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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Learn The Secret to Unlocking the Content Marketing Treasure-trove

The phrase ‘content is king’ gets thrown around very frequently to highlight how important content is. In my view interactivity plays an important role and should not be discounted from the content creation process.

Interactive content is extremely beneficial for business as it attracts audience, boosts engagement, increases web traffic, and increases conversion rate. Businesses often neglect the importance of the interactive element as they are too driven to produce more content. Producing excessive content will make it seem generic and even make your audience lose interest when you see them swimming off to other competitors that are most focused on content that are engaging.

Think of it this way, if you’re planning to buy something online, what is the first thing you do? You'll want to make sure you check online to read reviews and when convinced you will try your level best to find the best deals you can get in the marketplace. Access to an array of information freely has caused today's consumers to be more savvy when making a purchase with online research taking a foothold in the decision making process before a buying decision is even made. This is different from conventional purchasing habits. However traditional recommendations from high-value connections in your network which consumers view and trust highly still play an integral role in the buying decision too. This is why ever more so you should facilitate a consumer's behavior by servicing their need for information with interactive thoughtful ideas to further enhance their decision to purchase from you.

Interactive content is the fundamentals of lead generation and conversion. It enriches your marketing plan as it elevates it to a different tier that creates an engaging experience for your customers.

Interactive content is different from traditional content as it seeks to engage and entertain its users. The mechanics of the internet and websites have allowed content to exist in different forms that can be presented in various ways.

The few common and effective interactive content are:

i) Infographics

ii) GIFs,

iii) Videos

iv) Podcasts

v) Webinars

The examples above do not represent the boundaries of interactive content. Interactivity should be embodied by creative freedom. Innovative elements with the guide of thought to engage the audience by providing an experience can unlock a lot of potential in the content you produce. Rather than taking the side of the informant, why not gamify, request for an opinion, or start a conversation, because these are some of the building blocks to making highly successful interactive content. Have your audience engage and interact with your content and you would have developed a valuable community that shares and relies on the information you recommend to them, and this can indirectly lead to better sales opportunities and strong positive brand perceptions.

Now, the million dollar question: Why, and how is interactive content beneficial?

Enriches The Appeal Of Your Website

Interactive content contributes heavily to make a website seem well-designed. We cannot deny that humans like to be satisfied visually. We like seeing beautiful things and are always mesmerised by things that are visually stunning. This is why the way a website looks is crucial in attracting and sustaining your audience.

With that being said, the thing that truly engages them is the interactive content you have distributed over your website. Interactive content emphasises more on visual elements, which is much more appealing than normal content. It enhances the overall ‘beauty’ of your website and has a higher chance in making page visitors to explore your website because let’s face it, no one would be interested in navigating through a boring website that is lackluster in its design and content.

Entices Your Audience To Buy

Interactive content grabs an online user’s attention. Furthermore, it’s extremely informative and educative. The interactive mechanism allows users to understand the product more in an innovative way, along with relevant information that drives the users to purchase.

It also important to intelligently incorporate your interactive content with your website’s call-to-action (CTAs) widgets. Delivering content that entices your audience should also be capitalized, build content so that it translates to measurable goals. By incorporating these in your strategy your audience will be more convinced to interact with the product or service in which you have to offer.

Increases Social Sharings & Engagements

When people had hands-on experience on how remarkable your interactive content is, they will surely share it with friends, either by mouth or through social media. Word of your business will reach more people, increasing brand awareness.

Keep up the momentum and provide updates constantly to entertain your audience and keep them on the hook. Utilise social media as a tool to spread the news about your interactive content and get more people to visit it.

Boosts Your Business Revenues

Successfully improving readership and website visits means that there are more people who will mostly likely end up buying your products/services. It exposes your content to more visibility and more people will visit it and experience it themselves. The increase in readers/viewership automatically translate it to higher sales for your business as the chances of people buying your products/services are higher.

Most companies put attracting customers/readers/viewership as their utmost priority because your business needs to get a notable amount of visibility and exposure in order to reach the right people that are interested in your products/services.

Interactive content is the key to acing your content marketing strategy. It drives leads and conversions, which ultimately results in the boost of business revenue. Devise your content marketing plan carefully and be sure to produce interactive content that will lay an impact to your audience.

You can find more information on how you can deploy your interactive content here through EVERWORKS unique mobile distribution gateways.

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5 Tips for Creating The Perfect SMS Marketing Message

Text Message Marketing (SMS Marketing) has only 160-Characters, but can leave a lasting impression on your customers. It is also very personal and care must be taken when crafting a message. This fundamental character limit forces you to make sure that the text message being marketed is clear and simple.

1. Always Deliver Value

This may seem obvious, but with a strong personal attachment to the mobile phone you have to make sure that you have a strong time sensitive offer to give people a strong sense of value. They need to feel that they are getting something that others are not and it was a good decision to give up their mobile phone number. Good SMS content can come from exclusive offers that are different from sending out vague sale alerts resulting in a tendency for the customer to regard it as spam and want to opt-out. This is consistent with the need to be clear and concise. 

2. Speak in Plain Language

Do not type in acronyms. Although it does shorten text messages, but it leaves customers questioning what those acronyms mean. It is better to speak in plain simple language, so that there is clear ability to digest the message with a short glance. This eliminates the need to decipher code and leave an impression that your brand as coming off as "trying to hard".

3. Display Business Name First

Many people neglect this. Often numbers sent out are using automated processes and systems. Put your business name first to remove all doubt. Although, there is a possible way to display a name as a caller ID, but issue arises when the user is actually unable to respond.

4. Add Interactive Call to Action

You can engage a customer by mobile by adding quality call to actions. Discussed here are two primary methods of engaging a user with SMS:

• User reply with a keyword trigger, an auto reply, or forward to an application.
• Add a URL linking to a mobile web page. Google map, mobile video, application download or other rich media. Use a URL Shortener like bit.ly to save on characters and bit.ly has analytics so you can see how many recipients visited the link and with what device.

5. Remind about made opt-in decisions

Customers should be reminded of how they came to be on your list, whether a loyalty program member, previous purchaser or previous competition entrant you shouldn't generate frustration in the user as a perceived spammer.

Find out how you can start your SMS Campaign now here.

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8 Must Know for SMS Marketing

SMS Marketing is the future of marketing. It is simple, 160-Characters, to send out a clear and concise  text message. However, simple as it may seem, there are principles that should be kept in mind when sending out text messages.

SMS marketing is awesome. Great to send out direct marketing, to customers. It is personal and easy to reach customers anywhere, around the clock because of the portability the mobile phone gives to its user. There is also a evidence suggesting that SMS has a much higher engagement rate as compared to email marketing; data shows a 90% read rate within 5 seconds of receipt.

With most marketing tools there are considerations to be put into place. A subtle not explicitly stated rule in most cases that should be followed to ensure that the user's personal privacy has not been violated and the freedom of choice for the user is maintained.

1. Make your SMS Campaign Opt-in

Encourage customers to choose to opt-in rather than blasting them with a surprise message. As highlighted before the mobile phone is an intensely personal device and a message from an unfamiliar number can be intrusive in nature.

2. Offer value

Your message should convey or deliver value and relevance to the target recipient. You can include special offers, coupon codes, an exclusive invitation, or more information regarding the product or assistive information to help buyers make an informed decision.

3. Timing

Do not send out a message in the middle of the night. Consider the obvious rules of courtesy and monitor the behaviors of your target audience. What they might do at a particular time of day. For example: Commuters spend time on the train browsing on their phones, but sports fans might not be too impressed with a message midway through a game. Your message should include, "win __" or "special offer if you show this message to the front desk to get a voucher of 50% on your day's purchase". Alternatively, inform opted-in customers that your company will be sending them a fixed total number of text messages a month and that number so that it is non-invasive manner of approach to their day-to-day use of the mobile phone.

4. Interaction

Always prompt an action (call-to-action). This should be a rule in everything marketing related. Text messaging is very interactive with URLs enjoying a much higher clickthrough compared to links in emails. You can use SMS messages to prompt customers to vote, complete questionnaires or take part in research surveys. These are amongst the few great ways to gain knowledge to help shape future marketing strategies.

5. Correct language.

Regardless of your target audience, your manner of speech should be appropriate. You want to appear professional as well as engaging. Don't fill up your messages with slang-filled conversation "YOLO" or "ROFL" - it just makes customers uncomfortable. Be clear, accurate and polite. That should be more than sufficient.

6. Exploit urgency

Because of the instant nature of text messaging, there is opportunity to make an offer for a "spot" deal to customers. This works as there is no delay like other marketing channels and demands a quick response from customers.

7. Respond quickly

Customers expect quick response, so if interaction has been initiated make sure you confirm their actions immediately. Customer participation can be easily and quickly rewarded if the campaign is tightly integrated across multiple channels.

8. Measure success

Lastly, and most importantly is to check with the performance of your delivered message to the response rate. This helps you to compare and to develop better future campaigns.

Above was the 8 Must Knows for SMS Marketing. You can find out how you can start a campaign now with EVERWORKS' SMS delivery gateway. 

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10 Reasons Why You're Missing Out on Killer Lead Conversions

If you are still unconvinced of how SMS can help enhance your marketing strategy or if you haven't considered integrating SMS into your marketing strategy this blog post is for you. There has been big pull factor especially for Malaysia with a 140% penetration rate in mobile phone usage and with growing uses of SMS in businesses globally SMS might just be the next best thing after PayPal.

Here are 10 advantages of SMS marketing that might just persuade you, that you too should join in on the bandwagon:

1. Quick. Actually Instant.

SMS is lightning fast, sending and receiving messages to your subscribers' hands within a few seconds. The average time for all mobile carriers and SMS services is less than 7 seconds from sending to the receiver. There are other marketing strategies that are fast in their own right, but nothing compares to the swiftness of SMS.

2. Flexible platform

You have flexibility to send a large amount of messages to a targeted group or sends thousands of SMS messages to your entire list. A great SMS marketing service makes it easy to customize your text message campaigns to the needs of your SMS subscribers giving better control and ability to tailor suit messages to individual customers. A short promotional message or a quick industry update, SMS molds itself into whatever needs your business require, easily integrating into your broad or focused marketing strategies.

3. Instant Opt-In and Opt-Out

Short codes allow opting-in and opting-out consistent with the nature of SMS, quick if not instant. Unlike other opt-in or opt-out options, SMS only requires one step, and besides entering a mobile phone number or short code there is rarely any personal information required up front. If speed is what you are looking for subscribers will appreciate the simplicity.

4. High Open Rate

Comparing to email marketing SMS has a high open rate, where almost every SMS sent is opened (and read), whereas only a fraction of emails sent are actually read. There is always a tendency to look when a subscriber gets a vibration or sound signaling a text messages, but subscribers have a choice to not open your email.

5. High conversion rate

with sms there is a high rate of subscriber action. From promotions to contests there is more action compared to any other marketing or promotion strategies.

6. Reliable

Unlike email, SMS doesn't have to battle against spam or other email filters; it is a direct connection to your customer base unlike any other marketing strategy; there isn't any barriers.

7. Short Messages

160-Characters can be a challenge to most businesses, but this limit is good as it forces you to be clear and concise. This allows customers to get to the point immediately without sifting through content that isn't always necessary.

8. Cool factor

A large demographic of consumers have abandoned email and turned to short text messages. This allows small business who are looking for the next innovative solution that is affordable to implement a head start in winning the battle for the next generation of shoppers.

9. Limitless Market Potential

There is a large number of active mobile phones. Since mobile phones are able to receive text messages there is an unlimited potential to tap into this virtually limitless market potential. Mobile phone users represent all demographics - a marketing gold mine.

10. Green

Text messaging doesn't use print material and requires little energy to operate a single message output, suggesting an efficient handling of resources.

The above are the 10 Benefits of SMS Marketing. Looking for ways to implement this start now with EVERWORKS SMS Delivery Service that allows you to send sms to your customers for a competitive price.

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Advantage of SMS Payments

SMS payments are a means of paying for goods, services or products via a text message sent from a mobile phone. This represents a big opportunity for SME businesses in Malaysia to capitalize on a market that is unable to make Internet or credit card related transactions. Opening up a new payment option that could unlock a new market for businesses targeting targeted market segments.

This works just like a standard SMS with the system purchasers sending a text message to pay for a item or service and a clear transaction is created between the purchaser and vendor. The cost of purchase, is added to the monthly phone bill or deducted from a  pre-paid balance by the mobile phone operator allowing for a clear simple method for end-users to monitor their expenses on a single statement. This also mitigates inherent risks of publishing personal credit card or bank details on the Internet.

SMS is quick. In fact it's lightning fast, allowing your messages to be put into your subscribers' pockets or purses in a matter of seconds after you send. This ensures that there isn't any latencies involved. There is also an instant opt-in and opt-out option which is inherent with SMS's quick nature and requires only one step. 

Advantages:

For the customer

1. Quick and easy to use
2. Purchaser does not need to have to enter their credit card or bank details, or even have a bank account.
3. There isn't a need to remember passwords or usernames with payment websites like PayPal.
4. It is more secure, as there isn't a need for the release of personal or account details.

For business

1. Instant access to millions (billions) of mobile phones equipped with SMS facilities worldwide. There is a large penetration rate for mobile phone users in Malaysia, equating to 140%.
2. Access to millions of customers that do not have a bank account or credit card that has prevented them from buying goods and services before.
3. No need to verify customers' identities or worry about chasing payments or cards being denied.
4. All the billing is handled by the mobile phone operator.
5. It is easy and quite often costs little to set up.

Conclusion

Although there is a growth in other forms of payments such as Near Field Communication payment option and payment via web applications, there remains a simple fact that most basic mobile phones are capable of sending and receiving text messages meaning that SMS payments are seen by many in the industry to be a major player in future mobile payments. Start receiving payments through SMS now through EVERWORKS innovative SMS Payment Gateway.

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How to Increase SMS Subscribers at Checkout

One of the best ways to increase SMS Subscribers is through in-store campaigns. Having in-store campaigns are the most logical solution, but there is a big question that remains unsolved; where do we put our in-store campaigns? One suggestion is placing ads on your SMS Marketing campaign at checkout; more specifically on the point of sale system. 

Below is an example of a brand that uses the point-of-sale system to advertise their SMS Campaigns. In general an in-store advertising for SMS campaign generates a 2.3% to 3.2% opt-in rate. This is a fairly good response.

The disadvantage to the example above is the lack of an initial opt-in incentive. Where demonstrated previously can be highly persuasive and customers are willing to give up their handphone numbers for a fixed amount of text advertising per month to benefit from the offered incentive. This is quantifiable when a recent study showed that by offering initial incentives it increased their SMS Subscriber growth at a rate of 520%.

The reason to why customers are not opting-in could be largely due to the lack of incentives you are providing to them. Brands like Julep were able to generate 5,000 new SMS Subscribers within the first 24 hours of launching their SMS campaign, or why Taco Bell gained 15,000 new subscribers in the first five weeks of their campaign were because of incentivized campaigns prompting opt-in.

This can be done by encouraging your customers with a reward, coupon, or deal to join your SMS campaign much like Julep and Taco Bell have done, and you will be able to grow your SMS subscribers at a much faster rate than before.

Ready to start your SMS Marketing Campaign with a proven robust platform that helps to deliver your marketing messages to your customer? Consult an EVERWORKS Expert now.

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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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Alternative Option for SME Growth Driver Diversification

More people today use mobile devices as compared to years before. This has been driven with the sudden drive and demand for greater functional use and portability. This is heavily driven by growing global demand for more flexibility to perform daily tasks. The advancement in technology has made the smartphone indispensable to every modern person's daily life. Diversify your business and develop a unique proposition with proven results that drive greater profitability.

It is important that you look for a SMS Payment Gateway with these features:

1. Unlimited MO and MT. There should be no limitations to the amount of ingoing mobile originated and outgoing mobile terminated traffic providing you with the necessary scalability requirements;
2. SMS Helpdesk support. It is always integral to any operation to have available support to help with any payment-related disputes and management of your managing your sms business's reputation;
3. World-class datacenter with dedicated high speed fiber optic channels to ensure secure connections;
4. Easy API access with an emphasis on a short-integration method;
5. and flexible payment schemes to ensure adequate cash flow management to accommodate different payment terms of differing Telcos.

Small Business Diversification for Growth

Diversification options can be costly for most small businesses and therefore choices are not many but with EVERWORKS SMS Payment Gateway solution it can give small businesses opportunity to diversify with an affordable entry.

Transaction Costs

It is also important to identify with a provider that will not be charging you too high of a transaction costs. You can refer to EVERWORKS SMS Payment Gateway breakdown of revenue sharing here.

How it works

This method of diversification looks at fulfilling the key driver: adaptation as the business seeks to less risky and quicker deployment of an alternative localised internationalisation strategy. This would represent to be a more cost effective solution when compared to other vertical value chain involvements. 

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Mobile Delivery Gateway: Send SMS Guide

Message designed by Joe Harrison from the Noun Project.

As there has been a great frequency of questions from some of our clients, I thought this guide would prove useful for future reference. EVERWORKS delivers an industry leading Mobile Delivery Gateway solution that provides a quick, instantaneous communication method to deliver advertising or marketing information to targeted users (note: content sent to designated recipients has to be compliant with Malaysia's recently announced PDPA 2010; you can read more about the Principles of the PDPA 2010 here.)

To access the Send SMS dashboard, you would have to login to SMS Works, and you would immediately face the Send SMS dashboard as the first landing page (Login > Send SMS).

The content you wish to send to your designated recipient can be added in the Message Text field. Additionally, in the template column, there are choices of pre-designated templates, that you could use to aid your content development.

Important: After inserting your Message Text,  you have to key in according to sequence below:

For instances where you wish to only send via message leave the corresponding entry for the email address blank.

Instead, you could also send via Contact Group.

Once completed you can either send it immediately or a pre-scheduled date.

For more information on if you could change your content after you have set a date you can refer to MCMC Subscription Control FAQ.

If you still face some problems in regards to your access, or technical issues with EVERWORKS Mobile Delivery Gateway, don't hesitate to contact our ever-ready technical team cvs@everworks.com.

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Malaysian 4G Explained: What is LTE?

Like most things new, there have been a recent growth in acceptance across all major carriers in Malaysia touting "the fastest or widest 4G network in the country," but what does all this hype actually mean? What is the difference between 4G LTE and 3G? Which network should I choose for LTE the best LTE Coverage?

What is LTE?

LTE as defined by Wikipedia is an acronym for Long Term Evolution, commonly marketed as 4G LTE, is a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals.

Although the definition has defined LTE fairly accurately, it hasn't given simple minds like mine an easy enough breakdown for me to understand. Here it is, plainly put, LTE is a faster mobile connection, and data terminals. Look at it as the bigger brother of 3G.

For history junkies (also from Wikipedia): The LTE service was first launched publicly by TeliaSonera in Stokholm, and Oslo.

Everyone is going LTE

Today Malaysian carriers advertise their networks as 4G (a few carriers include Digi, Celcom, Maxis, P1 Wimax, Yes 4G, and U Mobile) which confuses a lot of people. 

The most notable change you will experience when switching from a 3G network to a LTE network is a significant speed upgrade. LTE networks are on an average 10x faster than 3G. Websites load faster, in fact almost everything loads much faster.

You can check for a list of LTE Networks here.

Choosing the right network

There are 8 companies in 2013 who have been granted access to the 2600 MHz spectrum band; Digi, Celcom, Maxis, P1 Wimax, U Mobile and Yes. In Malaysia Maxis was the only company to have officially launched 4G LTE smartphone plans.

"Maxis's 4G LTE offers speeds up to 75 Mbps, which is less than the required speed of 100 Mbps for the required 4G LTE speed set by Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). Although Maxis's LTE on average, depending on where you are, offers ranges of 10 Mbps to 30 Mbps remains to be a good speed bump from 3G, it is still lacking from the 100Mbps required speed.

One other popular network provider in Malaysia is, Digi, has been upgrading its network sites in Malaysia to a new network which Digi names 'Tomorrow Network'. With this upgrade Digi aims to cover at least 95.8% of Malaysia to provide High Speed Internet along with a fully equipped LTE network. 

Digi's Tomorrow Network boasts the following benefits:

1. Malaysia's first LTE-equipped network (able to provide fiber like speeds to mobile devices)
2. Expanding High Speed Internet Coverage (EDGE & 3G) to cover 95.8% of Malaysia.
3. More stable network
4. More efficient equipment (green initiative - saves more energy)

Further reading: How LTE affect to Malaysia's mobile content business

EVERWORKS is Malaysia's leading Mobile Hosting Provider, that provides business owners with operator- grade delivery mechanism that connects your SMS content and wireless applications to reach your targeted audiences. 

What are your views on 4G LTE? What is the impact of LTE to Malaysia?

photo by kowitz

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The LTE Game Changer: How LTE affects Malaysia's Mobile Content Business

In December 2012, MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) has announced that eight companies were allowed to access the country's 2600MHz spectrum band for LTE services.

The eight companies were Celcom, DiGi Telecommunications, Maxis Broadband, Packet One Networks, Puncak Semangat, REDtone, U Mobile, and YTL Communications.

Earlier in 2013, we have slowly seen local Telcos rolling out their LTE services with a lot attractive data plan bundled together.

Maxis has launched their high-speed 4G LTE network on 1 January 2013, and (according to Maxis) they are also the first Telco in Malaysia to activate 4G LTE for Apple devices such as iPhone 5, iPad mini and iPad 4, as well as you can see the same thing with other local Telcos like Celcom and DiGi.

Of course, penetration of LTE service has to work closely with phone maker, and this investment can't be a successful if none of their subscribers is upgrading to LTE phone. Hence, you can see how desperately Maxis is pushing their iPhone5 and Samsung 4S package with so much attractive data plan. In fact, I have signed up too with Maxis for their iPhone5 package.


How LTE affect to Malaysia's mobile content business? 

We see this as an advantage to our industry in term of the delivery of mobile content. A solid connectivity between mobile phone and content provider is extremely important once a mobile user has subscribed to their service via SMS short code. 

Today, many Mobile Content Providers (CP) has started shifting their content delivering method from SMS to internet channel (included GPRS, EDGE, 3G, LTE). In early years, when you purchase a mobile content via short code, you will usually receive the purchased content in SMS format, and now (as most of the mobile users have already signed up internet data plan with their operator) you will most likely receive a WAP SMS with a embedded URL. 

With high penetration of mobile internet, Content Provider (CP) has started to change their business model by offering even more bigger size content (such as mobile apps and games). Content providers have already 'think out of the box' with all these available mobile connectivity, and SMS has just act as their micro payment tool in collecting payment from their mobile users. 

Just to share a business case study from EVERWORKS.com, my client was thinking to offer some pre-launch test play for their latest online game and to allow their client to purchase the test play credit online using credit card. The price for each credit is RM5. 

Initially, my client has planned to use credit card payment to sell this credit online.

But to setting up the online payment gateway maybe too time consuming for this short term service, and most of clients may not have credit card yet at their age (age between 16 to 20). So how do EVERWORKS solved for this client?

We at EVERWORKS.com has suggested to use our premium SMS short code (such as 32886, 33886, or 36886 in Malaysia) to sell the game credit. 

But how to incorporate with their online business? In our proposal, we will integrate our SMS gateway with my client's existing servers (server that manage and generate activation code), and pass the activation code to our SMS servers.

So, if anyone request the test play credit in their website, the website will instruct the users to purchase it by sending in a SMS command such as GAME 1 to 32886. Our gateway will then reply the mobile user the activation code via SMS, and charge the RM5. User can key in the activation code on the web page to continue their game. 

4G LTE is growing very fast ......  From the recent report by research firm, Wireless Intelligence has revealed that there are now 100 million 4G LTE connections across the globe. According to the research specialist, there are now 163 LTE networks operating in 70 countries.

Furthermore, these figures are expected to increase to more than 400 networks in 120 countries by the end of 2017. Operators in countries such as Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea and the US have so far been principle drivers of this industry growth, with 90% of the international LTE connections market.

“Around 100 LTE networks have launched last year globally and as many are expected to launch this year,” said Joss Gillet, senior analyst at Wireless Intelligence.

Gillet also predicts that there will be in excess of 900 million LTE connections globally by December 2017, reaching one billion in the first half of 2018.

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Report: 69% of Plan Passenger Use Smartphone or Tablet During Flights

APEX (The Airline Passenger Experience Association) and CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) has recently join conducted an interesting survey on American airline passenger, and they found out that 69% of them will use their personal electronic devices such smartphone or tablet – during flights.

Doug Johnson, VP of technology policy at CEA, said: "Airline passengers have come to rely on their smartphones, tablets and e-Readers as essential travel companions. Understanding the attitudes and behaviors of passengers that are using electronic devices while traveling will help the FAA make informed decisions." Four in ten passengers (40%) would like to use their devices during all phases of flight, including take-off and landing. With 28%, smartphones are the most commonly used devices during flights, followed by laptops on 25%, tablets on 23%, MP3 players on 23% and e-readers on 13%. 

Meanwhile, we also found out another interest figure on their survey, that 59% of passengers will always turn their devices completely off when requested, 21% of passenger will switch their devices to 'Flight Mode' or 'Plane Mode', while 5% of them will just turn their devices completely off the entire journey. 

As we know this report is being conducted to understand the attitudes and behaviors of American passengers, but I think many Asia or even Malaysian passengers will have the similar attitudes like what stated in this report. Meanwhile, the steady growth of budget airlines (or no-frills airline) in Asia market such as AirAsia.com, has changed the attitudes and behaviors of Asia passengers during their flights. Most of the passenger will actually their own devices such smartphone or tablet – during flights.

After reviewed on this report, we at EVERWORKS.com are strongly believe that mobile content business will be a next biggest business in Asia market. Hence, hosting of mobile content will definitely play an very important role in making sure all these mobile contents are delivering to mobile devices with good and stable connection. EVERWORKS.com’s Colocation facility gives you more than just state-of-the art security and fail-safe provisions – we give you the direct connection to one of the Asia’s largest, next-generation fiber-optic networks. 

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