Bulk Text Messages: A Valuable Small Business Tool – 1
Bulk text messages offer extensive options to U.S. small businesses – whether you use them to extend the reach of your brand, increase your sales or to start a completely new mobile venture. Big businesses, including corporate giants such as Target, Sears and Wal-Mart, have all embraced the affordable and ubiquitous medium of mobile phones and bulk text messages to great effect. This is the first in a series of posts that look at why and how U.S. small enterprises should be using bulk text messages.
Recent reports show that advertising on mobile phones is becoming an increasingly mainstream phenomenon. Of the 33% of Americans, who received advertising via bulk text messages on their mobile phones, one third said that they had responded in some way, by either texting back or calling a toll-free number that had been included in the message. And one in seven bought a product or visited a store as a result of seeing a mobile advertisement.
Bulk text messages offer a quick, easy and very effective way to generate profit and reduce operational costs. This is largely because bulk text message data can be transmitted at a fraction of the cost of voice calls, and SMS gateway providers are able to buy message credits in bulk from mobile network operators and pass this saving directly onto you – enabling you to send hundreds, thousands or millions of messages at a time affordably. Moreover, bulk text messages can work as a sales and marketing tool by facilitating the instantaneous flow of information to large, diverse groups of people, regardless of their location.
There are an estimated 3.4 billion mobile phone subscribers in the world – making the mobile phone the ubiquitous personal communication device of choice – and unlike television, the Internet or print adverts, the mobile phone is almost always kept close at hand and is nearly always on. Because consumers will have opted-in to receive your bulk text messages (see more about this in the next post on the pitfalls and potential uses of bulk text messages), they are far more likely to read your message and respond to it, making this a far more immediate and targeted marketing device than email.
There is no need to lose the personal touch when using bulk text messages, as they can be personalized with names, dates and other defining characteristics. Any small business utilizing bulk text messages to reach its target market will benefit from the immediacy and affordability of the message, as well as experiencing high recipient response rates due to the ‘spot relevance’
‘Spot relevance’ refers to the fact that businesses can send the right marketing content to the right person at the right time in the right location using bulk text messages. Engaging with the customer by providing the desired information or solution at the right time will result in increased sales.
Bulk text messages can be received by any mobile phone in the world, as long as there is mobile coverage. Text messaging is in common use, understood and trusted by consumers all over the world. Most importantly, for small businesses wanting to enter the sphere of mobile commerce, payment systems are already built into the phone with the SIM card. Customers are used to paying for their airtime either via contract or pre-paid – this makes billing and collection of money simple. Customers have the added benefit of easily being able to cancel their SIM card in the case of theft.
Next week, we look at ways in which bulk text messages can be used in U.S. businesses to generate revenue, cut operational costs and extend the reach of your small business brand – stay posted…
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