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Time for a new year and time to set new goals for yourself. Time to celebrate!
Unless, of course, you’re someone who routinely seems to break their resolutions by Valentine’s Day. And that’s OK – you’re definitely in good company.
But even though your personal goals may sometimes crash and burn (less food and more exercise, yeah right! Not THIS year), it may be easier to focus on your professional goals. Save more money, make more sales, do better mobile sms marketing – now you’re talking!
Actually, Allan Hirsh from the Baltimore Business Journal, said even these goals may be too vague and have fairly sizeable odds of failing. Instead, he suggests that making sure your goals are SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, responsible and having a time for completion – can go a long way in making your goals are able to be accomplished rather than abandoned.
This philosophy is good to keep in mind when planning your company’s mobile strategy for 2016 and beyond. You know that more and more people are using their mobile devices, and that texting is becoming a more acceptable way of interaction for individuals and companies. So how can you leverage these facts into memorable mobile sms marketing?
- Increase the size of your subscriber list. Make sure every contact you have with customers and clients includes the opportunity to sign up for messages via text. It could include a link on your web site that automatically adds people to the list; a line at the end, or other places, within your email newsletters; regular social media posts; and other company information and marketing materials. No matter how creative and engaging your messages are, people won’t know about them until they give you that opt-in.
- Work on shorter messages. You have 160 characters in a typical text but you don’t have to use them all. And you really shouldn’t. All you really need for a basic message is a short, hopefully personalized greeting; an exciting offer, and a link people can use to go somewhere else to learn more info. This could be a landing page or somewhere on your site that provides more details of whatever you’re discussing or promoting. One of your goals for 2016 can be to cut down the average message length by at least 20 characters and see if this is more or less effective as far as sales or even click-thrus when compared to other year’s numbers.
- Start a VIP club. If you’ve been considering doing this, or some of your fans have been asking for more offers or discounts, this could be the time to create an exclusive area which people can register to join. You can reward the extra effort of signing up with things like coupons, special sales or other discounts. This could even create an extra segment for your texting audience – while your general supporters may receive one text from you a week, your more loyal fans might enjoy getting two every week, especially if there are some exclusive deals and info in each one.
- Look into short codes. A short code is a short string of numbers which your users can text back to you and can indicate a particular preference or even a vote. Some companies may give one code for Choice A, or other codes for Choice B, and so on. If you have a large budget for your mobile sms marketing, you can pick the numbers which are leased for a certain amount of time. Perhaps they can be something easy to remember or numbers that are associated with your organization. Or if you have a smaller budget, numbers will be assigned to you, but you can also ask people to text a certain keyword when they submit the code. Codes can be used to get your customer base involved in larger and smaller events, which could be everything from choosing a new logo to general feedback on a particular promotion.
- Make everything more secure. You may require users to have a user ID and a password to access your site. But two-factor authentication can require one more security step to make sure that correct people are accessing your info. Conveniently, one popular method of verifying is to text the person a short string of numbers. Then they can use this unique number when they log in or create their password. Alternate authentications can include answering a question, such as a childhood memory that impostors shouldn’t know.
How you fare at these resolutions is up to you and your company’s priorities and resources. Or, if you’ve accomplished some of these items in 2015, that’s OK too – simply move down the list, since there are plenty of smart strategies involving text messaging. For more suggestions visit Trumpia.com.
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