Industry Secrets Revealed: Mobile Originated vs Mobile Terminated

MO and MT are frequent terms that you may come across when dealing with EVERWORKS SMS Delivery Gateway. These two jargon terms sound complicated when they really are not! MO standards for Mobile Originated are messages 'originating' from the user's mobile phone. Where as Mobile Terminated which means messages get terminated on the phone. 

MO and MT are frequent terms used by mobile marketing and sms service providers to identify the different requirements and function of each point of action. Think of it simply as a flow chart where there is a point of inquiry and there is a final response.

Firstly, MO simply means user-initiated response from his/her own mobile phone. They usually send in a text word(s) which form the keyword so that the system can identify and respond to the inquiry. This keyword is only just a command instruction partnered with a short-code to help the server respond with to display the information requested for. 

For example: "mobile" is the keyword sent to the short-code "33886" would query a response from the server to sent information relevant to both the "mobile" keyword and short-code "33886".

Secondly, MT simply means the point where after receiving instruction from the MO will display the relevant information for the inquirer.

The command received from the MO's earlier keyword and short-code would generate a response from the server, which would be terminated on the user's mobile phone (terminated messages does not imply messages that stop an action, but instead it means the final point of destination the message is intended to reach). 

For example: after a user has sent an MO containing both the keyword "mobile" and the short-code "333-888" the server would respond to send "sms delivery gateway services special offer 40% discount for bulk orders over RM xx", representing the MT displayed on the user's mobile phone.

With a 140% mobile phone penetration rate in Malaysia there is ever growing opportunity to reach new customers, existing customers, or respond interactively with field employees and more (Source: eCommerce Milo).

Multiple uses of mobile marketing can be employed to generate a user response and initiate pre-sales and post-sales customer service and provide a response to a potential customer demand. 

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5 Rules to Make a Smashing Small Business Press Release

Content is hard to conceive and it is very common to have writer’s block. With all the new in the world, such as social, listacles, and more.

Sometimes going old school can be a good thing. However, the when it comes to your small business public relations strategy, and the traditional press release is advantageous for your business and brand.

Back in the day, news was only delivered through the early morning newspaper. Fast forward today, the vast majority of people obtain their news either through a Twitter headline, what’s trending on Instagram, or what is being shared on Facebook.

What Is a Press Release / News Release?

A Press Release helps to build meaningful news that can help your small business stand out in Malaysia and build confidence of your customers over time.

A press release is an official announcement (written or recorded) that an organization issues to the news media and beyond.

Whether it’s called a "press release," a "press statement," a "news release," or a "media release," we're always talking about the same basic thing.

While the heading should contain action verbs, the first paragraph should answer the "who," "what," "why," and "where." The press release should also contain understandable language and a quote.

Most press releases are short at just a page long -- two pages, at its maximum. 

The goal is for your small business to ultimately, provide enough information that news outlets or any reader have sufficient material to gather information about your activities for publishing.

It may be tempting to craft a press release tht twists the facts, but remember this is a piece of information that is published to the public domain live for others to see. As it would be positive for your small business, but on the flipside it could also be detrimental.

So instead of taking the press release as a way to earn short-term news coverage, think of it as a long term marketing strategy for your Malaysian small business.

Rule 1: Make your headline irresistible.

Just like writing any article the title, sets up your press release for success. It can’t be stressed that starting with a great headline, is extremely important.

Although this seems like a daunting task, but consider the diction carefully, and you would be creating a highly captivating headline.

Use action verbs, clear, understandable language, and keep your headline simple and short -- fortune (and search engines) reward the brief, so keep your title to one line to clearly focus people's attention on your topline message.

Most importantly, make it interesting: Keep in mind that reporters get dozens, if not hundreds, of releases each day, so invest the time to write a compelling headline. It's worth the time and effort on your part.

Rule 2: Convey the value.

For anyone reading to be inclined to share your announcement, you have to tell them upfront why they should care.

The first paragraph of your release should cover the who, what, why, where, and how of your new launch, update, or development. People don't have time to sift through details and fluffy background information.

There shouldn't be any new, crucial information covered after this section that the reader could potentially miss.

Rule 3: Offer a tempting quote.

It's time to bring your details to life with a quote that reporters can use for context around your announcement and help paint a picture of how your news effect.

Ideally, quotes will be from key stakeholders in your company including your executive team, project leads, or those directly impacted by your announcement.

Quoting key figures and authorities underlines the importance of your development. The chosen quote should shape your narrative and emphasize the core of the announcement.

Rule 4: Provide valuable background information

In this last paragraph, keep in mind that the reader already has all of the important information.

It can be tempting to provide superfluous facts and tidbits about your company or the development of your announcement.

Offer details here that strengthen your narrative, like creative or noteworthy ways your company developed the project or announcement at hand.

Rule 5: Summarize the "who" and the "what" in a boilerplate.

Make your press release incredibly easy to reference.

Describe what your company does in clear, plain English, include a link to your company's homepage early on, and make your boilerplate succinct and straightforward.

To keep yourself honest, ask a friend or colleague to read the press release without context and ask if they can easily and readily explain why the announcement matters.

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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.

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Is Viral Marketing the New Money Tree? (Lessons to Learn From Kony 2012)

The Internet Joins The Advertising Industry 

Ever since the emergence of the online media, the advertising industry has went through a huge revolution.

What used to be only found in newspapers, television, radio, billboards, etc, also exist in the online media now; which can be stored permanently and accessed anytime.

Majority of the people worldwide spends more of their time on the online media than any other traditional media. The online media is evolving rapidly and turning into the media that most people depend on the most these days. 

In recent years, social networking sites are trending worldwide and have managed to attract millions of users globally.

This phenomenon has caused big organisations and advertisers to target the online media, especially social networking sites to be a great platform to reach out to a large number of individuals or the intended demographics. 

The ‘Viral’ Phenomenon in Online Media 

‘Viral’ is a term constantly used to describe any form of work, production, or information that is being circulated rapidly, mainly in the internet. The term ‘viral’ was derived from the term ‘virus’, describing an effect of spreading rapidly and widely like a virus. 

Among the things that go viral in the internet, videos go viral most frequently. Ever since Youtube, a video-sharing website, was created in 2005, users are able to watch all types of videos from it and are even able to upload their own recordings and productions on Youtube.

With simple and convenient functions such as the search bar and the ‘trending videos’ section, users are able to search for videos they want to watch easily and can even watch what is trending at the moment. Furthermore, the emergence of social networking sites allow users to share these videos easily on popular social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and such.

This is where the ‘viral’ phenomenon kicks in. The videos are shared to all of their friends and connections in social networking sites. Then, the people who see it and also find it interesting might also share the video again to their own circle of friends and community. The cycle goes on and on and this is how the ‘viral’ phenomenon take place and functions. 

To make something go viral, it is essential for the content to be attention grabbing. It could be something interesting, controversial, offensive, shocking, or any other creative elements that can garner attention regardless of it being in the form of images, videos or whatsoever.

The mission here is to create something that will entice users to share it to their group of social circle, with the ultimate goal to make it circulate around the internet. 

KONY 2012 – Most Viral Video in 2012 

On 5th of March 2012, a short film called KONY 2012 was uploaded onto Youtube. It is produced by Invisible Children, Inc., an organization that aims to create awareness among the public globally to stop the Lord’s Resistance Army and its leader, Joseph Kony.

The video introduces Joseph Kony to the viewers, providing details and provoking viewers to support the organization in their actions of appealing to the officials to take the issue more heavily and deploy more troops to arrest Joseph Kony. KONY 2012 achieved more than 32 million views within its first week, and has more than 100 million views currently.

The video has been massively spread and circulated in the internet due to the use of the few major social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

The success of it was mainly due to the excellent videography and scriptwriting techniques that were employed in producing the video, accompanied with a strong emotional touch that touches the viewers. Users were sharing the video with their own input of opinions, expressing how it touches them and convince others to watch it as well. 

Why Viral Marketing? 

As of now, the public is even harder to please than ever. Therefore, companies must constantly come out with creative ideas to get the public’s attention.

Viral marketing does so and the circulation effect it achieves is astonishing. With that being said, viral content is not something that is easily created.

A huge amount of ideas and effort is needed in order to create something that relates to the public; something so good that when an individual sees it, he/she couldn’t resist to share it. 

Viral marketing is so successful because the content is extremely engaging and people are far more open to recommendations and testimonials from their friends compared to that of the media.

They are slightly more skeptical towards advertisements found in the media as they know organisations paid large sum of money to the media to broadcast their advertisements; while they are more likely to believe information provided from a personal source that they trust. 

As the world slowly evolves and improves, it is necessary for us to keep up with its pace and be up to date in recognising the social phenomenon.

It is undeniable that viral marketing is a great marketing and advertising tool for companies to get their message across as well as achieving brand recognition; but what makes it so special is that it also prompts the public to insert their own input into it while sharing it online, encouraging them to speak their mind and inspire them to invoke the creative and innovative potential within them.

Alternative Marketing with a 100% Delivery statistic

Consider mobile advertising done right with SMS. There is no limitation of connectivity or problems with compatibility. Reach every customer within your database to inform, educate, or to advertise your new product or service.

This method very much like social media is competitively cheaper when compared to billboard, and traditional media advertising.

Within the strategy of viral marketing impose reminders to your customers to have exposure to more than just social media channels but also through mobile channels.

Mobile is huge with penetration within Malaysia alone to be over 140%. Take on this new strategy for added growth now.

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4 Marketing Strategies to Engage Generation Z

Marketing trends are cyclical, rotating around generations in a different social upbringing. Marketing strategies that target Baby Boomers, Generation X and Y, and the Millennials is something of the past with a new generation coming forth, Generation Z.

This generation is exposed to the Internet from a young age. Technology and social media is the norm for communication with family, friends, purchases, their workplace, etc.

Internet is no longer a shiny new toy, it is a necessity that every business should be on immediately. Generation Z is the modern day consumer, with the Internet widespread in a variety of industries and impacting everyday tasks and needs.

Businesses should start to put effort in understand the behavioral patterns of Generation Z.

Children are big influencers. Ask parents and most will tell you their purchasing behavior is strongly influenced by their children. That goes without saying that the purchasing power of this new generation is approximately $44 billion.

Generation Z consumers are different from other groups. Companies must deliberately craft information that target and engage them through the appropriate channels.

Targeting and engaging Generation Z:

1. Visuals

In our experience video is the number 1 engagement media for Generation Z, with pictures coming second and words being the least effective. Modern consumers want to instantly consume and access information conveniently quick. Being conveniently quick means adoption of marketing content that must cater to mobile. Mobile adoption rates in the smartphone categories have been changing the global marketplace and your business should implement this right from the get-go.

Just to name a few; Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest have a lasting popularity because the platform allows Generation Z to consume quickly, share with the social circles that matter to them, and rely on information that trusted influencers recommend conveniently.

Conversations are changing. Short video messages, photos embedded with text allows Generation Z to share their life experiences with rich depth compared to describing their experiences through text.

2. Clear & Concise

Research shows that the attention span of Generation Z is approximately 8 seconds. The blame for this shocking revelation should be on the existence of smartphones and their ‘scrolling’ nature. All of the social media apps or mobile web pages exist in a scrolling form. Scrolling is extremely convenient, in fact, it is too convenient. It causes them to just scroll through or swipe away if they’re not interested in a particular post at first glance. This is why brands’ content posted on social media need to be able to grab their attention instantly to avoid being scrolled through and ignored.

Messages need to be bite-sized: short, simple, and direct. Keep this in mind, ‘less is more’.

Keep your message on point like how a drag queen’s makeup is always on point.

3. Word-of-Mouth

As permanent tenants in social media, Generation Z has been groomed to enjoy sharing in social media. They can’t be fooled easily by marketing schemes and will only share things that they find interesting or genuine. Therefore, your content needs to be authentic.

Incorporating influencers into your marketing strategy is an excellent way to achieve this. Generation Z tend to look up on opinions from a third party to obtain a non-biased opinion. Hearing it from a social media influencer which happens to be an expert in a particular field will definitely convince them into believe in your brand.

Furthermore, testimonials, reviews, and postings from people who’ve really tried it is important as well. Use your customers to convince your customers to trust your brand.

4. Locate Them & Go To Them

Put effort in finding out which social network is the widely used by Generation Z. While Facebook holds the record for the most amount of users among all social networking sites/apps, it is unlikely that you’ll reach a huge amount of Generation Z users in Facebook. Research has shown that Facebook is populated by mostly adults, while Generation Z regards Facebook as less interesting and is constantly looking to be entertained by new alternatives. New social networking platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and etc are more preferred by Generation Z as its mechanics and nature differs greatly from Facebook and offers a more innovative way to communicate with each other.

Understand these trends and factors to reach and engage them successfully. Most brands make the mistake of thinking that targeting 10 year olds are a waste of time, effort and money. This is by far the worst mistake they’ll ever make because these Post-Millennials are forming perceptions towards brands since an early age. They play a huge part in their parent’s buying decisions and has huge potential in turning into your loyal customers in the future. It is definitely a long run investment that benefits your business greatly in the future.

Find out more on how your business can focus on crafting marketing strategy to engage Generation Z while having peace of mind of having technical infrastructure being taken care of here.

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3 Magic Tips to Increase Your Marketing ROI

Data is everywhere. Everything from social media followers, to unique visitors through ppc, or organic visitors generated through SEO. It can be overwhelming, but don't get confused about how marketing analytics relates to ROI. All you need to do is set a clear, short and long-term objectives to surely start the beginning of profit improvement and well planned resource allocation.

Often ROI underperforms due to distractions in the expected performance. The solution? Recognize the distractions and execute differently.

1. Start by Planning

Plan for ROI. Value exists in quantifying the expected outcomes from the marketing activities you are about to enter into. Learn what to measure, when to measure, and how to measure them so that your marketing investments make quantifiable logic. In order to achieve your goals, make sure you establish specific steps to ensure that the processes that you are embarking on has clarity wrapped around the actions you are going to take.

There is a great desire for every campaign to be measured but only very few are able to effectively evaluate the ROI of each channel employed, and only half are using web analytics tools to measure marketing campaign effectively.

Start by creating an initial outline. Look at historical data (if none, don't fret just start) and notice if there are any trends that work parallel with campaigns carried out or outliers that occur when no marketing activity has been carried out. Make sure there is an implementation plan to install analytics into your existing plan. Without it you will have no capability to measure the results of your campaigns effectively.

Once you have both your initial outline and web analytics implementation plan in place you should come to realize that measuring ROI is a lot easier when you have a good plan in place. Preparing this has benefits as it relates to senior management in terms of marketing dollars and gives them a good expectation based on the objectives you have outlined allowing them to identify the anticipated ROI.

Make sure you keep in mind to:

1. Align your marketing plans and analytics with financial goals your organization has.
2. Use predictive modeling in the analysis of your marketing data.
3. Make sure to capture customer engagement data from social feeds to show positive conversions.

2. Don't use vanity measures

Distractions are always nice to have, but you shouldn't tempt yourself with them. Followers, likes and number of shares gives good bragging rights but they do not correlate to conversions or revenues. You should focus on metrics that convert. This in turn equates to ROI. Use metrics like lifetime value, blog shares, cost per acquisition, engagement, and number of active users. 

Mentioned before there is a wealth of data available but it is important that you collect the right data. This saves you time and allows you to make better decisions. This helps you to: 

1. create better customized reports with the data that matters to your company, 
2. consistently track your customers behavior, 
3. and analyze the performance of your marketing campaigns with better accuracy.

3. Sales

Your customers aren't like before, customers today are informed buyers. They make purchases based on blogs, reviews and social networks. Good news. Now with the efforts above you should be able to gain a wealth of information on your customers' behaviors. There is a value to knowing that information but your team and senior management can't relate. Why? Simple, because all that data isn't in the form of revenue.

Bring it all back to where we started. Get your team and senior management on the bandwagon. Your marketing campaigns that produce quantifiable ROI should suggest that everyone should focus on how marketing impacts sales not spend that is not measurable in terms of revenue.

Use data to increase sales by:

1. Use analytics
2. Understanding the journey of the customer
3. Creating a ROI discussion throughout the organization not just marketing and sales.

Data is really important to organizations today. Focus on your marketing ROI and don't let pesky technological infrastructure bog you down. Find out how - click here.

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