PlusOne - Musings of a marketer

One of the key elements of any successful marketing campaign is testing your offer.

For businesses who regularly print advertise, this takes the form of changing one element of the advertisement at a time, and measuring the change in response. If the change is negative, undo the change and change something else until an optimum response rate is achieved. This is a proven process, even if time consuming.

SMS text messaging as a form of offer distribution (and even redemption) is ideally suited to test marketing for several reasons:

Cost.
SMS represents an affordable marketing channel, so matter what size the business. Test marketing can be achieved by initially splitting your target lists into two, three, or even four lists. Make each offer, strong and unique. Once sent, ensure that all responses are tracked. This tracking is ESSENTIAL in allowing you to compare response rates.

Speed.
If you have large lists, you can test on a part of that list (by dividing that part as described above). If offer number three works best, you can then apply this successful message to the rest of the list - even on the same day, or within hours if you have made a time limited offer and the redemption method is equally quick (like texting back or calling a number to uptake the offer. This speed cannot be achieved using any other marketing medium, including email (because often people do not check their emails for several days, but mobiles are always with people). The successful message can then be further refined by ongoing modification and testing.

Depending on your business and the offer, a successful offer can be repeated regularly, increasing sales and boosting your bottom line.

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