Why Start An TEXT SMS MARKETING Program?
These subscribers are asking you to provide them with your promotions. They want you to give them reasons for buying your product. Offers that are sent to your SMS Marketing program subscribers are delivered in a timely fashion. No more receiving email coupons that have expired.
If you’re new to text message marketing, something that’s important to understand is the difference between a shortcode and a longcode. A shortcode is a 5 or 6 digit number that the subscriber sends their text message to in order to subscribe or interact with the SMS system. Like tv voting where a viewer texts the word “vote” to 54545 – the 54545 number is the “shortcode”.
Shortcodes have to be approved and accepted by each mobile company for it to work on their network. The process takes weeks or months and is very expensive. For this reason, an SMS marketing companies will buy and set up the shortcode and then lease “keywords” on their system to small business owners like you.
A keyword is how their system knows what member to send the text message to. If you want to market your business, there’s a good chance you might want to use the word “buyhomes” in a campaign, like text the word “30%Off” to 54545. Well, on a typical shortcode system, someone else probably is already using the keyword “30%off”, which means you can’t use it. This means keywords are precious and there’s a lot of competition. This also means keywords cost a lot of money. Not so with longcodes.
A “longcode” is just a regular local phone number and it belongs to only you. That means you can use any keyword you want and as many as you want and NEVER PAY MORE.
Another nightmare we’ve seen with shortcodes is that since they are typically shared with hundreds or thousands of other users, someone might be spamming or abusing others with the same shortcode you’re using. We saw a shortcode get dropped by the mobile companies for this very reason and EVERYONE lost the service. This affected countless businesses.
Call-To-Subscribe Feature
The ability to call-to-subscribe adds a huge advantage over other systems. This means ANYONE with a mobile phone can quickly and easily get on your list and it gives you a unique advantage when attracting customers to your business. This is especially effective with RADIO advertising. It’s much easier (and a bit safer) to dial a phone number rather than texting a keyword to a shortcode WHILE DRIVING!