The SMS Gateway & Facebook: Get More Opt-in Fans! Part 1

Use social media to get fans to opt-in on your text campaigns – you’ll be sending more texts through the SMS gateway, but you’ll have more people paying attention to what you say!

Facebook, Twitter and so many other social networking and micro-blogging platforms have made an impact on our daily lives, not to mention the lives of those people who invest in our businesses. And if you take a look at related literature available on the internet these days, it’s all about giving consumers what they want at a location (be it virtual) closest to them. Combining the SMS gateway and Facebook isn’t difficult and could have quite a significant impact on your business.

Getting Started: The Static FBML Opt-in Form

The only two requirements you have to fulfill to get started are:

1. You need a Facebook account
2. You need a ‘Page’ set up for your business in Facebook.

If you don’t have a page set up yet, you can do so by visiting this Facebook page. Once you’ve got your Facebook page created, you need to search for the Static FBML application, and add it to your page (click on ‘Add to my page’ on the left and select your page). That being done, we can now go ahead with the creation of a very simple form that you’ll be able to use to collect fan names and numbers. This form will be similar than the one created in How to Create Your Own Bulk SMS Interface, but with a few changes that will allow efficient future communication through the SMS gateway.

Let’s start with the form code:

<b>Get discounts and information regarding our specials before anyone else!</b></p><h6>
Sign up for XYZ Antiques and Stationary mobile alerts today!</h6>

<form method="post" action="http://www.clickatell.com/form_arbeit.php">

<table>

<tr>

<td>Please enter your name:</td><td> <input name="name"></td></tr>

<td>Please enter your number:</td><td> <input number="number"></td></tr>

<tr><td><input type="submit" value="Submit"></td></tr>

</table>

</form>

The Form Explained

As you can see, there’s nothing special about this form – it’s pretty straight forward HTML that requests a visitor’s name and number. Here are the two aspects of this form you should take note of:

1. We’ve defined form_arbeit.php in the ‘action’ tag – this is the page that will not only send users an opt-in confirmation text message via the SMS gateway, but also store their details in a MySQL database.
2. At the top you’ll note that we’re informing them what they are signing up for; it is especially important to ensure that you have all the legalities in place when creating your opt-in form.

Your Opt-in Box

On your Facebook homepage you’ll see that there’s a link called ‘Ads and Pages’ on the left. When you click on that link, you’ll be given a list of options, under which you’ll see Static FBML. Click on edit and create a new ‘box’ using a title of your choice and your code. Once you’re done, it should look something like this:

Of course, the one above is very basic and can, and should, be enhanced to fit the image of your business with all the appropriate information (regarding legalities, etc.) inserted into the right places. It is equally important to ensure that you have all the fields necessary that you want your Facebook fans to complete. This could be limited to the data necessary for SMS gateway text messaging purposes only, or a bit more to help you with future marketing endeavors.

And this concludes the first part of this two-post series. Next week’s post will look at form_arbeit.php and how it can be used to send an opt-in confirmation SMS to the user through the SMS gateway (using a suitable API) after he or she has entered their details, and at a possible way to enter the supplied details into a MySQL database.

In the mean time, read more about custom SMS solutions by visiting our SMS Gateway page.

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