Signing Up for an SMS Campaign - Why?
Sep 06 2007
So I might be a hold out on this whole SMS/Text Campaign idea. I hear stories of teens that are addicted to cell phone text mesaging, and I use it here and there, but I can’t figure out the draw. I have signed up for a large number of these campaigns to my cell phone to see why I might have customers that use this. Heck we added it as a feature to emailROI maybe 2 plus years ago. Still very few customers that actually use it.
From the ones I have subscribed to, I see that most of them are a “what’s up/ what’s going on/don’t miss it” type of campaign. Still none of them have made me want to drop what I was doing and rush online, to a store, buys a new release or even use my Slingbox ( I love this thing) to connect to my Tivo at home to record a show. Why I am so slow to see the impact? Has anyone seen a great text campaign or signed up for something that truly gave the brand, subscriber or sales a lift? I am sure that there must be some great campaigns out there. Or did the fact that I now fall out of the target demographic help to explain why I am not seeing why this will grow and work?
Here is one from Urban Outfitters that I was sure got “it”. This sign up form alone scared me with ugly design alone.
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September 12th, 2007 at 5:44 am
So here is a good question for you… what does it take to setup these SMS campaigns? Is it costly? What’s the technical stuff behind them (or is it just email directly to the phone)?
Also, have you considered the SMS etiquette? Just like Facebook has its own ‘etiquette’ and what you should and shouldn’t do… one would think that SMS has the same type of thing.
Especially if the recipient is going to be paying to receive the SMS messages. I would not want to receive an abundance of irrelevant SMS messages.
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Thanks Paul. It is not hard nor is it expensive. We have it in our emailROI system to do at the same costs of email marketing. What does cost money is a short code. A short code is the 5 digit text number you need to have to get emails from a cell phone. I know you have seen American Idol and this is the short code. Most of them are already owned by companies and they lease them or sell them. $10K a year for a lease in some cases.
There should be an etticut. The Mobile Marketing Association (http://mmaglobal.com/) is tasked with working on this and other issues around mobile.