#8 Online & SMS Promotions

Online & SMS Promotions

Direct Marketing Tips by Mediapost Hit Mail

#8

Faster & Cheaper

Direct marketing is not only about sending tons of letters, inserts, big envelopes or catalogues. Its principles apply for every channel that allows you to communicate directly with you customers.

Doing this online or via mobile phone is muchquicker, cheaper and easier (but of course, you cannot rely on the same great results as in direct mail) .

You can benefit a lot from your online and SMS promotions, even when the results themselves are not quite promising.

How

Reading the results

Online promotions

By using Internet you can minimize the risk and waste of time and money by making decisions

based on not what you assume, but on what do you know.

Some types of online promos

Online interactive promotion game: customers play an interactive

game associated with the promoted product; no purchase needed.

Contests/ sweepstakes/ lucky draws: Participants are

automatically registered for the event by purchasing the product/

entering a barcode/ unique promo code/ bill number from

purchased product in a dedicated promotional website.

Viral elements are strongly recommended but they are very hard to

be implemented.

Note: Always ask the participants in your online promotion to fill

some personal data – names, address, e-mail, mobile number.

Every gained customer is valuable.

On your website...…

Your website visitors do something –- they visit your website. It may sound stupid, but it’s crucial. They raise their hands telling you they are on the market. Moreover, they want something - it could be your new product, service, information or simply the lucky draw participation you have promised to them.

Permission..

If you run an online promotion where sales are not so much, but many people have registered, it is still good for your business.

When you ask for permission to communicate again with your prospects, you can use the data they provide for your upcoming promotions. It’s free. Don’t miss it.

This permission is probably the most important thing you should get from your website visitors.

What you could offer in exchange?

People are not so happy when providing their data, unless there is a good reason for doing that. Here are some things you could offer in exchange:

E-cards; Polls; Ask an expert feature; Free catalogue; Your latest research full with interesting findings; Quizzes; A free report on a subject of interest; Online contests; Lucky draw with small branded prizes (people love them); ‘Members only’ areas; Newsletter sign-up.

What about the SMS?

You can organize Send-and-Win Promotion with prizes using SMS as a channel to receive the barcodes/unique codes of purchased products. It’s easy for you and also for your customers.

They can download digital content (e.g. songs, games, images, etc.) on their mobile devices as an incentive for participation.

SMS - what’s next?

If you manage to get your prospect’s phone number, you can use it for quick and brief communication on your recent activities.

You have opened a new branch in the countryside? Inform your customers or prospects living there.

Or you launch a new discount session in your store? Drive traffic to it by sending SMS notification to the people living nearby.

Note: Do it carefully, don’t be too pushy. People are more conservative on getting SMS notifications too frequently.

Our five SMS & online tips:

1. Offer incentives to encourage your customers to do what you want them to do;

2. Always ask for data - phone number, name, e-mail address etc. You can use it later on, free of charge.

3. Resend a promotion to the same target - people like “a second chance"

4. Make the promotional mechanism simple and the participation of the consumers easy and fun.

5. Ask your registrants to invite their friends - this is member-get-member or viral, and you don’t pay for it.

A point to remember

Promotions are usually regulated by the law.

Before you start organizing such campaigns you should contact both your agency and lawyers for advice.

Example of such regulation in the Bulgarian law is that the value of the prizes of a promotion should be not more than 100 times of the product’s price or 15 times the minimal labor salary.

More to come:

1. Why Do You Need Your Own Database?

2. How to Build a Database?

3. How to Manage Your Database?

4. How to Segment your Customers?

5. Tests - How to Run and Analyze Them?

6. The Deliverability Problem

7. Personalization

8. Online & SMS Promotions

9. Useful Direct Marketing Tips

10. How to Launch Your CRM Program?

11. The Advantages of Direct Marketing (Summary)

two more slides...

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Phone: (+359) 2 962 86 29

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E-mail: [email protected]

Web: www.MediapostHitMail.bg

just one more...

Hello,

This is the eight presentation in the “Direct Marketing Tips” series and we are close to the end. Please don’t forget that you can share your opinion with us at your convenience by dropping an e-mail at

[email protected],

or calling us (+359 885 360 715). When you do, we'll send you a valuable incentive: you will get all the presentations as soon as they are available.

Thanks!

Hristo Radichev

Country Manager, Mediapost Hit Mail

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