Thinking of launching an SMS marketing campaign? You’ll need to do your homework. It’s vital that before you even begin messaging anyone you take a look at what other businesses have done and how they have achieved success. By learning the lessons of other strategies you’ll be well placed to know what works for you.
Here are three case studies, and the lessons you can take from them…
Silverstone
Campaign: The home of the Formula One British Grand Prix recently used SMS marketing to drum up interest in tickets for the event.
Bosses at Silverstone sent an SMS out to more than 45,000 recipients on its database who had either bought a ticket in the past or who had expressed an interest in attending events.
The message was timed to go out the moment that the BBC had finished airing its coverage of the Monaco Grand Prix.
The message read: ‘Enjoyed the Monaco Grand Prix? Get your tickets to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone now! http://bit.ly/12wYgh1 To opt out text STOP to 60070’.
The link led customers straight onto a mobile-friendly page where they were a mere click away from snapping up tickets. Tatango reports that this one batch of messages had a whopping 608% return on the investment for this message in subsequent ticket sales.
Lesson: With a low cost, SMS messages can really deliver – with a big ROI possible for the right message delivered in the right way at the right time.
Bulmers
Campaign: The summer sunshine offers an important opportunity to cider retailer Bulmers and it looked to cash in on that through an SMS campaign.
It ‘geofenced’ its customers for the campaign, a process that involves sorting them into geographic locations and targeting them based on their proximity to a retailer (chains such as Pizza Hut have also done this). In practice this meant anyone who lived within half a mile of a pub selling its cider got a text message like this: “Why not come and enjoy a refreshing pint of Bulmers at the (enter pub name) Check out other locations here link to website) using the Bulmers local guide. Terms apply To stop text stop to (shortcode).”
SMS Bandit reported that Bulmers sent 77,000 texts in one month – and 25% of recipients took up the offer. About half clicked on the link to the guide too.
Lesson: SMS messages are a great way to promote an offer quickly and effectively to a large group – and can allow businesses to zero in on people based in a specific location.
Domino’s Pizza
Campaign: The takeaway pizza chain has grown adept at cashing in on the tummy rumbles of its loyal customers. Like Bulmers, it is mindful of location and knows what time to strike for maximum results.
The following message went out at 4.15pm to customers of one store – just as they were casting their minds as to what they wanted to eat for an evening meal. “Domino’s (location) All this week Buy One Get One Free Online Online. Use Code (code) @dominos.co.uk Exp 13/03 T&Cs Apply OptOut STOP to (number).”
Just as in the Bulmers case above, this is mindful of the location, but this campaign is also clever in the way it targets the right time slot. It also fits in nicely with the rest of the marketing material from Domino’s – pushing people to the website (in this case) or app where it has further chance to sell its goods.
Domino’s now handles a third of orders from mobile devices and was able to grow sales thanks to its canny strategy. Speaking of a 7% growth in 2014, chairman Stephen Hemsley said the success was: “Surely one of the strongest growth stories on the UK high street. This strong performance was driven by a broad blend of activities including: investment into digital sales, smart use of SMS marketing, strong new product development and targeted incentives for franchisees to accelerate their order counts.”
Lesson: SMS marketing can support a wider strategy and help to deliver wider marketing and business success.
