Every long weekend, entrepreneurs are persistently looking for more means to reach customers in today’s increasingly competitive marketplace. “How was weekend?” has transformed into “On-The-Go weekend.” Whether online or offline, buyers are always expected to engaged wherever they are. Because it is the most basic form of mobile marketing, texting may seem like a dated method of mobile communication to the fast-moving marketer. However, recent studies showed that texting drives significant customer engagement and return of investment for companies across United States.

The following are good ways to boost customer engagement

• Sending Promotions: Disperse special weekend deals via text message, or promote special SMS codes in-store for next-visit discounts.
• Create Contests: Build weekend cheer with SMS-based contests. With text-to-win offers, you’ll grow your lists while improving engagement across your entire existing customer base.
• Encourage Charity: Support your company cause or a local charity through SMS. Also provide a common short code via your sales receipt for customers to text and donate a portion of their purchase to those in need.
• Go Green: Eliminate paper receipt waste and promote and encourage customers to opt-in via short code to an eco-friendly record of their order or purchase.
• Gently Remind: In the weekend hustle and bustle, even the most structured of customers may overlook an appointment or two. Use texting to remind your customers of important dates, appointments or meetings and eliminate costly cancellations.

• Alert Quickly: Whether you are a financial institution protecting against fraud or a service provider with an important update, the ability to quickly alert your customers is vital to your business success. Alerts or calls exclusive of their phone ringing or vibrating, your customers are bound to read your alert in no time.

BroadcastBySMS – SMS software

BroadcastBySMS is a Voicent automated SMS software with two way interactive communications between the computer software and the person who receive the text message. It can be used to send customized messages to small or large groups. With this SMS software you can send group text messages in as few as 3 easy steps, then, automatically collect and process individual responses.

Text messages are immediate and personal, less intrusive than a call to a cell phone. That’s why texting has become the planet’s single most popular way to communicate—surpassing even telephone calls!

This SMS software is great for sending promotions, creating contest, promoting charity and alarming alerts that needs to be quickly delivered.  One of its key feature is interactive text messaging.  This capability, along with the message customization feature, allows the software to process text responses automatically. The second special feature is that Voicent SMS software does not require you to sign up with a SMS center. The software uses your own text plan from a cell phone company. It is the same as you sending out text messages from your cell phone.

Every long weekend, entrepreneurs are persistently looking for more means to reach customers in today’s increasingly competitive marketplace. “How was weekend?” has transformed into “On-The-Go weekend.” Whether online or offline, buyers are always expected to engaged wherever they are. Because it is the most basic form of mobile marketing, texting may seem like a dated method of mobile communication to the fast-moving marketer. However, recent studies showed that texting drives significant customer engagement and return of investment for companies across United States.

The following are good ways to boost customer engagement

• Sending Promotions: Disperse special weekend deals via text message, or promote special SMS codes in-store for next-visit discounts.
• Create Contests: Build weekend cheer with SMS-based contests. With text-to-win offers, you’ll grow your lists while improving engagement across your entire existing customer base.
• Encourage Charity: Support your company cause or a local charity through SMS. Also provide a common short code via your sales receipt for customers to text and donate a portion of their purchase to those in need.
• Go Green: Eliminate paper receipt waste and promote and encourage customers to opt-in via short code to an eco-friendly record of their order or purchase.
• Gently Remind: In the weekend hustle and bustle, even the most structured of customers may overlook an appointment or two. Use texting to remind your customers of important dates, appointments or meetings and eliminate costly cancellations.

• Alert Quickly: Whether you are a financial institution protecting against fraud or a service provider with an important update, the ability to quickly alert your customers is vital to your business success. Alerts or calls exclusive of their phone ringing or vibrating, your customers are bound to read your alert in no time.

BroadcastBySMS – SMS software

BroadcastBySMS is a Voicent automated SMS software with two way interactive communications between the computer software and the person who receive the text message. It can be used to send customized messages to small or large groups. With this SMS software you can send group text messages in as few as 3 easy steps, then, automatically collect and process individual responses.

Text messages are immediate and personal, less intrusive than a call to a cell phone. That’s why texting has become the planet’s single most popular way to communicate—surpassing even telephone calls!

This SMS software is great for sending promotions, creating contest, promoting charity and alarming alerts that needs to be quickly delivered.  One of its key feature is interactive text messaging.  This capability, along with the message customization feature, allows the software to process text responses automatically. The second special feature is that Voicent SMS software does not require you to sign up with a SMS center. The software uses your own text plan from a cell phone company. It is the same as you sending out text messages from your cell phone.

Is there a way in BroadcastBySMS to send more customized or specific to each person text messages?

BroadcastBySMS supports personalized text messaging to each of your contacts. Whether you want to include the contact’s name or some other specific information (such as money owed, specific discounts, address to go to, etc.) you can absolutely customize your broadcast with specific information for each contact. Here’s how.

Under “Broadcast” select “Message Designer” to get started. Here, you can customize your broadcast message however you like. In this example, for specific to each recipient information we will include the contact’s name and money owed to a fictional business. Additionally, we will include a response option where the contact will be able to respond with  ”paid” or  ”unpaid” depending on what the answer is.

In the Message Designer we will add some new message items, which will allow us to draw from the name column the contact’s name for each message. We will also include some normal text as a greeting and filler. Once you have selected Message Designer, you will need to click “new” then give a title your new message template. Then you will start adding message items for the actual text. These images will demonstrate:

To get the contact names in the message, simply select “Standard item” and click on “Contact Name.”

To get the money owed in there, we will need a new column for that. In the spreadsheet, you will go to “Edit” -> “Insert new column” and title it “owed” for this example. We will mark it as currency which will automatically mark numbers entered into this column as dollars.

Next, we specify this column to be entered into the message.

We will want to also fill in some text between these special items so that the message will make sense for our contacts, as in our example seen here.

Finally, we add some confirmation items by checking the confirmation box and adding two confirmation items. We will specify our own custom meaning as seen in these images.

Add another one just like that for “unpaid” and our message is just about set. Here is what the final message will look like in message designer:

Once we fill out our spreadsheet our message here will take care of the rest.

Our first message then will say: Hello Dave you currently owe $50.00 Please respond with “paid” if you have already paid or “unpaid” if the debt still owed

The second will say: Hello Mark you currently owe $25.75 Please respond with “paid” if you have already paid or “unpaid” if the debt still owed

Once sent, we can gather their feedback through “Broadcast” -> “Check Response”

The confirmation column shows us what they sent back, with Dave texting back “paid” and Mark sending back “unpaid” as his response.

This is just one small example of the customization options available to you with the built-in message designer in BroadcastBySMS. With custom columns you can personalize any aspect of your message using message designer.

We often get questions about whether a particular device works with Voicent’s text marketing software (BroadcastBySMS). The first thing to check is obviously whether it can send and receive text messages. But how do we know whether it works with BroadcastBySMS?

To answer that question, here are the steps to check:

1. Get the device model and check online for its technical specification

2. Look for GSM standards that is supported by the device. For text message or SMS, the standard is GSM 07.05 Phase 2.

If it contains the above interface, it should work with Voicent software.

Short codes (also known as short numbers) are special telephone numbers, that can be used to receive incoming text messages (SMS messages). Short codes are easier to remember and are used for value-added services such as television program voting. Short code is normally linked to some back-end applications, such that when a customer text in with the word “info” or “stop”, more information will be text back to the customer or add the customer’s phone number to an opt-out list.

According to wikipedia, short codes can be leased at the rate of $1000 a month for a selected code or $500 for a random code. In addition to cost, short code are usually shared by a number of brands. In order to identify a particular brand or company, service providers may charge for these “keywords” or “service identifiers”. For example, an advertisement may state: text Morning News to 23456 to get daily news. The service identifier “morning news” is reserved for a particular news organization.

The good news is that with Voicent text message solution, you do not need short code. You simply use the the mobile number, the long code, that is associated with your mobile account. The reason Voicent can do that is that Voicent software uses your SIM card (with a SMS modem) directly, which is the same way your cell phone uses your text message service. Anyone can text your cell phone, ie. the device that contains your SIM card, without going through a short code.

Since you own the number, you do not need to get a service identifier either.

Best of all, you pay nothing more except your regular cell phone bill.

So how do you have your prospects opt-in to your newsletter?

Simply ask them to text [the number number] with [any keyword you choose].