Digi Increases Its 4G LTE Network Covering 60% of Malaysians

Digi recently increased its 4G LTE network covering 60% of Malaysians and what this means for most users:

• 99.9% accessibility to Digi's 4G LTE services
• 2x faster web page loading
• 2x faster latency
• 3x more stable connections
• 80% more than 5Mbps speed consistency
• 10x faster LTE relative speed

How is this an opportunity for SME Business in Malaysia?

Digi's response to increased network coverage indicates a potentially strong relation to Malaysian's mobile penetration rate. Indication that there is a strong user usage of mobile phones and increasing more opportunities for SMS Marketing initiatives.

How to build an advantage?

Strong mobile penetration in Malaysia provides a strong argument for a SMS Marketing Channel to be used alongside tried-and-tested marketing methods. There are strong arguments for the profitability of participating actively with target customers through their mobile phones and in return providing additional incentives and exclusive deals to push them to continually engage with your business.

What to avoid?

Misplacing customer trust. Customers expect transparency and honesty when companies approach them. What this means is periodic and limited broadcast of text messages would be more than welcomed as it was a self-initiated request, but over excessive message sending may lead to a strong negative response instead of the desired effects. Simply put; don't spam.

EVERWORKS provides a reliable and robust SMS Delivery Service that caters to your SMS Marketing Campaign needs and more. Contact an EVERWORKS Expert now.

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Case Study: Text Messaging Recruiting Example (Target)

Previous posts addressed the various methods on how SMS Marketing can help to spur increased sales and provide as an important variant to the tried-and-tested marketing channels. Much sales can be obtained with a strong and robust platform to help support your broadcasting needs, a solid marketing strategy and the understanding that customers are more likely to participate with provided incentives build into the offer.

Question. SMS Marketing is an alternative marketing channel, but does it apply to other parts of the value chain too? The answer is yes. A lot of focus has been placed on the end-user or customer indicating a downstream approach to improving the value chain. However, there are places further upstream that can further enhance your competitive product offering as well. 

An example: SMS Marketing used when recruiting new employees, a Target case study. Doubts may be cast on this, but some of the largest brands are already doing it. 

The recruitment poster at Target instructs prospective employees to submit keywords and email address to a short-code to learn more about potential seasonal opportunities. After texting a prospective employee receives a text message in return with a link directing them to target.com/careers and also telling them to look for an email about job opportunities. One day after the potential employee receives an email in their inbox as indicated from the message that they have sent a day prior. 

This example illustrates that text messaging can be used to increase recruitment efforts, especially during seasonal times.

Looking to find a service provider that will help you establish your SMS platform to reach potential new employees please contact experts at EVERWORKS for more information.

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Case Study: Kiehl's Experiences 73% Redemption Rate

SMS Marketing draws a fair bit of competitive pressures with arguments that SMS is a thing of the past and in the growing digital age of apps may prove to be surplus to requirements today. This post won't address the advantages and disadvantages of SMS Marketing compared to having an application on the smart phone but rather, look at providing either a strong alternative marketing channel to consider or a reliable cost effective solution to start with from the get go.

We will look at Kiehl's, an American cosmetics brand retailer that specializes in making premium skin, hair, and body care products.

To raise awareness about the new marketing campaign Kiehl's was involved with, they used in-store signage, email marketing and social media to promote the use of their SMS Campaign; which they called Kiehl's Alerts. The cosmetic company had two opt-in methods, one was signing up online, or through SMS by texting the SMS Keyword "KIEHLS" to the SMS short code 25687. 

Part of their geographic marketing approach to determine the closest store to their customers they were asked to agree to share their location with Kiehl's so that the cosmetic company could send up to three location based text alerts a month; this was triggered when the customer was within a certain radius of one of Kiehl's 45 test stores.

After the 6-month program, Kiehl's found that 73% of customers that had signed up for their SMS Marketing Campaign had made a purchase, and 81% of respondents in a survey sent out remembered the SMS marketing messages from Kiehl's, meaning that 90% of customers made an in-store purchase during the 6-month program!

How does this apply to your SME Business in Malaysia?

Geofencing a fancy term for Geographic location based anonymous tracking, might be something that your business may not require yet, but the core idea was how effective SMS is in providing incentives to your customers and serve as a valuable reminder of the special products and services you can offer to them as a means to provide instant information for them to make a decision.

A clear consistency is how companies' disclaim the number of text messages they will send to the users giving them ample notice and expectation reducing the likelihood of regarding messages sent by the company to be considered as overly excessive; a prevention method for a negative emotional response (spam).

Are you interested in launching your SMS Marketing Campaign, that produces similar results to what Kiehl's has experienced from their campaign? Contact the SMS Marketing Experts at EVERWORKS and let us help you get similar results that Kiehl's experienced through a robust platform for your own SMS Marketing Campaign.

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How to Grow Your SMS Subscribers Faster

Previous case studies have indicated that SMS Marketing is a powerful alternative money generating activity. Growing your SMS Subscribers faster leads to an increased potential to meet growing sales requirements or to maintain customer loyalty.

A study conducted by HipCricket found that 44% of consumers were willing to provide personal information like their mobile phone number in exchange for a reward or coupon deal. By encouraging your customers with a reward, coupon or a deal to join your SMS campaign, much like Kohl's, as you can see below, you will be able to grow your SMS Subscribers at a much faster rate.

Pitfalls to avoid

First, do not pursue cold customers that have little interest in what you offer to them as the additional marginal costs involved with having a not effective subscriber list adds up over time, and may prove to be an inefficient measure for customer adoption with SMS Subscription against customers without SMS Subscription.

Willing consumers demonstrate a need for the product or service that you offer, but more often than not just require convincing to choose your product or service over existing competitors. This can be provided through incentives that fulfills their desire for exclusivity or incentives to push them to action.

Second, avoid overwhelming your customers' with too much information. Periodic text messages help to remind and provide incentive for your customers to respond and relate to the exclusivity offers you offer, but over enthusiastic (spam) wards a negative response from customers that would put an otherwise effective SMS marketing campaign rendered to be more damaging than good.

How to deal with worried customers?

It is important that you always provide worried customers an option to unsubscribe if there ever reaches a point that they may feel the need to do so. However, from research conducted there is an average of only 2.3% of SMS subscribers unsubscribing after receiving the initial opt-in promotion, as they were initially willing to receive and gave acceptance to the clear indication of the number of messages sent to their mobile phone from your business; as provided in the example above.

Conclusion

As previously stated there is a strong indication that with 44% of customers willing to provide brands personal information like mobile phone numbers in exchange for a reward, coupon or deal, plus an average subscriber retention rate of 98% for SMS campaigns after they have received the initial offer, is a sure fire way to grow your SMS Subscribers faster than ever. Need help growing your own SMS subscribers contact EVERWORKS experts to provide you with a robust platform to discuss about how you can go to market now.

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Retailer Makes $2.5 Million in Sales with Mobile Marketing Campaign

There is fierce retail competition in Malaysia and with increase in costs of late, an increase in sales doesn't sound like such a bad idea. 

Are you looking to increase sales but have already tried various marketing channels? Do those marketing channels provide little return on your investments? Have you tried mobile marketing? 

If not, partner with a local expert in Malaysia to provide you with a robust platform to go to market. 

Results of the retailer's mobile marketing campaign (according to Vibes) are:

• Started mobile marketing campaign in the summer of 2014.
• Customers were sent a welcome offer indicating preference to subscribe, along with a discount, as long as they spent a certain amount in-store.
• Retailer grew their mobile marketing database by more than 250,000 customers since launching.
• The retailer generated $2.3 million in sales from their mobile marketing campaign during a 3-month period.
• On average, each new mobile subscriber generates $10 in annual sales for the retailer.
• Retailer is projecting to hit 1 million mobile subscribers within the next 10-months.

A surprising fact was that the fact that this retailer compared their website visitors that were SMS subscribers to their website visitors that were not SMS subscribers. The results? Shocking. What the retailer found is that visitors to their website were also SMS subscribers made 32.4 purchases for every 1,000 visitors. However, when compared with visitors that were not SMS Subscribers, their website only made 5.4 purchases for every 1,000 visitors, hard to believe but true.

This reveals that although tried-and-tested marketing campaigns serve an important role for driving customers to your business, an alternative method would be to stay involved with customers and to provide relevant information to customers to enable a more interactive response to your customers' demands and desire for exclusivity; VIP Status.

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