A while back I was talking to a potential client about mobile marketing. This client ran an executive golf course here in St. Louis. They were ideally suited for mobile marketing. Here is a list of services they offered: an 18 hole executive golf course, an 18 hole pitch & put course, mini golf, driving range, golf supplies, restaurant & bar, golf lessons, golf outings, and demo days. They easily could have run separate mobile campaigns targeting each of these service offerings. It was a slam dunk. It was like teeing off with a driver the size of the one pictured. I couldn’t miss.
So I started off by explaining to the person who handled their marketing how they could use location based social media to pull in customers at little or no cost to them. She thought that social media was silly. So I moved on by explaining how she could target each of the services that they offer with special offers via text messages.
“Don’t most people already get their email on their phones?” she asked. “I don’t see the need to send out text messages. We have over 4,000 people on our email list.”
I wasn’t prepared for her comment. I don’t remember what my answer was, but I know it wasn’t good enough. She ushered me out of the place like an unwanted solicitor, which to her I was.
It wasn’t until later that I realized what I should have said. First off, email marketing has a place. It’s an ideal way to stay in touch with your customers. It’s a great way to promote special offers and upcoming events. But there is also a place for mobile marketing. For one, emails are not formatted for mobile phones. So while you can receive emails on your phone, they don’t always display well. So they don’t always get read. The open rate on text messages, however, is close to 95%. It’s also immediate. So if I want to drive traffic to a business during a specific time period, like the middle of the afternoon when the course is wide open, I can send out a quick text message and know that the majority of the people who get that message will open and read it within seconds of it being delivered.
And while having an email list of over 4,000 is impressive, they weren’t using it except to send out emails announcing the next demo days. Plus the list wasn’t an opt in list. They had purchased the list. It was basically a list of every golfer in the St. Louis area. That’s not nearly as targeted as an opt in mobile list.
So while email marketing has a lot of value, you can add even more value by creating a separate opt in mobile list. Call it your mobile VIP list. Make sure you give these people better offers than the people on your e-mail list. That’s how you grow a list. Once you have a segmented list based on service preference. You can then run continuous campaigns targeted just to that list as opposed to sending out an email blast to 4,000 non-targeted people.
It may also make sense in some instances to send out both email and SMS messages simultaneously. The provider I use for mobile marketing also allows you to send out emails and IM messages all at the same time.
So rather than having to decide which is better – email or SMS – use both. Experiment with both and see which offers and which medium gets the best results.
For more information on how you can implement mobile marketing for your product or service, visit our St. Louis Mobile Marketing page.
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