of your business card.
The sides of trucks and trailers.
Product tags and packaging.
Convention and event Name Tags.
Restaurant menus.
Point-of-sale receipts.
Your brochures and other marketing materials.
At your store to encourage happy customers to leave reviews at the store.

QR Codes could then be taken to a landing page of choice, for example:

Opt-in for your monthly newsletter.
Build your email list.
Installation instructions.
Directions to your business.
Google, Yelp, other Internet reviews for your business.
Link To Your Online Content Blog or video.
Summary of your professional services on your website.
Link To Your Contact Information.
Valuable coupons and special offers.
Recommendations for complementary products and services.
Customer feedback forms.

These are only a few of the possibilities we will start seeing businesses use. Are you beginning to see the vast potential QR Codes will offer for your customers? To simply scan and send them to a dedicated page on your website for additional valuable information? Powerful stuff!

Sprout Social Offers Social Relationship Management Services

admin — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:30:22 +0000

Sprout Social, a provider of social relationship management (SRM) services, that is comparable to hoot suite, but with more business metrics in mind. Sprout Social provides a platform that everyone from the novice to the professional social networker can use and benefit from.

Sprout Social is built so that you a contact management system built in and can fully engage in conversation with people through their platform. Sprout Social allows you to post to social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, FourSquare and many other social media sites in a single place so that you or your business can interact with your customers. This platform also allows you to geo-target your messages, schedule your posts, and read your inboxes. You get to work in all of your favorite social networks on one platform, saving you time and money. You will be able to track links that you send out and get a good idea of your promotions.

The Social Dashboard lets Sprout Social SRM users engage customers, gain feedback and achieve targeted audience growth. The Social Dashboard combines message distribution and monitoring in order to track key metrics and provide competitive insights. The application helps businesses discover and target new customers on the Web through the use of deep database logging and search capabilities that let Sprout Social SRM users target customers based on their profile characteristics, including location, job roles, employer and more

Sprout Social SRM is scalable, designed to grow alongside a thriving social media presence for virtually any size business. In addition, Sprout Social SRM is backed by the support of the Sprout Social: Insights blog that provides resources, education, tips and social media management how-tos.

If you are serious about social marketing, then you should take a look at Sprout Social. www.sproutsocial.com

LinkedIn Mistakes to Avoid

admin — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 04:40:49 +0000

Using LinkedIn appropriately will lead to greater success for you as a business owner. However, it is important to understand which practices to avoid in LinkedIn also.

Poor Choice of Photo

One of the very first things that people do when they go to a profile is look at the photo. They want to connect what the person looks like with their profile and the profile of their business. Not including a photo is a big mistake. If you don’t understand the importance of the profile photo, it creates a negative perception of you as a business professional. It is also a mistake to include a group photo as your profile photo.

LinkedIn is a professional social media site, not a personal one. Your photo should be clear and you should be recognizable. You should never include your business’ logo or a product shot of any kind. It is not a bad idea to pay a local photographer and get a headshot of professional quality. If you insist on taking your own photo, make sure that the lighting is correct.

Lack of Detail in Your Profile

Your profile certainly should not have the level of detail that your resume has; however, it should have enough detail for others to get to know you a little bit. There are some key areas that will give you the opportunity to add keywords easily into your profile. The first area is your summary. It is a good idea to begin your summary with your 30-second elevator pitch (your name, what you do, what you are looking for). You need to make sure that the beginning of your summary really grabs your readers. You can, of course, use that same pitch when you are at face-to-face networking events.

Another area that is worth including is your employment history. People not only want to know what you are doing now but they also are interested in what you did in the past, which got you to where you are now. If you don’t include this information, your readers may wonder what you are trying to hide. You should take the opportunity to include keywords in your job descriptions. When discussing your past job descriptions, you should include as many keywords as possible. Remember to demonstrate how your previous work experience has made you that much better at what you are doing today.

Ignoring Applications

Filling out applications is a great way to bring your profile from 2 dimensions to 3 dimensions. It makes you much more real to those who are connecting with you. Applications allow you to post a PowerPoint presentation, attach a video, or send out other relevant and appropriate materials for your business. It is a wonderful opportunity to blast your message in a much deeper and more comprehensive manner. Any way that you choose to communicate your message will most likely be available to you. You are giving your LinkedIn connections many options by which to learn about your business offerings and how you can help them.

Failing to Join Enough Relevant Groups

LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups. Make sure that you join only groups that are, in some important way, relevant to what you are doing. It is essential to use this feature to your full advantage. When you are considering which groups to join, make sure that you choose groups that your prospects would be a part of. After you have joined the groups, you just need to start discussions with those people.

Not Securing Recommendations

An extremely important part of your credibility on LinkedIn is recommendations. People want to know what other people say about you. They don’t want to hear you talk about yourself. Having 10 recommendations is a nice amount. It shouldn’t be too difficult to obtain that many from people with whom you have professional relationships. You shouldn’t feel shy about asking for recommendations. Most people will be happy to recommend you even though they probably won’t take the initiative to offer the recommendation without your asking first.

An easy way to get recommendations is to help your business connections in some way and then request a recommendation from them. It is all about helping each other. You serve them and then they give you a recommendation afterwards. Client recommendations will really go a long way for you.

Overlooking Answers

You need to be involved with discussions through LinkedIn. The generation of discussions in which you are involved will build trust, credibility, and position you as a subject matter expert. Get involved as much as you can with discussions on subjects that you know quite a bit about. Your responses in a discussion can be linked to your profile, which will give you extra mileage and make you look really good. You will help others by responding to their questions with valuable information. You will feel good about helping others.

Another advantage of being a part of discussions is that you can indirectly communicate your own message. You should post helpful blog articles to your profile whenever possible. People really value articles with helpful information. It makes them feel that you are trying to help them and that you are not trying to sell them anything.

Selling Directly

Don’t try to sell directly on LinkedIn. First of all, your chances of success are slim. Second, you will do more harm than good to your brand over time. People are not on LinkedIn to buy products and services. However, with that said, there are selling opportunities on LinkedIn. You just need to remember to be discreet when going in that direction.

By providing valuable information on LinkedIn, people will trust your motive (you are there to help others) and will begin to trust you. People won’t buy anything from you if they don’t trust you. Would you?

Five Reasons to Make Social Media Part of Your SEO Strategy

admin — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:26:27 +0000

It’s well known in SEO circles that most links created through social media are “nofollow”—and therefore don’t help sites rank higher with search engines. Some SEO professionals believe there’s no SEO benefit to developing social-media profiles at all.

Not so, counters Derek Edmond in a recent post at the Komarketing Blog. To search marketers like Edmond, “social-media strategies are much more than a method for securing direct links through submissions, posts, and updates.”

Edmond offers five reasons to incorporate social-media tactics into your SEO strategy:

Brand-Based Search Results. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook Pages and company blogs often appear prominently in brand-based search results. Completing social-media profiles at these sites helps ensure the company message you create gets found.
Link-Friendly Content Strategies. Even if newly created content gathers few SEO-friendly links, acquiring and evaluating the number of bookmarks and votes helps illustrate how successful your organization is at connecting with potential customers and audiences.
Connection with Content Publishers. A social-media presence can open doors of communication and new link opportunities previously unavailable to you.
Connection with Connectors. Social-media sites offer greater access to people and organizations that can help your business grow through new business opportunities, partnerships, and strategic advice.
Social Media’s Influence on the Search Space. Google, Yahoo, and Bing are all integrating social elements with their respective technologies. Therefore, social media’s direct influence on rankings is certain to increase.

Search engines are already smarter than we think, Edmund adds, and they are likely able to determine link intent and so establish some SEO value—even for “nofollow” links.

Make your SEO more social. Adding social media to your SEO strategy is a sure bet these days, Edmond concludes, as the influence of social-media keyword rankings is definitely on the rise.

Source: Komarketing Blog. Read the full post.

10 Tactics to Drive Relevance in Email Marketing

admin — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 14:50:41 +0000

Each of the tactics below will help you create more relevant email messages.

1. Benefit from short-burst email communications.

In a word, be concise. Your content should be:

Easily consumable. Deliver your message payload in a glance. Use enough copy to entice or answer a basic question, but save the fine print and long explanations for your landing page.
- Easily shareable. Readers should be able to share your email with their social networks without having to cut and paste.
- Easily directable. Get to the point and clearly label links to drive readers to your landing page.

2. Understand and use subscriber engagement and behavior.

These four steps can help you incorporate these key data points:

i) Create email list segments based on subscriber engagement, such as:
- Active: Click at least once every 1-3 months
- Passive: Click once every 3-6 months
- Laggard: Click once every 6-12 months
- Lapsed: No clicks after 12 months

ii) Tailor email messaging to reflect these segments and push subscribers to more active segments. One example: a reactivation email campaign sent to “lapsed” subscribers.

iii) Create a Customer Engagement Index using key performance indicators and trends to determine list health. (click on image to see illustration)

iv) Determine the value of an email address to measure profitability and ROI, defend email’s budget allocation, and define and target highly profitable segments. (Download a free spreadsheet to calculate this value at the website for Email Marketing An Hour A Day

3. Leverage engagement and relevance to improve email sender reputation and deliverability.

Subscribers click the spam button or ignore messages they consider irrelevant. This hurts sender reputation, which ISPs use when deciding whether to deliver email to the inbox or the spam folder or to block it.

Use win-back (reactivation) campaigns to wake up lapsed subscribers or direct them to other channels to receive your messages.

Practice good list hygiene, including removing lapsed addresses that don’t respond to win-back campaigns. Also, use deliverability tools such as feedback loops, tracking delivery by domain, and scoring content to avoid looking “spammy”.

4. Use email visitors’ website behavior to improve relevance.

Incorporate your Web analytics with your email marketing application to create highly relevant messages that can deliver higher conversions. (Lyris integrates these automatically.)

Five ways to leverage website visitor activity in email marketing:

Identify and move underperforming products.
Send cart-abandonment reminders to those who put items in a cart but leave without purchasing.
Track entry and exit points to measure effectiveness of acquisition sources.
Balance behavior segmentation with promotional content.
Analyze email subscription-page behavior to optimize the subscription process.

5. Test to better control future success.

Enlist these tactics to quickly see the benefits of email testing:

Use email subject lines to test open rates.
Test to see which creative elements spur more action.
Test targeting to drive your desired behavior.
Test email rendering on big and small screens, with and without images.
Test links before every send.
Test to be sure personalization works correctly.

6. Develop more effective email content and subject lines.

Testing (No. 5) can help you boost your creative efforts here:

Optimize email content for short-burst messaging.
Use shorter subject lines to avoid cutting off the main message in mobile inboxes.
Use shorter creative, cutting out clutter and reducing options that distract from your main message.
Experiment with/test video and rich media, such as animated GIFs.

7. Apply social networking.

You can build email relevance by leveraging your subscribers’ social activity:

Measure social sharing: how often your subscribers share content.
Measure social influence: which subscribers are influencers and advocates.
Measure duration: how long an email message lives after delivery.
Use this data to build subscriber profiles and target future email marketing.

8. Drive subscriber acquisition and optimize search.

Search and social networking are rich sources of new, motivated email subscribers:

Leverage social networking for subscriber acquisition by cross-promoting content and offers and with prominent opt-in invitations.
Use keywords and search phrases in blogging to advance search placement and help new subscribers find your website.
Promote email registration at all possible entry points on your site beyond the home page (landing pages, privacy, preference center, category pages, even unsubscribe page).

9. Implement email design for small screens.

The mobile marketing age is here. Are you ready for it?

Design email that will deliver your message on all screen sizes, with/without images; i.e. put image descriptions and calls to action in alt tags.
Avoid forcing sideways scrolling.
Leverage “click to view mobile version” and test the page for mobile rendering.
Create mobile-specific landing pages.
Add SMS mobile short codes for offline acquisition.

10. Use email segmentation tactics to drive top- and bottom-line results.

Proper segmentation and targeting makes email marketing 4x to 9x more effective.

Create segments using data you already collect: open, click, recency, frequency and age of list.
Social segmentation: Target subscribers who share your content, rate a product or post a review
Use behavioral analytics and customer activity to set up automated lifecycles and triggered email campaigns.

Where Do I Start??

Admittedly, this list might look daunting if you run a one-person department or don’t have the software capability to incorporate data, launch segmentation or targeted messaging.

I recommend beginning with the most essential aspect of any email marketing program: knowing the value of each subscriber on your email list to your organization.

You might not think one subscriber is worth much, so why bother? Because everything else is predicated on knowing what your email subscribers bring to the bottom line.

Being able to assign a monetary value to your email list helps you justify money spent to re-engage lapsed subscribers, to launch testing, and to justify budget requests for additional labor and services.