Join By Text’s users have captured upwards of 50,000 email addresses and the platform continues to receive rave reviews among businesses, non-profits, and agencies

Pittsburgh – Feb. 17, 2015: JA.TXT, a product of digital marketing technologies firm, JA Interactive, today announced the company’s email sign up platform, Join By Text, has helped businesses and non-profits capture more than 50,000 email addresses via text message within its first year, surpassing it’s original goal!

“Since the beginning, we’ve remained focused and dedicated to providing a service that would help our users capture more email addresses offline, at a cost that makes sense for them,” stated Justin Mastrangelo, Founder, JA Interactive.  “Not only did we exceed our goals for the first year, but we received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from our users and are honored to be a part of helping them grow.”

Learn More About Join By Text

Join By Text has received the following feedback, among many others:

• “When I want to grow my Waldow Social Weekly email list, I simply turn to Join By Text. There is no better SMS-based email campaign in the world. It’s easy to implement, simple to customize, and most importantly, it works.” – Digital Marketing Evangelist

• “We have run a variety of text campaigns with them and have been very happy with the results of capturing over 2,500 event attendee emails. They have been quick to respond and helped our team understand the ins and outs of text campaigns.” – Senior Manager of Interactive at Creative Trust Media

• “This email capture platform via SMS was flawlessly easy to implement. The email capture portion was extremely simple to customize and use for potential leads and/or notifications.” – Pittsburgh Tweetup Co-Organizer and SKINourishment Chief Digital Officer

• “Our clients have been very happy with the ability to capture email addresses quickly and accurately at their events. The system has been very reliable and I would happily recommend it to others.” – Director of Digital Strategy at BrabenderCox           

Join By Text is currently offered at $19 a month with a 14-day free trial.  This allows you to capture up to 500 email addresses every month using your keyword.  However, larger plans are available if more email addresses will be captured.  More information about Join By Text and the company’s software solution can be found by visiting JoinByText.com.

About Join By Text

Join By Text was created by JA Interactive, a firm specializing in digital and online marketing technologies since 2003.  JA Interactive has helped companies, large and small, implement effective web, social and mobile technologies.  JA Interactive has been involved with text message marketing since 2005 and built Join By Text on their JA.TXT platform as a way for organizations to capture email addresses more accurately and efficiently offline.

Are you missing opportunities to encourage your audience to quickly signup for your email list in advertisements and marketing materials?

Introducing Join By Text

Capture an email address from any phone in seconds

We have launched a new product that can help if you answered “yes” to either question above.  The product is called Join By Text and it allows your audience to quickly and easily join your email list using a technology they already have on their phones and they’re very familiar with – text messaging.

How does it work?

1. Your audience texts your unique keyword to a five-digit shortcode.
2. Our system asks them to respond with their email address to signup for your email list.
3. Their email address is automatically added to your email marketing platform so they can be sent a welcome email immediately.
4. You watch your email list grow as you promote the keyword at events, in ads, and at brick and mortar locations.

After years of helping businesses and nonprofits use text messaging to capture email addresses we’re excited to launch this product that will make it even easier and more cost-effective than ever.

Currently Join By Text integrates with many popular email marketing platforms including MailChimp, AWeber, iContact, Campaigner, InfusionSoft, Emma, ActiveCampaign, and Publicaster, but new ones will added in the very near future.

If you’re looking for a new way to grow your email list then we encourage you to learn more about JoinByText and read answers to some common questions, please visit www.JoinByText.com

What is SMS Polling?

SMS polling or SMS voting is a fun and effective way to discover what your customers and fans are thinking. Here’s an example of how it would work for you if you were say, the owner of a boutique cupcake shop. Imagine your bakers have been dreaming up some pretty innovative new flavors and you’re starting to get a little nervous as the frosted creations get stranger and stranger. You want to make sure the next batch of treats is one that customers will actually try, so you won’t be left with a dumpster full of spoiled cupcakes. This is a perfect situation for SMS polling.

You print up a special sign and hang it in your shop for a month. It reads, “Which flavor should we bake next month? Dark Chocolate Bacon, or Cucumber Lavender? Cast your vote by texting BACON or LAVENDER to 68724.

You receive an overwhelming response and when the results are tallied, Dark Chocolate Bacon is the clear winner.

You can then text your subscribers to let them know the results and to tell them that you’ll be debuting the new flavor in three days.

You even give them a promo code that they can show at the register to get two free cupcakes when they buy a dozen.

On the day your new flavor debuts, there’s a line around the block. All the hype and booming sales, they’re all the direct results of SMS polling.

SMS polling doesn’t just help bakery owners – politicians, sports teams, nonprofits and other businesses can all use this form of text message marketing to connect to an audience, to hosts contests, to get feedback and to adapt to meet your consumers’ needs. Let’s take a look at how SMS voting can be used for events.

SMS Polling in Action

Each year in February, restaurants in the South Side neighborhood of Pittsburgh open their doors for the annual South Side Soup Contest. The event invites soup lovers to take a walk down Carson Street to visit participating restaurants and sample their best soups. Then attendees are asked to vote for their favorite soups in several categories. Prior to 2012, the contest used paper ballots that were collected and tabulated at each location, then given to the event’s organizers to determine the winners. The process required a great deal of time and effort from volunteers. Many a bowl of soup grew cold as a volunteer bent over a stack of papers with a calculator. Ballots were lost or misplaced, and most attendees chose not to vote at all. Then in 2012, the South Side Soup Contest decided to try SMS polling to solve their issues. Each soup was given a special ID number, and attendees could vote for their favorites in four separate categories by texting the numbers to a designated shortcode. As the results came in, participants and volunteers could watch the soups battle it out in real time (on a web dashboard, that is – not literally) until the winner pulled ahead. Participation shot up from 12% the year before to nearly 70%. Volunteers loved the SMS polling because it saved them hours of work and frustration, and participants were happy to receive a text announcing the winning soups instead of having to remember to check Facebook or the website days later. All around, this was a definite success story for SMS polling.

Things Only SMS Polling Can Do

Why does SMS polling work so well? Because it accomplishes goals that other methods of data collection simply can’t. Here are just a few examples: Paper Polling. We talked about this with our South Side Soup Contest example, but let’s get a little more in-depth. Here are some of the reasons SMS voting is better than paper polling:

• Paper ballots can be lost.
• Scores on paper ballots can be miscalculated.
• SMS voting doesn’t require a large team of volunteers to gather ballots and tabulate scores – everything is done automatically through text.
• Participants find texting easier and more accessible.
• No trees need to be cut down to make your digital ballots. (We just had to throw that one in there.)

QR Codes. Users with smartphones can scan QR codes to take a survey or cast a vote. SMS polling is a far better technique. Here’s why:

• Not everyone has a smartphone with an Internet connection, but most people have cell phones with texting capabilities.
• Even those with smartphones must first download an app to decode QR images.
• To conduct a poll via text message, you don’t need an image like you do with QR codes, so you can announce your contests over a microphone or radio broadcast and don’t have to waste money on printing codes.

Read more: “Comparing QR Codes and SMS” Online Surveys. Some businesses and organizations rely on online surveys instead of SMS polling. Here’s why they’re making a big mistake:

• SMS polling is a much better way to reach an audience on the go or at your location.
• An online survey won’t automatically add participants to your text message marketing subscription list.

As you can see, these other forms of data collection just don’t stack up to SMS polling. And text message marketing is so versatile that the uses for SMS voting are almost limitless.

Who Should Use SMS Polling?

Now that you know what SMS polling is, how it works, and why it’s better than other forms of data collection, you may be wondering if it’s right for you (hint – it probably is). If you’re unsure, here’s just a short list of the people and organizations that can use SMS voting to their advantage:

• Politicians. Get feedback from supporters on how they feel about current issues and your campaign.
• Event hosts. Poll live audiences to get real time results for contests.
• Nonprofits. Get feedback on fundraiser themes, or ask supporters where they’d like to see you focus your efforts.
• Sports teams. Make games interactive by polling the crowd with sports trivia.
• Restaurant owners. Learn which dishes your patrons like best, and which new foods they’d most like to see on your menu.
• Small business owners. Ask customers to rate their favorite products or in-store deals.

See yourself in one of the categories above, but aren’t sure how you’d use SMS polling to boost sales or build support? Contact us today and we’ll brainstorm with you. And if you already have an idea and you’re ready to go, we’ll help you set up your first SMS voting campaign quickly and easily. We love seeing the impact that effective text message marketing strategies can have on businesses, events and causes. Have you had success with SMS polling in the past? Tell us about it in a comment below.

Are your subscribers unhappy with your text messages?

Anyone can launch an SMS marketing campaign, but not everyone can do it well. In fact, some companies and organizations trudge along blindly, completely unaware that their text message marketing tactics are doing more harm than good. They barely even notice as their supporters flee from their subscription lists like rats from a sinking ship. And one day, when it’s already too late, they turn to each other and ask, “What did we do wrong?”

This doesn’t have to be your story. Your SMS campaign can be a vast success, and you can ensure that your results surpass your expectations by learning how to keep your subscribers entertained and engaged. The best way to do that? To learn exactly what it is that makes subscribers opt out of SMS campaigns. Almost always, one of these four mistakes is to blame:

1. Text Message Marketing Frequency

Frequency is the number one culprit behind dropped subscriptions. Here’s what usually happens – a local company, let’s say a restaurant, signs up for text message marketing services. They’re so excited to see their new marketing strategy at work that they go a little overboard. They send daily texts announcing the soup of the day. They text discount codes by the hour. Sometimes, they send the same duplicate message over and over again. And their subscribers, feeling smothered and annoyed, quickly unsubscribe.

How can you avoid this? By learning to time your texts properly. This will vary depending on your campaign, but here’s one example. Say you own a pizza shop. On your boxes, you print “Text “Pizza” to 6874 for a free offer!” When texters send the message, they receive one back offering them a free order of breadsticks with their next purchase. Two days later they receive another text that reads, “Don’t feel like cooking today? Why not order a pizza and use your promo code to get a free order of breadsticks?” Try a campaign like this and you’ll be surprised by how many additional orders you receive. After this initial interaction, wait a week to contact your new subscribers again.

2. SMS Marketing Tone and Content

It’s not just what you say, it’s also how you say it. Many subscribers turn away because they dislike the tone of the texts you send them. While trying to win over customers with humor, a local diner might text a joke that many subscribers find offensive. The owner of a museum may text using 10-dollar words and lofty platitudes that alienate supporters. A salon might hard sell their services so often that they start to sound like shady used car salesmen. These are all examples of tones that can break a relationship instead of build one.

Even recipients who give your tone a thumbs-up may be turned off by your content. They might feel like the knowledge and updates you share have little significance or impact on their lives, or that your announcements of events or promotions are of minimal interest. They may even start to wonder why they subscribed in the first place. When subscribers feel this way, it’s easy to understand why they’d choose not to receive further messages.

So in order for SMS marketing services to be utilized to their full advantage, your tone and your content need to work, and they need to work together. To make sure your tone hits the mark, try this – read every message aloud before you send it. Does the message sound like something you’d say to a customer or supporter in person? If not, you may want to consider a revision. To optimize your content, mix it up. Try not to send the same “kind” of message twice or three times in a row. The more diverse your text message marketing campaign is, the more likely subscribers will be to find your messages useful and relatable.

3. Incentives from SMS Marketing

Promotions and incentives play a huge role in most text message marketing campaigns. Free appetizers, discounted haircuts, buy one get one half off event tickets – they’re all great tools for helping your business, and your subscriber list, grow. But again, your strategy for how you offer incentives will determine your success.

First, you need to ask yourself how valuable your offers are to customers. A 10% discount on a $200 ticket to a charity ball isn’t much of a deal. But a free child’s admission to a local zoo is an offer that many subscribers may actually redeem.

You should also be wary of the frequency and variety of your promotions. If no customers redeemed your free appetizer promo code the first time you sent it out, texting it five more times over the course of two weeks isn’t going to suddenly make the incentive a big hit. In fact, your incessant messaging may lose you dozens, or even hundreds of subscribers. Don’t go overboard with your messages. Track each promotional offer, then adapt your efforts to focus on the promotions that were redeemed the most and don’t waste your time sending out the types of offers that were mostly ignored.

4. Brand Experience Outside of Text Message Marketing

If you think you’ve covered all your bases, and that your SMS marketing strategy is close to perfect, there may be an outside force that can cause your subscription list to shrink. As you know, your company or organization reaches far beyond your text message marketing services. You may have a chain of restaurants, a volunteer street team, or a weekly radio show. There are plenty of ways you can connect to customers and supporters outside of texts, and if someone has a bad experience in one of these arenas, they may choose to cancel their subscription to your messaging campaign.

A rude waitress, an offensive disc jockey, a less than helpful customer service department – all of these things can leave a bad taste in subscribers’ mouths. Try SMS polling to get feedback from your current subscribers. And if you learn that a recent ad campaign, a defective product, or a dirty restaurant is a problem, focus your efforts on fixing the problem as soon as you can. When customers see you responding to their feedback, your relationship will become stronger than ever.

If this seems like a lot of information to take in all at once, don’t be dismayed. It’s true that using these tips will help you craft a winning strategy with your SMS marketing services, but at the end of the day the most important thing is that you know your business and that you know your customers. You know what your customers need, what your supporters believe in, and you know what your business or organization can do to help. And an effective text message marketing campaign is just an extension of that relationship. So if you feel a little uncertain that your efforts are hitting the mark, just think about that relationship and try to evolve a strategy that will nurture it and help it grow.

Need a little help? Contact us to learn how to put SMS marketing services to work for you.

Overwhelmingly you asked us for specific examples of how businesses and nonprofits are using text messaging.  Many also asked what trends we’ve seen lately in SMS marketing.

So, on Thursday, July 11^th at 1pm EDT our founder, Justin Mastrangelo, will give a quick 30-40 minute webinar that covers the following:

• 6 successful ways we see organizations using SMS marketing
• What we’ve learned over the past few years about SMS
• What trends we see growing over the next 6-12 months

Interested?  Just click the button below to sign up for this free webinar.  Even if you can’t attend on July 11th everyone who signs up will receive a recorded copy of the webinar in their email.

How Does it Work?

A keyword inside your JA.TXT account can be used to ask people for their email address and then add them to your ActiveCampaign list.  This can be useful when you’re trying to collect emails offline at events, your brick and mortar location, or through traditional media.  It only takes two quick text messages for them to join your list.

3 Easy Steps to Integrate with ActiveCampaign

1.  You create a web form inside your ActiveCampaign account that will be used to capture the signups.  It is recommended you also create an autoresponder for that list so new members will receive a welcome email immediately.

2.  Forward the code for that web form (or the link) to your JA.TXT account manager.  They will integrate this with your account and discuss the best text message responses for your campaign.

3.  When someone texts your keyword to the short code, the JA.TXT system will ask them for their email address.  When they respond, that address will be submitted through the web form and into your Active Campaign account immediately.

We are very excited about this latest integration and we look forward to helping you launch your first email capture campaign soon!

Why Do I Want to Capture Email Addresses through SMS?

There are many advantages of collecting emails via SMS.  For more information please check out the following blog posts:

• How to Use SMS to Grow Your Opt-In Email List

• Kill Fewer Trees at Your Next Event, Use SMS Marketing

• Text Messaging is an Easy Call-to-Action

7-Eleven increases in-store traffic with SMS

The convenience store chain is using text messaging to distribute mobile coupons via a link in the message. The goal behind this campaign is to drive consumers into the stores to try a new Slurpee flavor and grow the overall SMS database for 7-Eleven.

Read More

Caribou Coffee builds buzz around new location via SMS

To celebrate the launch of a new store in Illinois Caribou Coffee ran a sweepstakes via text message that gave participants a chance to win free beverages for a year. This contest generated awareness of the new store and built a database of opted-in mobile users for future promotions.

“Utilizing SMS technology for this purpose made the most strategic sense in terms of maximizing participation levels,” said Alfredo Martel, senior vice president of marketing and product management at Caribou Coffee, Minneapolis.

Read More

Macy’s relies on SMS to drive Labor Day sales

Macy’s encouraged shoppers to stop by during the Labor Day weekend through a text message sent out to their opted-in mobile database. Each message contained an offer and a link to the company’s mobile website.

Read More

For more on how text messaging can be a valuable part of your mobile marketing strategy be sure to check out our blog post “3 Reasons To Start Your Mobile Marketing With Text Messaging”

When we’re working with the client to determine the prize they almost always bring up some sort of “i” product; iPad, iPod, etc.  Obviously the thought here is “everyone loves the iPad and everyone will try to win one.”  While this might be true, the client is almost never selling a product or service that “everyone” wants.

Qualify Your Database on the Way In

Sure, while giving away an Apple product might yield the biggest database it doesn’t yield the most interested database.  For example, if you’re a carpet cleaning business running radio spots with the call-to-action “text in for your chance to win a whole house cleaning for free!”  You’re going to get a list full of people who actually want and need carpet cleaning, not just everyone looking for a free gadget. If you have really dirty carpets this offer may be even MORE attractive than an iPad, and get your attention faster.

Build a Database of People “On the Fence”

After you pull the winner you’re going to have a list of people who are primed for a “second chance offer” or “last-minute deal” that will encourage them to buy.  Why not send them a text message or email when business is slow?  For example, “schedule an appointment for a free quote this week and get 20% off per room!”

Everyone is Looking for an Excuse

Let’s face it, we all have a list in our heads of things we want to buy but haven’t yet because there’s hasn’t been a good “excuse” or great deal.  Give us the chance to win that product or service for free and we’re going to take it.  Give us a great follow up offer with an expiration date on it?  Well, you’d be surprised how many people will start calling and how effective this technique can be.

Sometimes it’s a Good Idea to Giveaway an iPad

There are some situations where giving away an Apple product can be effective.  Let’s say you’re attending an industry tradeshow that will be full of your target audience.  Since admission to the tradeshow has already qualified them, giving away something very attractive like an iPad might make sense.  Now your goal is to capture as much of the audience as possible, rather than fill your database with people who will never be interested in your messages.

What have you tried as a mobile marketing giveaway? Leave a comment below!

Do you even find yourself emailing and texting at the same time?

Quick, answer these two questions –

1. Do you read and send emails?
2. Do you read and send text messages?

We’re going to go out on a limb and guess your answers to both of these questions are a resounding “yes!” Chances are you’re probably doing at least one of them right now.

It’s no surprise email and text messaging are the most widely used digital communication channels today, sometimes even beating out the good old telephone.  What may be a surprise is how well these two technologies can work together.

Learn How SMS Can Help Your Email Marketing

Join email marketing expert DJ Waldow and JA.TXT President Justin Mastrangelo on Thursday, July 19^th at 2PM ET for this free webinar.

On this jammed-packed 30 min webinar you will learn how to use SMS (text messaging) to find and engage new email subscribers.  You will also learn:

1. Ways to use traditional media, events, and foot traffic to grow your email list through text messaging
2. Tips on using a welcome email series to quickly engage new subscribers
3. Strategies for using email and SMS together to maximize your campaign’s effectiveness

Register today and find out how these two widely-used technologies can help you achieve your marketing goals and grow your audience.

Also, If you’re interested in learning more about DJ Waldow (and how you can be a better email marketer) be sure to check out Waldow Social, his Twitter feed, and his latest book The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing: Grow Your List, Break the Rules, and Win.