Though not seen much on the campaign trail, mobile strategy is expected to be important for attracting younger voters.

Social networks played an important role in the last U.S. presidential election, but the explosive growth in smartphone usage and the introduction of tablets since 2008 could make or break the candidates for president in 2012.

As the Republican primaries heat up, the major contenders show on their official websites a strong recognition of social networking and connecting in digital ways via desktop computers. But the GOP and President Obama's campaigns are not yet making many mobile-specific connections to supporters via smartphones or tablets, analysts noted.

Some campaigns have special links on their websites for getting updates via SMS to a phone, but they don't appear to have candidate-specific downloadable mobile apps on Apple's App Store or the Android Market so far.

"Smartphones and tablets are much more mainstream now, and these devices are literally driving the Occupy movement and the revolutions in the Middle East," noted Rob Enderle, an analyst for Enderle Group. "The ways we connect to one another have changed quite a bit in the last couple of years. Candidates need a good social media campaign to win, and social media done right includes mobile, because mobile allows candidates to loop in supporters in the moment and stay in touch and respond in real time. Mobile makes social networking more important."

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Why start with Text Messaging?

Here are three good reasons:

1. Cost-effectiveness

It’s not news that in many marketing departments these days money isn’t always easy to come by. Coming up with the budget for a mobile app, on one platform let alone two, is not always easy.

Creating a mobile website, depending on size, scope, and content management system, is not cheap either. Text messaging marketing can be extremely budget friendly, especially if you’re already printing signs for something or running traditional media.  Just revise the creative to add a “text-in for this or that” call-to-action and you’ve just started a mobile marketing campaign.

Best of all, almost all SMS marketing providers charge based on the number of messages or subscribers in your database. The cost starts small and when it increases that means your campaign is working!

2. Biggest Audience

When marketing dollars are tight everyone likes to see “good numbers” at the end of the campaign. Because text messaging is available on essentially every phone and used by just about everybody (over 70% of adults), you’ll have the best opportunity to reach the most people and build the largest opt-in database.

Every other mobile marketing technology has an inherit “audience-limiter”. Mobile websites; must have an HTML-capable phone.  Apps; must have a smartphone. QR codes; must have a smartphone and a QR reader installed. The more things your audience needs to participate, the smaller the numbers get. Start with the biggest audience and then target the more technology capable groups later.

3. It will “launch” the other ones

At the end of any text message marketing campaign there will be a database of mobile phone numbers (the people who texted-in). Launching a mobile app or website? Send out a text and tell them.

They’ve already had one mobile interaction with you so there’s a good chance they would be open to another. Instead of counting on the app store or mobile searches to drive traffic you can generate that initial burst of activity on your own. Think about it, it’s a lot easier to drive traffic to a new website when you already have a big email list of people who would be interested.

Ok, so you agree text messaging might be a good place to start mobile marketing.

But where do you start with text messaging? 

1. Traditional media

As mentioned above, this is an easy one. Instead of telling your audience to “call now” or “visit our website”, have them send a text message. Maybe they’re entering to win something or getting an instant “show this message on your phone for something” coupon.

2. Events

Are you still using clipboards and sign up sheets to gather data at your events? Still putting out that plastic fish bowl for business cards? Try having your event attendees get out their phone and text to vote, answer a question, put a message up on a screen, sign a petition, win something, or get a discount. It’ll be more fun for you and your audience, and in the end you’ll get a valid mobile number instead of an email address you can’t read anyway.

3. In-store

Many businesses have more people passing through their doors everyday than visits to their website. Those people also have phones in their pockets and purses. Print out a sign and create a mobile loyalty club by having visitors text-in for a discount on their next visit. They’re in your location so you know they have an interest in your business. Give them an easy way to offer up their valuable mobile phone number so you can bring them back later.

by TXTImpact

Build Text Alert Opt-in List using Text to Join campaign

#1 Setup a Text to Join campaign

Prospects and customer can send a mobile keyword and join your text alerts list.

#2 Optionally you can add a signup to your website or facebook page using our web widget tool.

Create customize web signup widget, which you can add on your blogs, website, or facebook to allow people join your Text Alert List

#3 Promote your Mobile Keyword

Add to print material, restaurant Menus, Yard Signs, Print Ads, Online, Shopping cart, at POS, Sales receipts, etc.

#4 Now time to enjoy fruit of all hard work, you have gathered opt-in mobile numbers, time to send a promotion, invite for private event, reminder, fund raising call, etc.

Be careful, send very specific message, actionable, to the point, should able to provide or point to the details. Alway include "Reply STOP to cancel. Msg&Data rates may apply."

Record Black Friday sales have given retailers hope that business will pick up a bit this holiday season. For many people, that news conjures images of crowded mall parking lots and busy big-box retailers.

But the news also offers opportunities for small businesses like those that line Hopkins’ Mainstreet.

Hopkins Patch spoke with Doug Denny—a local marketing consultant and copywriter—about how local businesses can make the most of the season. His company, DeJa Local Marketing, has done work for businesses ranging from Hopkins Auto Body to Chili’s.

Here’s what he had to say.

1) Connect your business to local holiday events.

Hopkins has plenty of seasonal festivals that local businesses can often tap into better than big-box retailers. Small-businesses owners should tie their sales into these events in order to emphasize how local they are, Denny said. For example, stores open during Hopkins’ Old Fashioned Christmas celebration could offer an “Old Fashioned Deal.”

2) Tie in to local successes.

Hopkins’ sense of community is one of its greatest strengths. While the standardization of big-box stores can make it hard for them to capitalize on that sentiment, local businesses don’t have that problem. Their owners often live in the city and have a pulse on local happenings.

Find out what’s successful in the schools, in churches and elsewhere in the community, Denny suggested. Then connect promotions to those local highlights. When the boys basketball team won its third championship in a row, for example, stores could have offered three deals for the three-peat.

“Think local,” Denny said. “Don’t just think about your customers. Think about your customers’ lives.”

3) Connect with customers on the go.

That means going mobile.Use text message alerts, smart phone apps, mobile websites and other options to reach potential customers as they go about their day.

The good news is that these products are no longer the domain of big corporations. Small businesses can hire someone to put together a functional app for less than $2,000—with financing plans available to spread the cost out, Denny said. Mobile websites are even cheaper, as low as $750 for an easily navigable site tailored to smart phones.

When you have the mobile pieces in place, promote them heavily at point of sale locations and other traditional ways in order to let customers know the options are out there. Offer mobile-only deals with coupon codes.

Local stores may offer products and bargains as good as those in a crowded holiday mall. But that doesn’t help if customers aren’t reminded about what’s available.

“Reach them where they are, so we can shop Mainstreet,” Denny said.

4) Avoid “interruptive marketing” whenever possible.

These are messages that force potential customers to stop whatever they’re doing to pay attention to the ad—whether that’s a commercial breaking into a TV show or a newspaper ad interrupting an article.  Customers, especially the younger generation, have become adept at tuning out this type of marketing.

But what about the text message alerts and other messaging that Denny recommends? Those aren’t interruptive because customers opted to receive them, he said, noting that about 95 percent of text messages are opened.

5) Build in a time element.

All that mobile marketing means businesses are no longer communicating with people comfortably ensconced on the couch. Those messages are coming in while people are in meetings, transporting their children or otherwise going about their day. 

Including a not-too-distant deadline—“Come in during the next four hours for a special price.”—encourages customers to stop by on their way home and choose your store for the spontaneous decisions they make while out and about, Denny said.

6) Don’t sweat it if customers share the coupon codes with friends who don’t subscribe to your mobile products.

The whole goal is to increase the number of customers. As long as you’ve included some profit margin, your store will be better off for the extra people stopping by.

7) Make visiting your store enjoyable—especially throughout the holiday season.

“During the holidays, people are attracted to bright lights and fun,” Denny said.

Source: hopkins.patch.com

 Read more about SMS Marketing and Text Messaging services 

Sears customers used their mobile devices to shop and make purchases during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and on Cyber Monday, delivering double digits gains for the retailer.

Mobile has been a major focus for Sears over the past year, with the retailer intent on building out its mobile offerings to provide a full set of features. Additions to Sears’ mobile strategy this year include giving customers more mobile payment options and adding QR codes to out-of-home ads so on-the-go consumers can easily purchase gift items. 

Sears also tweaked its mobile site a couple of months ago to improve performance, a move that paid off during the Thanksgiving weekend, when the retailer’s mobile site was one of the leaders in terms of customer satisfaction, according to Compuware Gomez.

Mobile Commerce Daily spoke with Michael Murray, chief marketing officer of online for Sears Holdings, Chicago, on the Monday back to work after the holiday weekend to discuss mobile’s strong performance and how the retailer is positioning itself to take advantage of the growth in mobile.

Source: Mobilecommercedaily

Click below to read complete article..

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/2011/11/29/sears%E2%80%99-integrated-mobile-experience-helps-deliver-strong-thanksgiving-results

To lure customers and boost sales, stores are deploying cool smartphone apps. Will consumers buy into the latest shopping fad?

By Caitlin Keating, reporter

FORTUNE -- Scott Thompson, president and CEO of eBay's PayPal unit (EBAY), says that he is one of those people who drives to Starbucks, sees the long line, and keeps on driving. "I'm on the go. I wish I could have stopped, but I don't have time," Thompson quips over a glass of wine. "No one does."

Not surprisingly, Thompson and his competitors in the fast-growing mobile payments business have a solution for impatient consumers and harried retailers alike: software that lets consumers pre-order and pre-pay for their coffee (or sweaters, or TVs) with a few taps on their mobile phones.

"We all just don't have time to shop," says Thompson, who hosted a recent soiree in New York to unveil PayPal Wallet, smartphone software coming next year that promises to replace both the consumer's wallet (all your credit card information is stored in it) and the retailer's cash register.

But retailers aren't waiting for PayPal Wallet. Many are already going mobile, either offering mobile apps to supplement e-commerce sites, or finding new ways to let potential shoppers get information in stores using their mobile phones.

Sears, for example, has tricked out O'Hare Airport and other high-traffic areas with so-called shopping walls that feature its top-selling products. See something you like? Whip out a camera-enabled phone, scan the Quick Response (QR) code, and you'll be sent to an e-commerce site that lets you purchase the item. By the time you board your plane, the item is already in the process of being shipped.

Tom Aiello, a division vice president at Sears's parent company, Sears Holdings (SHLD), said in regards to this holiday season, "Customers are going to spend more, but shop less. We have seen people use mobile phones when electricity was out to order generators in an ice storm, or an air conditioner during a heat wave in New York City. We've also seen surprising items like lawn tractors purchased on mobile phones and tablets."

The National Retail Federation estimates more than a third of retailers say they have significantly invested in QR codes in offline advertising, such as magazines and billboards. About half of online retailers say they have significantly invested in mobile-optimized websites, and 20% have invested in tablet device apps.

Greg Ahearn, chief marketing officer of Toys "R" Us, has started accepting mobile payments in some of its stores via Google Wallet (GOOG), the search giant's mobile commerce platform. Consumers who have phones enabled with special wireless technology can "bump" their gadgets against compatible cash registers at some 200 of the toy retailer's 870 worldwide locations and complete the sale that way. "It's all about convenience," Ahearn says. "The easier you make it for someone to find the exact toy you're looking for and get it to them the way they want it is the way retail is headed."

But sometimes people can't find that exact toy, or book, or necklace. That's where gift cards come in, and no surprise, gift certificates have gone mobile, too. David Stone, co-founder and CEO of digital gift card purveyor CashStar estimates that Americans purchase some $100 billion in these cash substitutes every year. Cohen's company is trying to shift the business from plastic cards to digital chits. "This is the post-plastic card era, because we are living on our iPhones, iPads, and computers."

Stone's dream scenario: "You're walking up to your friend's kid's birthday party, and you see people bringing gifts, and you think: 'Oh my god, I forgot to get a gift.' So you take out your smartphone and instantly buy the gift, walk into the house, and you say, 'Susan or Debby, I just sent you a gift! Check your phone, and there it is.'"

Convenient, yes, but we're not sure if Miss Manners would approve.

A shorter version of this article appeared in the December 12, 2011 issue of Fortune.

The SMS Marketing text messaging service for advertisers provides marketers with a fantastic way to keep in close contact with their customers via print ads, TV, radio, and more. It’s tough to make it in business no matter what type of business you’re operating. The statistics are rather frightening. Over 85% of all businesses fail. And this isn’t because people set out to sell bad products that nobody wants. It’s more to do with the fact that there is so much competition. Only the best known, heavily advertised companies are capable of building a brand, and only a successful brand reaches long-term, sustained success. For anyone needing to advertise their business, TXTImpact has released their SMS Marketing text messaging service for advertisers out there. Whether your company is big or small, local or global, this sms marketing approach is a surefire winner when used correctly.

Say that you print weekly ads in a popular newspaper. You cannot achieve very much with the space allotted. You’re usually only putting forth a catchy tag line and some details to entice people, and then you attach your business’s number and/or location. That’s the traditional advertisement. With a text messaging service, though, you can list your text number with an ad that says something to the extent of “Find out today’s biggest deals.” And when someone texts you, you can respond with the in-depth information needed to lure customers to your business.

Having a text messaging service like this is just easier and more convenient for everyone involved. Customers don’t have to visit your location or wait to speak to a person on the phone. As soon as they text your number, they will receive all the information they need. And what’s better – now they’re part of your network and will receive every ad you decide to send.

It doesn’t only work for print ads, either. You can do the same on local TV by airing your number across the screen, or for a local radio spot. Any way you decide to go here, people deciding to opt-in to your text network allows them to receive ads from you at any place and at any time.

You can send people a wide assortment of custom-tailored information, including but not limited to:

·         Offer discounts

·         Prize entries and drawings

·         Customer support

·         One-on-one conversations and feedback

·         Affiliate systems

·         And so much more

Having a service like TXTImpact’s text messaging network allows you to advertise in ways you never thought possible, and on a budget that’s absolutely unbeatable.

TXTImpact offers a simplistic web-based text messaging application that allows real estate agents and customers to interact in a more intimate fashion than what the market previously allowed. Although the housing bubble burst in 2008 and most so-called experts wouldn’t be caught dead attempting to sell real estate, most successful agents are savvy enough to realize that there’s money to be made in any market. You only have to offer potential homebuyers what they’re looking for. Thanks to TXTImpact and their new SMS Marketing service for real estate, people shopping for homes now have instant, enticing information available.

Real estate can be a very tricky business. There are only so many ways to communicate with a buyer. A picture of a house is posted in a circular somewhere, and if a homebuyer is interested in shopping homes, they call you, ask for details, and you might get lucky enough to take them out looking at homes in person. And in the rare instance, you finally land a legitimate buyer.

With this new text messaging service, however, you have a new, fresh approach to giving homebuyers details about the property.Real estate agent put texting enabled yard sign or Rider in front of the house. That's it! As prospective buyer's text in for information, there phone # is sent right to your mobile phone or email. When the property is sold, simply reuse the codes.

You can send out new photos and other interactive materials, details about the area, up-to-the-minute pricing changes, and so much more. Whenever a buyer wants to know about a particular property, as long as they’re a member of your network, you can send them a wide range of materials.

This intimate one-on-one setting makes the homebuyer feel like an important part of the real estate process. Instead of homes just sitting there collecting dust, your listing can go viral and reach many people through SMS marketing approach.

For the savvy real estate business out there looking to offer their customers much more than the ordinary, TXTImpact’s real estate SMS Marketing package is a great step in the right direction.

 Businesses need efficient communication in order to provide good customer service and to increase sales. While phone calls, mails, and emailing have been utilized by many businesses today for communication to its customers. Today, we'll talk about a new communication channel “text messaging” a.ka. "SMS".

We have seen tremendous growth in Text messaging among age group of 13-18 years and has typically been utilized peer to peer, however now businesses are starting to adopt it as a way to communicate time sensitive and relevant information to the customers, employees, and/or field sales.

Text messages reach people wherever they are, at any time of day or night. Due to its very nature, text messaging is viewed with a sense of urgency to which email can’t compare. People carry Mobile phones almost 24 hours a day and thus the ability to deliver the message directly to the receiver is done with great confidence that the message will be received instantaneously.

Consider these statistics:

• 18-29 year old consumers use text messaging more often than voice to communicate.
• On average 94% of text messages are read.
• 80% of consumers keep their mobile with them all day.
• When given a choice 39% of US consumers — 76 million people — prefer text messages to radio or TV advertising.

Consumers are numb to the huge amount of advertising that is presented in front of them each day.  So much advertising has conditioned consumers to ignore almost every advertisement.  The organizations that suffer the most is the small, and medium size because they do not have millions of dollars to spend on marketing like the large corporate sector.  Until now this has been an almost impossible challenge to overcome.

Here are some examples of how different kinds of businesses use texting strategically:

Advertising. Advertising agencies, businesses, and marketers use Texting to build opt-in databases to send promotions and announcements to subscriber’s cell phones.

Education. Schools use Texting to send alerts to parents about important reminders, truancy, or emergencies. Communicate with your entire student body in a matter of minutes.  Or do surveys in the classroom to make it more interactive.

Real Estate. Texting gives house hunters instant access to property listings, and easily communicates with them to setup an appointment or request more information.  Related, you can send text messages to tenants the 1st of every month to remind them of rent being due.

Retail. Online retailers and mail order houses use Texting to notify customers about their order status and when their merchandise is shipped.

Services. Doctors, dentists, salons, and other service companies use Texting to send appointment reminders and confirmations.