Best SMS Tactics From The Top Text Advertising Trends of 2011
Text Advertising Trends of 2011
In business and in life, there are lessons we can learn by watching the best. Building an effective mobile marketing campaign is no different. As local advertisers find their legs and learn better strategies for crafting and implementing a text message advertising campaign, there are no shortage of 2011 mobile marketing success stories from which useful tips can be borrowed.
Advertisers both large and small have demonstrated mobile marketing’s most powerful traits, benefiting from its ability to communicate personally, quickly, and/or to a targeted, responsive audience. And while the tactics can vary greatly from one campaign to the next, the best mobile marketing campaigns share one crucial characteristic: they work.
The boundaries of mobile marketing continue to grow, and now include innovative technological advances such as location-based “check-ins”, mobile websites, apps and QR codes. But most campaigns haven’t strayed from the relative simplicity of text message advertising, incorporating it to some degree in any campaign.
There are countless examples of international corporations such as Walmart and Coke adding SMS advertising to their marketing efforts, but as a reminder that it is far from a medium reserved for big-budget retailers, consider the story of Deer Creek Golf Course in Overland, Kansas. Deer Creek attended a three-day golf trade show and walked away with 500 new opt-in subscribers in its database. A few days later, Deer Creek sent those 500 golfers a text message promoting a same-day VIP special. The result? Twenty-six players redeemed the mobile coupon, and the course profited $650 on a day that had typically seen little action.
Riding the success from that offer, Deer Creek sent out another message to the same 500 golfers on the following Friday, promoting a VIP Sunday special two days later. Sunday was a cloudy, cold, windy day, hardly optimum for golf. Despite that, 18 golfers redeemed the mobile coupon and the course grossed $504 in greens fees alone, and more than $600 in total.
Text message advertising success stories like Deer Creek’s are more and more common as local advertisers gain an understanding that mobile marketing is not only easy, but effective – when implemented wisely. Critical to Deer Creek’s success was collecting 500 opt-in users at a trade show. Other retailer segments – bars and restaurants, fitness centers, and real estate agencies – that may not provide business owners with the luxury of a trade show audience must rely on other means of finding a captive audience.
To some, it might be the customers who already visit your store. To others, capturing the attention of your social media audience is the ticket. Do you have a text message advertising success story to share? Want to ask how other retailers built their database? Post your thoughts to TXTin’s community of readers. And if you found this article helpful and want to pass it along, use of our social media share buttons below.
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Some really great example here! I think text message marketing is really a great way to reach out to potential customers if you plan your messages and promotions properly.
Hot Topic does something similar to this, actually. They send out special coupon codes and offers to my daughter’s phone all the time. It saves us a ton of money and we go there a lot more often than other stores. Definitely works if you use it properly!
I wish my golf course would text me promotions, haha. Golfing can be expensive!
My only problem with this is that these conversion rates are about 0.03%-0.05%. Just doesn’t sound like an effective marketing strategy to me.
That’s a really great point. The numbers in this case study really don’t seem that impressive when compared to conversion rates from other tactics.
We have a QR code and a, “Text CAFE to 123456″ sign people see as they are leaving my coffee shop. Not a terrible amount of traffic based on it, but I have heard more than a few stories of people sending the codes to their friends who later came in.
I love the apps and mobile website, but I don’t get these square codes. They don’t really seem that convenient and I have never seen anyone use one.
I love the simplicity of mobile marketing. Honestly, I was very impressed by the case study regarding Deer Creek golf club. I always have this thought that only major corporations, like Wal-Mart or Target, could profit from an advertising campaign like this. It is apparent this notion is very inaccurate for sure. The sales turnover may not be huge (for Deer Creek, 26 respondents out of 500 isn’t a life changing number), but the fact that SMS costs about nothing to implement makes it instantly appealing. I wouldn’t mind making an extra $600 dollars just by sending out a quick and simple text message. In all honesty, it is little things like that that can make or break a business, especially a small one struggling in this economy. Looking at Deer Creek’s earnings and projecting it onto the month, they can make roughly $2,000 dollars a month just through the text message specials. That is really impressive if I can say so myself!