Lessons from email marketing’s mistakes

Emarketer.com recently published the results of some research they undertook to find out the main reasons behind why people choose to unsubscribe to email updates from various companies. While email marketing and SMS marketing are not completely identical there are a great number of similarities between the two marketing mediums, as a result there are a number of lessons to be learnt from this research.

The study found that the single greatest reason for dropping out of an email marketing subscription was that “The message was not relevant to me”, 46% of respondents cited this as their reason for unsubscribing.

Second highest on the list of reasons was “I receive too many to manage”, this was cited by 23% of the respondents.

And third and fourth place on the list, with 16% a piece were “They cause clutter in my inbox” and “Not from a trusted source”.

So what can we learn from this study? What actions can marketers using SMS text messaging take to ensure that their opted-in subscribers stay part of the database? Well based on the information outlined above we can come to a few conclusions.

1. Make sure the message is relevant – This might seem like an overly simple point to make, but almost half of email un-subscribers were prompted to do so when they received one too many irrelevant text messages. Therefore it should always be kept in mind that when sending a marketing SMS message it must be related to what your customers requested, it must be RELEVANT. For example if Tom joined your VIP club with a view to receiving text coupons, he might not be interested in receiving quizzes, polls, updates etc. Sending Tom too many of these might force him to unsubscribe.
2. Almost a quarter of respondents in the email marketing survey cited the reason: “I receive too many to manage”, SMS marketers should keep this in mind at all times when contacting members of their database. Just because you CAN send your database three messages a day it really doesn’t mean you should! Customers’ expectations should be set from the beginning, for instance you could advertise the “VIP weekly coupon”, or “monthly special offers” therefore customers know exactly when to expect when subscribing to your SMS messages.
3. Inbox clutter was cited by 16% of respondents, this is likely to be an increasing problem as SMS marketing becomes more popular in the future. Again, this is an issue related to the frequency with which SMS marketing messages are sent. If marketers behave in a responsible fashion and send a reasonable amount of messages at a pre-agreed frequency then this should not be an issue. All marketers need to play their part in keeping SMS a relevant medium by adhering to reasonable usage and not firing out multiple messages every day.
4. Another 16% of respondents claimed they unsubscribed due to receiving messages from an un-trusted source, it should go without saying that you should never send marketing messages to people who have not agreed to receive them, not only is it illegal to do so, it will more than likely generate negative word of mouth around your brand.

By keeping the mistakes made by email marketers in mind at all times those using SMS marketing can ensure that their opted-in database remain opted-in.

Mobile Coupons – Redmption rates to die for

A leading market research company, Juniper Research, this week announced the results of their research into the effectiveness of mobile coupons. Unsurprisingly their findings indicated that redemption rates for coupons received via mobile phone far outstripped that of traditional paper-based coupons.

Howard Wilcox of Juniper commented: “The redemption rate for traditional paper coupons is typically 1% or less, but, based on our survey, mobile coupons offer 6 times these rates. This means that retailers and brands have the opportunity to exploit the mobile channel via personalised coupon offers direct to the ultimate personal device – the mobile phone.”

The reasons for the comparatively high redemption rates are obvious. Firstly you do not need to walk about town with a wallet that is teeming to the brim with coupons. Every coupon adds up and soon you can be left with enough pieces of paper to write a short novel on.

And secondly,  because customers have opted in to receive these mobile coupons, the chances are that they have a much greater interest in redeeming them then any old coupon that is shoved in their face.

Mobile coupons clearly have great potential, and it is the businesses that realise this first that will win.

The importance of giving customers feedback… on feedback

Feedback is important, that is undeniable. In order to improve the levels of service you provide or the quality of your products you must have an clear and honest idea of what your customers are thinking about your offering. In reality only a small amount of companies have effective feedback mechanisms in place, and of the companies that do, a small amount of them do end up following through with something equally important… a responce.

It is all well and good to ask for feedback, if you are lucky your customers will care enough  about your product or service to tell you what they think, however this should not be a case of one-way traffic.

Gary Schwartz, a VP of a large US-based feedback software company recently recounted his contrasting experiences at two hotels he stayed at recently. “Sometimes the experience was a terrific one, such as when Housekeeping at the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan found and returned the phone charger I’d left in my room. Or it may have been a poor one, as at a Washington hotel that couldn’t get any of my food orders right during my week-long.”

Both hotels requested his feedback, which he duly gave them. “The New Yorker customer services manager wrote me just a few days after I sent her my feedback, telling me how proud she and her staff were to receive it. Not only did her positive response to my comments create yet another good customer experience, the hotel used the feedback to create a great employee experience. The other hotel still hasn’t replied to me, six months later.”

There are no prizes for guessing which hotel he will be telling his friends about in a positive manner, and which will be receiving a verbal beating and some seriously negative word of mouth.

When a customer gives you feedback it means that they have gone out of their way to help you, surely the very least that can be done to show appreciation for this is to respond to the customer and tell them how helpful their feedback has been?

This is one of the benefits of using SMS software to collect feedback, once you have received the feedback and it is in your online account you can elect to send any customers providing feedback a quick response via sms. You don’t have to type up a letter, put it in an envelope and send it in the post. With SMS feedback software you simply click, type a short message and hit the send button.

You owe a response to those customers who take time to give you feedback, and SMS makes it very easy to do so.

Mastercard, Amazon tap SMS for service improvements

Mastercard, the credit card giant, has this week announced that is has decided to start using SMS to improve security when it comes to online transactions.

In a move to negate the increasing problems being encountered with “phishing” and other forms of online scams Mastercard will send customers’ mobile phones a one-use password that must be entered in order to authorise online payments.

This move by Mastercard shows that they acknowledge that SMS marketing is indeed the best way to reach customers wherever they are in a safe and speedy manner.

This announcement comes just days after Amazon revealed that they are in the testing phases of allowing customers to track their packages by SMS. It would appear that the big players are finally realising the potential of SMS

SMS Spam report: Findings

Txt4ever and the Direct Marketing Association recently released a report on the general public’s attitudes toward SMS spamming in the UK.

Nielsen: UK Smartphone usage up… but still not great

Recent research carried out by Nielsen has indicated that smartphone usage in the UK is on the up from Q2 09… but just barely.

In the UK the number of people using smartphones had moved from 8.8million in Q2 to 10.4million in Q3. The Vice President of mobile media at Nielsen commented: “Although there have been sizeable increases in the take-up of new mobile technologies, such as video and location-based services they remain niche forms of behaviour. Although the era of the handset as a truly multimedia device on a mass-market level lies somewhere on the horizon, the key for companies to successfully harness mobile lies in a realistic understanding of what media activities people on a large-scale are actually doing on their handsets now.”

In reality a small proportion of the population are engaging with their mobile devices with things like video, with most opting to occasionally browse the web. It is obvious therefore that text messaging is still the most important way for advertisers to reach their customers.

As a whole smartphones have crept from a market share of 14% to just over 15% over the last quarter, and the much lauded iPhone hold just 19% of this share. Therefore those marketers choosing to pursue iPhone apps over SMS are in reality resigning themselves to communicating with just 19% of 15%… or 2.85% of all phone users in the UK.

That choice seems somewhat unwise when compared to the 100% of phones that can receive SMS messages!

The last of the Xmas cards, and the rise of the Xmas SMS

The first ever SMS text message was sent by developed Neil Papworth in 1992, it read “Merry Christmas”. This was the message that marked the start of a global phenomenon and ever since then people have been sending each other text messages every time a special event comes around.

www.rightnobile.co.uk recently commissioned some research into the area and found that this year will most likely see more people sending each other Xmas texts rather than Xmas cards. 66% of respondents claimed that they would buy their immediate relatives a card at Christmas, but only 42% admitted that they would do likewise for their friends. However over 2/3rds of respondents confirmed that they would be sending a Merry Christmas SMS text message to their friends.

The main reasons cited by respondents were the cheapness of the medium (31% chose as the most important factor) and ease of use versus buying and sending a card (41%). A smaller group (5%) admitted that they usually sent text messages instead because they had forgotten to buy a card.

SMS is clearly a great way to communicate with our friends and family, it is cheap and also much more environmentally friendly, so this year don’t hold your breath for that card… you can probably expect a text in your inbox instead!

Marketers want an app that will work on all phones… We have it!

Over at Hello Mobile - a great blog with interesting insights into mobile marketing – they recently looked at the question being asked by marketers interested in using smartphone “apps” for engagement with their customers. The question being asked is “why can’t I pay for a one mobile application that will work across every device?”

The problem, which appears to have gone unthought of by most marketers until this point, is that unfortunately all smartphones are not created equal. Some phones have much higher processing and graphics capabilities than others, and each smartphone tends to run on its own unique operating system. As a consequence, the fancy iPhone app that you have spend many thousands of $/€/£’s  on, will never work on someones Google Android phone, or nokia’s 5800. This is obviously rather problematic, and the only solution would involve developing a separate app for each brand of phone.

Well if they are really looking for an application that will work on EVERY device, then surely they also mean the 80%+ phones that are not smartphones, and luckily at True North Metrics we already have the answer to this question. We know of a technology that will work on all smartphones, and also on every non-smartphone too… yep that’s right.

The answer to the marketers question is quite clearly SMS text messaging, glitzy it is not, glamorous it is not, but that is an application that will work on any and every phone in the country and has been shown to deliver consistent, measurable results.

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