This post is written by guess blogger Pavel Webb.
Email is dead!
Okay, it’s not actually dead. But it’s definitely time to start treating a mobile number and SMS marketing with the same priority and focus as email.
Why?
Because customers take their phones with them everywhere. You don’t need to settle for marketing to their inbox, when you can send an SMS message right to their pocket!
Smartphones make integrating your campaigns even easier because their web browsers allow you to display your existing landing pages. According to the Guardian, smartphones now account for more than 50% of phone sales in Europe.
Getting the numbers yourself
If you already have an email list, then it’s time to add a mobile number to your sign up form, giving your prospects an option to receive updates via SMS. Hotels are already doing this allowing a confirmation message via opted-in SMS complete with sat nav coordinates to plug right into a smartphone. Once they have the number, they have permission to send targeted offers.
Let’s say, for example, you have a weight loss or dieting site, and that you already have a whole site or landing page dedicated to your offer. Maybe you already give away an eBook or recipe book as an incentive for prospects to sign up to your email list.
Perfect. Simply add a mobile option into your subscription form, or better yet, create a second value-add specifically for mobile: “add your mobile number and receive daily encouragement by SMS.”
Buying the numbers
Make no mistake, getting a mobile number is definitely harder than getting an email address. But preferences are changing and people are becoming more comfortable with the idea of SMS marketing – especially when it is relevant to their needs.
Besides building your own SMS marketing list, you can also buy batches of numbers from others who run co-registration via CPA offers. Many of these marketers will sell you names and numbers segmented by interests, but this should really only be considered by marketers with experience in mobile marketing.
What and how to promote your offer
Beginning in SMS marketing can be as easy as adding a shortened URL to an SMS offer that sends the visitor to a mobile-optimised web page.
If your site isn’t optimised for mobile, that’s okay because today’s smartphones have capable browsers and most of your customers will be able to view some version of your site with little trouble.
Sending messages
Don’t worry, you’re not going to have to sit down and manually enter numbers in a phone.
Just like managing and sending out hundreds of emails to a list requires a specialised email management tool, sending out hundreds of messages to a list also requires a specialised service to make it easy to manage and send SMS messages in bulk.
A good system will allow you integrate your web forms right into your mobile database through an API. They will also make it easy to segment your list and connect directly to 
global mobile networks.
A robust SMS marketing platform will let you enter your campaign or offer once, and send it out to the whole list or just to the segment that you choose.
With the right offers and with a little experience, you’ll be well on your way to making SMS marketing an indispensable part of your outbound marketing.
Pavel Webb is from the mobile marketing company Text Magic, for more info on the company visit here: mobile marketing
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This means that sms marketing will be replace email marketing in the near future
Some good points you make here, I do have to agree that SMS marketing is definitely a great way to market to someone, who doesn’t look at their SMS when they come through. The only problem I can see looking into the future is that if it goes down the same route as email marketing then everyone will be getting so many that you probably wont be so keen and quick in checking them.
Steve
Secrets To Becoming A Super Affiliate
Pavel Webb Reply:
December 2nd, 2011 at 1:36 am
Carriers fight with SMS spam, that’s why it will never reach the ‘Email’ level. Imagine if your ISP was responsible for filtering out spam Emails? You wouldn’t get much of them.
Also, all the SMS gateways have the same ‘unsubscribe’ option, you simply reply to text with ‘STOP’ and you will never receive a message from that sender again.
I am curious. Would this would be kind of spam?
N!ce read 🙂 What about push messages on mobile devices ?
Hi Matt
Thanks for this article on mobile marketing. This is something that I have to set up as well as my other marketing mix.
BTW I love your SEO Experts Academy course. I no longer feel hopeless when it comes to SEO. Your course makes it easy to do SEO for my sites.
I’m looking forward to getting your Rapid Profit Formula as well
Cheers
Dave
Keeping in mind, a number of new concerns evolve from mobile marketing since they are quite personal in nature. These include mobile spam, personal identification, location information, and wireless security.
Everyone was surprised when Apple was continuously tracking the geolocation all their iphone users.
And no, sms will not replace email, just like computers did not replace paper. 🙂
Matt, what your suggesting in regards to buying mobile phone numbers is in gross violation of the Mobile Marketing Associations’s U.S. Best Practices, section 1.5-9.
Not to mention when you send them text messages you are now violating federal law under the TCPA.
You may want to re-think the advice you are giving…
Hi Matt, as a side note, at what point would you suggest before pushing some type of monetization onto a site. Assuming that you are building up a client base and gaining trust? Eg. once the user base hits 100?, 1000?, or more of a time thing like a couple of months?
Matt Carter Reply:
December 1st, 2011 at 8:14 am
There is nothing wrong with monetizing your site immediately, as long as you give the customer what they want.
Jason Campbell Reply:
December 1st, 2011 at 10:44 am
True, I could possibly get away with sticking some adsense on there. But, really don’t want to look like one of those spammy sites that stick out like a sore thumb. With my particular site that I am targetting, it is the users that are generating the content. So, I just have to keep the back-end feature packed and working. 🙂
Great information! I had no idea that you had to set up a different campaign for SMS, that is really good to know. Can you use this for the free Google email system? I have a form for my visitors to enter their email address and then recieve updates in their inboxes. I don’t actually have a paid service such as AWeber anymore.