5 Things to Start, Stop, and Keep Doing With Your SMS Marketing

If you're reading this it's likely you're trying to figure out a way to improve on your current SMS Marketing tactics.

SMS Marketing is a powerful tool as we've discussed about in previous posts where we've explored;

• 10 reasons why your cafe should use SMS Marketing and 
• SMS having a 99% Open Rate and 36% Click Through Rate

covering some of key topics on why we believe SMS Marketing is something you should seriously consider. Let's get straight into this:

How to improve your SMS Marketing 

1. Send SMS to lists that want to hear from you

If you have SMS lists that have low rates of engagement activity, stop sending more SMS to them. Every time you send to a list with low rates of engagement, it not just hurts your budgets, but also your reputation for connecting with your customers.

2. Have a goal for for each SMS before you press send

You should always have a goal in mind for every marketing effort you do. If you do not have a clear goal in mind, your customers receiving your SMS won't either. Some examples of these goals can be filling up a form for gated content, or redeeming a voucher code to be used in your store.

3. Personalise and test your SMS

SMS personalisation really works. When it comes to personalisation its best to stick to the basics such as recipient names. You don't want to come across as creepy, so it's best to leave it at that.

4. Experiment by sending SMS out on different days of the week

Stop sending SMS on Wednesdays. Just stop. Tuesday all the way through to Thursdays are the most popular days for sending out SMS but they're over saturated and might be overwhelming your subscribers. If you want your SMS to be opened try on different days like Monday or Fridays. You can also try on Saturdays, and make sure you include a call to action - there's a tendency here for consumers to react.

5. Engage with contacts that have engaged not uploaded lists

When someone willingly provides their information, the engagement is likely to be higher - the key here is willing. That's because they are willing or interested to hear from you, and they've told you so by engaging with your opt-in request. We've got an idea that would help to drive better engagement reach that might help with your SMS list building efforts through influencer engagement.

Never buy SMS lists, you're only hurting your reputation - your hard earned credibility will be hurt by doing this, and it is plain annoying to receive messages that don't matter to you. Here's an example: what if there's a guy that's interested in sports attire, but you end up sending claimable discount vouchers through SMS to him for the new red hot lipstick. There's a disconnection when you purchase lists, and the likelihood for backlash is greater. Why risk it?

SMS has strong merits, and it should be an avenue for you to consider to diversify your marketing channel participation. Having a targeted campaign enables you to direct your marketing campaigns to your customers immediately. Learn more about how we can help you with SMS. If you'd like to run through some ideas with us, just get in touch with us.

Read More

5 Influencer Marketing Ideas to Drive List Building

What's the difference between Influencer Marketing and the traditional Celebrity Spokesperson Marketing?

Influencers are specialists in their respective niches, have a high level of trust with their network and establish a two way communication with their followers.

Influencer marketing is a strategy to tap into an existing community of engaged followers. This means that these people have influence over an audience that you might be trying to reach - this might prove to be valuable to your marketing efforts.

The line is blurred with Influencer Marketing when it comes to celebrity endorsements. There is a tendency for fans to rely on a well researched recommendation compared to signed marketing contracts.

If having a selective niche audience is what your brand needs, engaging with influencers with niche specialities is often better compared to celebrity endorsements that may cover a broad range of different sponsored products and industries. Celebrity endorsements are great, but it's often less about fan engagement and more about attaching a person's fame and name recognition to a particular brand.

Important Tip: Use influencers to drive list building activities. 

Although, giveaways and other perks are great, but use your campaign to also build rapport with your audience - this is a great way to build credible engagement with your fans and grow legitimacy with easy collaboration with reputable influencers.

1. Old Navy

Check out Old Navy's approach to implementing influencer marketing - they got in touch with Meghan Rienks to do a series of promotional posts for them on their social accounts.

she’s baaack 💫🎉💫 . got a bajillion holiday parties? @meghanrienks shows you how to wear 1 jumpsuit, 3 totally different ways. now all that’s left to do is RSVP “yes” 💌 . shop her looks, link in bio ✨ . #oldnavystyle #happyistrending

A post shared by oldnavy (@oldnavy) on Dec 6, 2016 at 1:06pm PST

2. Natta Cosme

Natta Cosme got in touch with woonsingg a local influencer to carry out their influencer marketing.

This Glacial Clay Mask is just what I need, for purifies the skin, as well as minimise the enlarged pores and firm the sagging pore walls 🌋 @nattacosme

A post shared by ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀w o o n s i n g g 👾 (@woonsingg) on Jul 28, 2017 at 5:27am PDT

3. SKII Malaysia

SKII Malaysia engaged with Sue Lynn Tiong popularly known as Bangsar Babe for their on-ground event. They drove digital engagement with Sue Lynn posting on her Instagram driving awareness for their campaign.

All set for the SK-II beauty workshop I'm hosting in Mid Valley! If you're around, drop by and say hi 👋🏻 #changedestiny #skii @skii

A post shared by Sue Lynn Tiong (@bangsarbabe) on Oct 18, 2017 at 9:14pm PDT

4. The Starling Mall

The Starling Mall organised a campaign #mystarlingtrails and to raise awareness about this they engaged with Tzia an influencer with a giveaway.

You've seen me on my trail. Now, it’s time to do your own! Stand a chance to win RM500 worth of prizes by following the exact same trail as me! Here's how: · · Step 1: Follow @thestarlingmall on Instagram Step 2: Choose and save a map. Step 3: Complete at least 3 of the 5 stops on the map and take photos at each. Step 4: Upload your photos as an album and tag @thestarlingmall + hashtag #mystarlingtrails. Then, add the category hashtags: #starlingfamilytrail, #starlingnaturetrail or #starlingwellnesstrail · · For more info follow @thestarlingmall! T&C apply.

A post shared by tziaaa (@tziaaa) on Nov 2, 2017 at 6:45pm PDT

5. Cetaphil Malaysia

Cetaphil Malaysia is raising awareness of their product through the use of influencer marketing. Engaging with Jane Chuck they get reach to 517k+ of her followers and the trust that they have in her recommendations.

Simple cleanse & moisturize will do the job. Cetaphil is one of the safest brand I go to whenever I have skin problems and when I’m unsure with the products that cause it / make it worst. They never fail me for getting a healthy skin 😉 #CetaphilMy #IdealCleansing #MoisturizeMoisturizeMoisturize

A post shared by Jane Chuck (@janechuck) on Oct 25, 2017 at 3:28am PDT

Key takeaways

Don't limit your campaigns to the use of usual advertising channels only. It is one dimensional and does not encourage your fans to respond. Deliver rapport along with your awareness campaign as you will create greater credibility with your following.

Grow your list and boost it with influencer marketing to expand your reach to fans that want to interact and share their experiences with you!

Introducing NEXT Academy's brand new Digital Marketing Quantum Degree. Now open for enrollment. http://nextmy.co/qd-digitalmarketing

A post shared by Next Academy (@nextacademy_) on Apr 28, 2017 at 1:35am PDT

You can learn more about SMS Marketing and how it is a direct channel tool that will help you with your marketing efforts in our blog post here. Also if you're interested to find out more about SMS Marketing and how we can help you, please visit our website for more information.

Read More

The Quick Way to Learn if Your SMS Marketing Campaign Converts

According to the Malaysian Digital Association, Malaysia has 44 million+ mobile subscribers. That's a whopping 1.4x the total population of Malaysia. This is huge for businesses in Malaysia and should be an ideal place to reach and engage with new and existing audiences.

There's an argument though that Facebook is all the hype with 1.28 billion active users every day it seems to be a no brainer for marketers to focus their efforts here.

Hold on right there, that's the total number of active users a day, globally. How does Malaysia fair? According to Facebook themselves as reported by soyacincau.com about 80% of Malaysians that have access to the Internet are on Facebook, that's about 18 million people.

From this perspective SMS Marketing seems to be the more attractive option. However, this article isn't written with the purpose to discuss about the differences between SMS Marketing and Facebook. Rather how to measure whether the campaign you're running through SMS is actually worth it for your business. Let's get right into it.

How do you begin measuring SMS Marketing ROI?

You might be asking, why calculate your SMS ROI?

You need to know which channels are working best for you and how much return you're getting to know where to spend your marketing dollars for your future SMS Campaigns.

Here's an example scenario.

It usually costs your company around RM100 to acquire a customer. You just got to know about SMS Marketing and want to test it out by trying an SMS Marketing campaign to generate new customers with a budget of RM1,000. You run this campaign and notice that it generates you 11 new customers. Was it worth it?

To find out if your campaign is actually worth it or not is pretty simple.

Just follow a simple formula and you're good to go.

Take the amount you spent (cost) and divide it with your returns. From the example scenario above you take the RM1,000 budget that you have as the amount you have spent (cost) and divide it with the number of customers it has brought back in (returns).

11 new customers. That makes for an approximate of RM90 per acquired customer.

Since you know that the typical cost it takes to acquire a customer (RM100) with the new campaign you have decided to run you realise that it only costs you RM90 to acquire a new customer.

Knowing this allows you to understand that you're SMS Marketing Campaign is performing fairly well against the usual customer acquisition cost you have previously been running.


via GIPHY

With this, you should be well on your way to becoming an expert on measuring your customer acquisition costs and using it as a benchmark to tell if your SMS Marketing campaign was actually worth it or not.

If you'd like to discuss more about SMS Marketing and how we can help you with your campaign, do get in touch with us here or if you'd like to learn more about the services we have on offer please visit our website.

Read More