How To Move Customers From Email To Text Message Lists

Five Easy Tips To Move Customers From Email Lists To Text Message Lists

Five Easy Ways To Move Customers From Email To Text Message Lists

This past week I received a number of questions from our customer service department. A number of customers have called in with an interesting question.

They are small business owners who have built an email list…
But they have a problem.

They’ve spent a ton of time and money identifying prospects and customers and adding them to an email list.

They’ve been doing everything the email marketing gurus say.

They’ve been sending regular emails… they’ve been writing great content…. they focus on keywords and links… they craft headlines and great calls to action… they split test subject lines and work on their copywriting.

Despite this constant effort and work, they still have very low engagement rates.

Their email open rates are under 20%... and click rates hover around 1% if they are lucky.

They know text message marketing gives off a much greater engagement rate with a lot less effort…. It’s much easier to write 160 characters and get a read rate of 90% - 94%!

So the million dollar question… how do you move the people from your email list over to your mobile marketing list?

It’s a great question… and I have a few ideas.

First, let me help you right off the bat.

Add a signup form to collect smartphone numbers right on your website.

Think of it… you’re already spending money to advertise online… and you get traffic to your website… you might as well hit up your site visitors for their email address AND phone number.

This will automatically add people going forward to both your email and your mobile marketing lists. It gives you two bites of the apple!

Just remember to put the correct disclosures on the opt in form and make sure to add the right disclaimers to your website terms of use.

By making that one move, you will start adding people to your mobile marketing list with great speed.

That deals with new people signing up… what do you do about the people already on your email list?

How do you move the people from the email list over to your text message list?

There are three things you need to keep in mind...

First, let people know you have a text message marketing list and they can, and should, sign up… You’d be surprised at how many people already on your list want to hear from you via text message.

If you’re targeting a younger demographic, they may prefer text messages to emails…

Many will sign up just because you have a list!

The second thing to keep in mind… let your email list know if they sign up for your mobile list, they will get something special.

Give them a gift.

Give your mobile marketing prospects and customers something they can’t get elsewhere… something they can’t get on your website or by being on your email list.

Yep - that’s right… play favorites….

Give your mobile marketing prospects and customers something they can’t get any other way.

What do you give them?

It can be anything… but remember to give your customers something they want. Give them...

Information like a free report or guide…

Give them coupon codes or discount…

A link to a video...

Access to an Interview or podcast…

Here’s a great special offer - add people to an early-bird access list! It can be for a new product or special offer… the early bird list is a great carrot to get people signing-up.

Once again the options are limited only by your imagination.

The third thing I want you to remember… Don’t be afraid to remind people repeatedly you have a mobile marketing list. Remind people on your email list over and over again.

If you email your list… do it frequently. Why?

If you have a 10% open rate on your emails… that means 90% of your prospects and customers didn’t see the email!

So don’t be afraid to send out different offers. Remind people over and over again about your mobile marketing list… it will ensure more of your email list sees the offer and has the option to sign up.

One final tip - if you have customers on both email and a mobile marketing list… use them both. Don’t limit yourself to one list or the other. Use them both to really get the best engagement rates.

Remember repetition is reputation!

If you’re looking for answers to your critical questions about mobile marketing…. we wrote a special report. We cover everything about mobile marketing for your business - it’s a must read: “The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Marketing”

You can download it with this link: http://text.betwext.us/ebook-mobile-marketing/

Remember Mobile Marketing is a very powerful, and cost effective tool to communicate with your prospects, customers, and employees! Give it a try today.

This article originally appeared on the Betwext blog: http://www.betwext.com/tips-ideas/five-easy-tips-move-customers-email-lists-text-message-lists/

Online Customer Service For Business

4 Misconceptions About Online Customer Service

Ask even the most established e-business about the principles of online customer service, and you’re likely to hear some wild misconceptions. These are four fallacies we’d love to see erased from the industry:

1. Text chat is an adequate way to communicate with every customer, in every situation. Text chat sure is a wonderful tool. For many, many customer interactions, a quick text from a skilled service agent (who might be supporting multiple customers at once) is enough to get the job done and convert a prospect into a purchaser. But for some business-critical situations, text chat is not enough to attract and retain customers.

2. If your business is online, you can’t deliver personal service. E-tailers cannot afford to accept this idea. If you are to entice consumers away from your online and offline competitors, you need to be able to connect with them when they require a personal touch. When a customer needs to hear the voice of your business, see a live rep. or watch a detailed product demonstration, your support system must deliver.

3. First-rate online support is too expensive for the small e-tailer. This is flat out wrong. We can start to dismantle this idea by sharing our free option for real-time multimedia collaboration, but we also need to mention the cost of not offering superior customer support. All the money you put into SEO, advertising and marketing activities is for naught if you can’t help a qualified target convert once he arrives on your site. And if there is inadequate support for product selection, you’ll eat the costs in terms of call center resources or product returns.

4. Customers don’t want to engage with us in any significant way. Yes, your customers are a busy bunch. They shop online – at least in part – because it is quick and convenient. But wandering around your site unguided and unsupported is frustrating. If website visitors cannot easily access a knowledgeable rep. to help them when they need assistance, they’ll bounce. Let your customers and prospects engage with you on their terms and at the level of support they need, and you’ll see the returns in conversion and sales rates.

6 Reasons Why Businesses Still Need Social Media Marketing

6 Reasons Businesses Need Social Media Marketing

In order for a business to grow quickly, they need to be able to reach a wide target audience as soon as possible. Without an active social media presence, your business is doomed to fail. Research shows nearly 2 in 3 adults use social media. By not tapping into the potential of social media, marketing yourself to potential leads and customers becomes a lot more cumbersome.

Here are 6 ways in which social media marketing can benefit a business.

Social Media Gives You a Wider Reach

With social media, it’s easy to market your services to a large population. And not only does social media allow you to reach out to more people; it even lets you determine the kind of audience to whom you wish to market yourself.

Using Social Media for Business Boosts Your Site’s SEO

Search engine crawlers know which pages are consistently earning traffic and which are just floating out there, forgotten and ignored. A killer content strategy for SEO is the most important part of earning top spots in search engine rankings, but driving traffic to your optimized pages will cause them to climb much faster in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Social Media Marketing Is Easily Sharable Marketing

A user can easily share any marketing activity or advertisement that’s posted up on a social media website.

This means that once you’ve shared a post, people will eventually ensure that it gets to your target market; the people who will actually benefit from your business.

A Strong Social Media Presence Builds Brand Loyalty

A report published by Texas Tech University found that brands with active social media profiles have more loyal customers. It’s easy to imagine why: when you’re engaging and interacting on social media (not just tossing your posts out onto the web hoping someone will stumble upon them) you become less like a corporation and more like what you truly are, a unified group of people who share a vision.

Social Media Gives You the Ability to Quickly Respond to Customers

Once you’ve shared any content on social media, it’s easy to keep track of customer responses and feedback given by social media users.

Besides making the necessary changes as soon as possible, you can even respond to your customer’s queries and messages. This will help you engage with the audience better so they keep coming back for more.

Customers You Didn’t Know Existed Will Find (and buy from you)

In the process of marketing with Facebook, you’ll probably join a ton of groups related to your products, industry and customer base. By posting links in these groups, you’ll help influence customers to check out your site. Answering questions on Quora is another option.

These are just a few ways in which companies can use social media. Without a strong social media presence, it’s impossible to survive in today’s market.

Contradiction Right??????????????????

Social Media Is Not The Complete Marketing Toolbox

How We Forgot the Telephone

We should understand that Social Media is not the complete marketing toolbox, it's just another tool in the box. As businesses, we need to leverage every tool we have and choose the best ones for us, tailored to our products and services. We should therefore still be giving all due consideration to analog media marketing methods, such as hand written letters, post cards and that weapon of mass discussion, the telephone.

Unfortunately, some social media marketers who don't have the right kind of social skills have convinced businesses that the telephone, in particular, is evil. This is bad for business, because the telephone is, in reality, still a very important business tool indeed. Social Media didn't replace it, but it did allow people who could not do telemarketing well an opt out. One reason they fail is because they already have gone through the conversation in their heads over and over before they call. When the conversation goes a different way, they get flustered and then it's game over. Bad conversational skills have given telemarketing a bad name. Unfortunately the people who were poor at it promulgated a myth that it is the telephone itself which is bad.

But the telephone is not dead. It's very much alive. My collaborator Angus Grady gets through to CEO level people all the time for his clients (10 a day is a standard target). His calls do generate business which can be measured in terms of monetary income. His calls do not create ill will (generally, apart from in extreme cases of telephone averse managers). So Angus is opening very thick doors with the telephone. I also know people who sell office telephones. They tell me that they're selling more than they ever did. What does that indicate to us?

So when we’re beating our head against a brick wall, trying to get to exchange written text with someone's electronic avatar by using social as our blunt weapon of choice, we might consider hiring someone who has the right kind of social skills. Someone who can pick up the weapon of mass discussion instead to open the door to a real conversation with a real person. Who knows, it might be the most important conversation we ever have.

written by Gary Sharpe

Stop Wasting Time Building Facebook and Twitter Followers

Small Business Owners: Stop Wasting Time Building Facebook and Twitter Followers

Why Texting Is Critical For Your Small Business Marketing

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Look, if you’re a small business owner, or manager, you must start looking at texting for your small business today. Set aside 20 minutes and do a bit of research and figure out how to use texting in your business.
Why?
Because nobody is paying attention to your other marketing efforts!
Seriously.
Consider this, according to one Hubspot article, Facebook posts get natural organic engagement of about 2% to 6.5%... let’s do the math. If you have 10,000 followers on facebook and make a post, between 200 and 650 of your followers will see your post.
Why so few?
Because facebook is becoming overwhelmed with content and they’re filtering what people see.
Think twitter is any better?
Think again. According to an article I found atmarketingland, between 1.3% and 2.6% of your followers actually see a tweet. One resource recommended tweeting several times a day… every day of the week… and you might - might - reach 30% of your followers!
I don’t know about you but we’ve been putting in tons of work growing our facebook and twitter followers. Now, I’m starting to think it’s all wasted work!
Think your email list is any better?
It’s not. Average email open rates are running between 15% and 30%... and if you’ve got a big list (more than 100,000 emails) you’ll see your open rate hover around 10%... if you’re lucky.
Of course Facebook and Twitter will help you reach more of your followers (and new people too) you just have to pay for the privilege. So cough up your credit card and hand it over… That’s how they make money!
There’s got to be a better solution to communicate with prospects… with customers… with your VIPs!
That’s why I love mobile marketing… specifically text message marketing.
Text Message Marketing is Critical For Small Businesses
Did you know it’s estimated 97% of all text messages are read within just a few minutes of being received.
No - that’s not a typo. - 97% of text messages are read.
So, you send out dozens of tweets a day... for an entire week… and you might reach 20% or 30% of your followers. On facebook, you can post to your heart’s content… and your reach won’t be much better.
See why I want you to stop worrying about Facebook and Twitter… and focus on marketing that works?
Sending emails - ok - that’s a little better. Send out two or three emails and you might reach half your list.
Text message marketing is where it’s at.
So, the question is… why aren't you jumping into text message marketing for your small business right now?
I think I know. You don’t know where to start… You don’t know what to look for in a service provider… you’re afraid it’s expensive, or difficult to do.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Finding a texting service is easy… the start up costs are minimal… and if you plan your marketing strategy the right way, you can do an entire month of marketing in 10 minutes or less.
That’s why you should stop worrying about facebook and twitter followers, and instead spend that time building your text marketing list!
Next time, I’ll address some of the biggest objections small business owners spit out about text message marketing. I’ll share with you some great ways to grow your business, and give you examples of what other business owners are doing!
If you’re thinking about using text messages to promote your small business, we wrote a special report just for you… “The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Marketing”
You can download it free - right here:http://text.betwext.us/ebook-mobile-marketing/
Remember text messaging is a very powerful tool that small businesses must start using. It’s a cost effective way to communicate with your prospects, customers, VIPs, and employees! Give it a try today.
This article originally appeared on the Betwext.com blog: https://www.betwext.com/mobile-marketing/texting-is-critical-small-business-marketing/