Tell me where to text!
Roger at Technological Winter has had enough of advertisers not utilising the medium of text…
Link: Technological Winter
If you want me to sign up for a blood drive, tell me who to text. You want me to come to your movie premier, tell me who to text so that you can text me a two or three day reminder and then an opening night text. You want me to get excited about your new car model, tell me who to text.
I don’t have a pen and by the way I am standing in train, so no I can’t write down that web address
I agree. Although I’m quite delighted to see more and more ads around the place featuring mobile call-to-actions.
The next issue is: What happens when you text? As I’ve blogged quite often, many times I’ve tried out a text service just to see what it was like (I’m thinking of that chain of gyms… in particular, Holmes Place) and never received a reply back! So, it’s all very well adopting the medium but if there’s nothing or no one behind it ready to deal with incoming messages, it’s not very good is it?
It has taken 3-4 years of hard work by a number of 2-way text providers such as ourselves to convince UK businesses that a text/shortcode service is very useful as part of their marketing. We are now seeing thousands of businesses take this up and this is great news for the mobile industry - at last texting is an integral part of the marketing for businesses both small and large.
However we still have a number of clients who insist that they know best and that an auto-response text is not required. “We are just gonna forward the text to an email of one of our sales guys”…and then as Ewan points out, the text just sits in someones inbox until forever.
We gently point out that sending an auto-response is not just so we can earn a few more pence on an outbound text but allows them to immediately engage with a new potential customer; a customer who has called YOU…i.e. one that has said “I am interested in buying stuff from you, please tell me more”. If the text comes in and nothing is done with it then frankly the £25 spent on the keyword is a waste of money.
So indeed I totally agree with Ewan in that these businesses, whilst we should celebrate they have taken the first step to using this new medium, now need to consider the second step, i.e. responding back to a potential money earner…otherwise why are they in business?
steve/itagg.com
Posted by steve procter on March 14th, 2007 at 8:11 am.At The Carphone Warehouse we are just putting the finishing touches to our value prosposition for MarketinG directors. Yes, we do have our own SMS platform and having regularly sent between 1-2m messages to our own customer base each month, we have a lot of experience with what does and doesn’t work in Marketing.
We are not a technology company trying to sell you something, we are an organisation that practices what it preaches!
phil.stubbs@cpwplc.com
Posted by Phil Stubbs on March 14th, 2007 at 2:08 pm.Just putting the finishing touches to your “value proposition” hey Phil. Wow, where have you been!? Blimey I must dig out the value proposition we wrote when we started offering mobile services (both at a technical and marketing level) almost five years ago; to remind myself what we said way back then. But I’m sure it wasn’t snide comments about our competitors though.
steve/itagg.com
Posted by steve procter on March 14th, 2007 at 3:32 pm.Thats okay Steve.
To be honest I didn’t actually understand Phil. In comments its always a jarring experience when someone talks marketing or PR speak, instead of plain everyman english (or whatever other language you blog in of course).
But I have to say its good to see someone doing something and I feel as though its a bit of a pat on my back that Ewan decided it was worth following up on his site since he is more of a mobile guy then me by FAR. :))
Thanks Ewan and Steve keep the good comments flowing. FYI, I just checked out your website because of your comments.
Posted by Roger Kondrat on March 23rd, 2007 at 8:57 pm.