Monday, April 8, 2013

Mobile marketing on the rise and infographic mania!

Text usage and engagement is preferred and on the rise! 2013 is shaping up to be another excellent year to actively utilize mobile marketing. Business owners must be involved in the marketing process and actively seek out as many different advertising channels as possible to implement their mobile marketing component.  Mobile marketing is the perfect compliment to other forms of traditional advertising, turning an otherwise static ad into a dynamic ad by introducing the ability for consumers to interact with your brand via your text component.


Infographic Mania below!


The survey found that 26% of consumers that have received SMS promotions have attributed their in-store purchase back to the SMS promotion.

 When it comes to mobile offers in America, consumers overwhelmingly
prefer to receive those mobile offers via text message.


Your #1 opportunity for communication with customers?




Infonetics Research says that, despite the growth of the mobile Internet, SMS will remain a priority and popular communication mode for the next 4 years, for both personal and commercial use. And accordingly, SMS marketing will continue to take a leadership position, surpassing even the IM (Instant Messages).
According to Forrester Research, Inc. the advertisers will spend more than $ 8 billion on mobile marketing in 2016, up 38% over current spending, and the total revenue for SMS providers for the period of 2012-2016 will reach $ 1 trillion.
The number of mobile subscribers is expected to increase during the next 4 years – from 6 billion to 7 billion. The popularity and active spreading of smartphones will contribute the increasing of users who can access the Internet from their mobile devices. The high progress is predicted for online messengers and instant messaging via mobile Internet.
Read more information on the SMS marketing forecast for the years 2012-2016 in the infographics below.










Monday, February 4, 2013

Success!

What's the goal?

         Our main goal is to identify and engage customers with personality and value to increase their purchase frequency. There are obstacles and opportunities that we both partner together to overcome and capitalize on. We want nothing more than to see you successful in your mobile marketing efforts because our success depends on your success. This blog post will focus on several things that can help increase that success rate.

Where the rubber meets the road...

          This is it. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where we kick it into high gear and MAKE success happen. Of course, the devil is in the details, so let's discuss a few of those details. Believe it or not, some of the simplest things can drastically affect our chances at a successful campaign. For instance, having a good steady wifi connection for your touch screen kiosk is of the utmost importance. If it's not connected we can't identify which customers are players. The connectivity of that kiosk to a solid wifi signal can affect our analytic reports which in turn affect how we can  learn to better engage your customers.

A properly trained staff. We can assist with this. We can train them about the program, how it works, and what to say to get customers to join, but consistency will be key. Every customer should be made aware of your Loyalty Rewards Program and encouraged to sign up or check in on the kiosk. Without the staff's assistance your program might not perform at the level that it could.

The kiosk is constantly working on your behalf. Continually gathering data and compiling that data into insightful analytic reports for us. It's always keeping track of each of your customer's check-ins, rewards earned, rewards redeemed, sending inactive customer offers to get them back into your doors, and even funneling traffic to your Facebook page. It never asks for a break or a vacation day. The least we can do for this hard worker is supply it with a great wifi connection and have our staff direct the customers to it, don't you think?

The Tool Box

        For some of our existing customers it may have been a while since you last thought of some of the other tools in our tool box. It's easy to get busy and be satisfied with the results we are currently getting but I wanted to remind you of a few things that we can implement to inject some fresh excitement and new engagement into your mobile marketing campaign.

         Keyword- Don't forget about your keyword! You can put this on any print ad or other advertising you are doing to turn a static advertisement into a dynamic one. Introducing this text component can greatly increase your advertising efforts and ROI because it allows you to capture a customer's data from it instead of just hoping they see your ad. We can even set up special keywords for certain advertising efforts so that you can measure it's success. Speaking of keywords, how about setting up special keywords for different customer segments to market more effectively to just them? We can do that!

        Loyalty Tiers- Don't forget you can set up different tiers of loyalty rewards. 3 check-ins earns a free hug but 6 check-ins earns a free kiss, etc. (This is only an example, I wouldn't recommend using hugs and kisses as loyalty rewards, unless you are just that close to your customers)

       Sweepstakes, Trivia, & Polling- Yes, we can set up a text2win sweepstakes to help bolster customer engagement or to promote a new product or event. Use the polling feature to find out what your customers think about a new product or menu item!

New Tools!

       Reward Redemption Mode- Some of our customers like to keep track of how many loyalty rewards are redeemed on their own but now we can set this function up in your kiosk to keep track of it for you. When a customer checks in and has reached the point where they earn a reward, the kiosk will ask if they would like to redeem it or save it for later. Redemptions will be shown on your weekly analytic report.

      Automated Engagement- Most of our customers already use the Inactive Customer feature (which is extremely powerful) But we also have added several new features. Inactive Reminder: Send them a message reminding them to come back and patronize your business but do not provide a discount or offer. Reward Reminder: Sends them a message reminding them that they are only 1 check-in away from earning a reward, to entice them to come back into your business. Any of these can be set to be sent out automatically at a certain number of days from the customer's last activity on your kiosk.



We are here for You!

If you have read anything in this blog post that you have any questions about or would like to implement, please don't hesitate to reach out to us! We are here to help you experience the most success possible with your mobile marketing and customer loyalty rewards programs!


















   

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Loyalty Apps VS Loyalty SMS

Loyalty Apps VS Loyalty SMS
Loyalty Apps vs SMS Loyalty Programs-
Before the creation of our touch screen Loyalty kiosk, mobile apps could boast that their biggest positive was it's ability to capture data, see trends, and reward customers for their loyalty based on patterns of buying. However, this benefit is rivaled by a setback almost just as startling: only 95.8 million of the 327.6 million mobile phone connections are smartphones – that’s only a 29% customer reach. The barrier of entry that a mobile app presents drastically reduces it's reach and therefore, your marketing effectiveness.

Who Competes with us?
Companies like SpotOn and Belly Card require your customers to download their app onto their phone and then scan a QR code to check in. If your customer doesn't want to download the app, they have to carry yet another plastic rewards card to scan.  Business owners are discovering that programs like this are more about SpotOn or Belly Card building loyalty to their own brand and NOT yours much like Groupon has been hammered for in the last year.

Why SMS
SMS marketing presents no barrier of entry. Your customer simply types in their cell phone number into your loyalty kiosk much like they have been conditioned to do through the years at grocery stores and gas stations, so it's something they're already accustomed to doing. It takes 7 seconds to check-in on the kiosk and your customer doesn't even have to pull out their phone, find the app, launch the app, and then scan the code. Let's face it, we are all inundated with technology in our lives, do we really want to ask our customers to do more work than necessary to show their loyalty? Over 86% of consumers send or receive text messages every week. That's a far better reach than the 29% I previously mentioned about the mobile apps. 95-98% of text messages are read within minutes. When your customer who has voluntarily opted in to receive text alerts from you gets that text, you have just engaged them in a very personal way and have done it all within your own brand name, not in the name of some other mobile app.
2013 is the year of loyalty
A lot of these loyalty app programs are priced very low compared to a local, full service mobile marketing program but as you can see from the info above, their reach, effectiveness, and value are just not comparable. If I sound biased, well, it's because I am! 2013 is on track to see tremendous growth in mobile and loyalty marketing. We have many exciting new things planned for this year and can't wait to roll them out to you. We congratulate you on being ahead of your competition already by having adopted a solid mobile marketing strategy with EngageDFW and we look forward to continuing to serve you in 2013 and beyond.