Let Your Business Live This Spring: Only with Bulk SMS

Use bulk SMS this spring to help thaw away the winter blues. With an interface available to suit any business, you can get in touch with your customers and make your sales blossom.

The seasons are about to change and for a large part of the country it will mean a return to better weather and smiles all around. This year, however, could be different: as a result of the lengthy and rather extreme weather, the average consumer will be looking forward to the coming spring, which means that it is now the time to get your business bulk SMS-enabled and get the info about your spring specials out there.

Why Bulk SMS?

There are a number of distinct advantages to using bulk SMS to get in touch with both current and prospective customers. These include:

• The mobile phone is almost always carried, and always on. This means you’ll be able to reach individuals wherever they are, be it out on lunch or, perhaps even better, while they’re out shopping.
• SMS messages are often read as soon as they are received. Compare this to email, which in many cases can wait in the inbox until the next morning or, when it’s Friday, until Monday morning.
• The mobile phone is a personalized medium. Nay, it’s an extension of the person. In fact, it is perhaps the only device that we customize to the last detail, which means there is a type of connection between the device and the person that makes it receive more attention than most other devices in our daily lives.

Taking the above into account, it becomes obvious that bulk SMS is the ideal way to communicate with your target market above the more conventional methods, such as print, email or even web (but it doesn’t mean that SMS can’t be used in conjunction with the aforementioned).

What You can do with SMS this Spring

One of the main benefits of bulk SMS is that it is almost instantaneous delivery, which means that your contact will be able to see what you have to offer right after you sent it. But what do you have to offer? Here are a couple of ideas of what you can do this spring:

1. Provide value-added services: “Weather around Joe’s Pizza Bar: 71°F with clear skies. Perfect weather for pizza!”
2. Give Discounts: “Beat the winter blues with 25% off on all orders! Only on Wednesdays and only @ Joe’s Pizza Bar!”
3. Freebies: “Buy 1 get 1 free between 6PM & 7PM today only! Only @ Joe’s Pizza Bar”
4. Competitions:  “Text to win” competitions are almost just as effective as incentives to help you get contacts on your bulk SMS distribution lists.

Can you think of anything else? Although the above have proven to be popular recipes for success for many businesses in just about every industry, there are in fact countless ways to promote your business this spring and it only relies on your own creativity.

How to get Your Opt-ins

As with the amount of things that can be done with bulk SMS, the number of ways you can get opt-ins on your contact list once again only depends on your creativity. But, keep in mind that there exist a number of regulations regarding the sending of SMS messages in the U.S.A – it will be in your best interests to stick to these regulations.  Once you’ve gone through the regulations, then feel free to use any of the below ideas to get current and potential customers to sign up, or simply use your own creativity:

• Online: Provide your users with the option to opt-in to your contact list on your website so that they’ll be able to receive information on future specials and giveaways on their mobile phones.
• Print: Distributing flyers? Perhaps business cards? Or maybe you’re advertising in the newspaper? Whatever you’re doing, it could be in your best interest to provide your opt-in number to “Receive information about future specials and giveaways, only available via SMS”.
• Noticeboards: If you’ve got a little space in your establishment, hang a noticeboard displaying the availability of your bulk SMS information service through which anyone will be able to receive information on specials and giveaways.

If you need any more ideas on how to get opt-ins or what you can do with bulk SMS this spring, download the 101 Business Uses for SMS.

Getting Started with Bulk SMS

One of the most common misconceptions regarding bulk SMS is that it is a communications solution for the corporates and other big players. The truth, however, is a little different: it’s a solution available to anyone who needs an effective way to communicate with their target audience. If that’s you, then you’ll be able to use any of the methods below to start sending out those bulk SMS messages and energize your sales:

Small to medium-sized businesses: How you send out your bulk SMS messages depends entirely on how many contacts you have. For those who don’t have thousands upon thousands of contacts and would like an easy way of implementing SMS, then a web-based or desktop application can be just the thing to suit your needs.

Medium to large businesses: Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) are most suited to those businesses who have their own development teams. These API’s exist in some of the most popular protocols and programming languages to allow for ease of implementation. Use this option if you want to seamlessly integrate bulk SMS into your current software infrastructure.

If you want to know more about marketing through the mobile phone, just follow the link to the bulk SMS page.

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Tags: bulk SMS, bulk SMS sales, SMS application, sms campaigns, SMS interface, SMS marketing, SMS opt-in