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Time to get text-savvy for business: 3 rules for SMS

Sarah Stowe

It’s the era of smart phone, where texts, e-mails, social networks and the Internet are available at your fingertips.

In 2011, BI Intelligence revealed mobile device sales exceeded PCs for the first time in history.

According to Mobile Marketing Association, SMS is the most used form of consumer communication.

With this in mind, managing director of Exact Target Lee Hawksley says marketers should be thinking about how best to use SMS to connect with their consumers.

ExactTarget gives you three rules to use SMS to its full potential.

1. Know your audience

First thing to do with any marketing campaign is to know your consumers and who you are targeting. After that, find out their preferences like what messages they want to receive and whether they want alerts for offers and product updates.

2. Personalise

A personal text is always more appealing than a chain letter. Subscribers are turned off by recycled content or ‘batch and blast’ messages. Now that you have collected information on preferences, use it to personalise and send relevant messages.

According to ‘The 2012 Channel Preference Study’ by ExactTarget, 35 per cent prefer to receive personal messages via text. Hawksley believes if you have data to divide and deliver personalised communication, you should apply this to your SMS campaigns.

3. Communicate across all mediums

SMS was the first step. Now go a couple of steps further and market to consumers across other platforms. When a consumer opts to receive text messages and provides their e-mail address for further communication, marketers should make the most of this opportunity and be in touch over e-mail, Facebook and Twitter.

Start by sending triggered e-mails to consumers who have opted for e-mails. Triggered e-mails deliver quick messages to someone’s inbox. This is ideal if you want to send product information, event registration forms and transactional e-mails.

Consumers no longer get their information from just the one source. They are accessing multiple platforms everyday.

Facebook and Twitter are important marketing tools for consumers. Add a Facebook and Twitter icon to your e-mails to persuade subscribers to follow your brand. This is another avenue to observe consumer preferences.