Sms Industry

As we head into the busy summer travel season, travel brands will be looking for ways to connect with consumers. Of course, brands are constantly chided to avoid over-communicating with their opted-in subscribers. Even after consumers have subscribed to your brand's email or chosen to "like' you on Facebook, your brand's connection with them remains tenuous, because they can break off the relationship at any time.

A major temptation for some brands is to over-communicate with customers, inundating them with offers, deals, product news, and just about anything else that marketers believe could...

Retailers spend most of their budget and energy on the in-store experience. It only makes sense: upwards of 95% of revenue is generated inside the bricks and mortar. However, retailers should also consider the following:

The path to purchase often begins online. 73%-83% of US consumers research online before buying in-store, per a Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey.  

Shoppers leave stores to buy online.  Per a Harris Interactive Poll, 43% of adults report that they’ve visited a brick and mortar store to examine a product before purchasing it elsewhere.

Customer expectations of online/in-store...

It’s amazing to think that just a little over two decades ago, consumers had only two options to communicate across long distances: telephone and mail. In today’s mobile, post-PC world, consumers have countless ways to communicate with each other.

They have similar options when it comes to communicating with brands. The question is, how do consumers determine the proper channel for their communication needs? The decision appears to boil down to six factors:

CONTENT: Is this a marketing message?
As we document throughout the Channel Preference Survey, consumers are much more selective about the...

When Seth Godin introduced the concept of permission marketing in 1999, it was a big idea: ask customers to accept marketing messages from you. Looking at the best uses of mobile, I believe we are at a new crossroads; one where customers request marketing messages.

Never forget that digital messages rendered on mobile devices are personal and intrusive. On the Advertising Aggravation Continuum (shown below), they are most comparable to telemarketing. We all know what happened to that traditional marketing channel and the impact on brands that abused it.

In the middle of the continuum, people...

There’s a big difference between a first-class flight and a pedi-cab ride. Similarly, there are many differences between an ROI-optimized digital marketing strategy and a half-baked, unprofitable one. As a travel and hospitality brand, you’re tasked with creating a seamless booking process for your customers—or else you might miss that narrow window of time when they’re most likely to convert.

Our own Jeff Rohrs recently shared some tips for reaching the digital traveler in a blog post for Ataway Exchange, where he’ll be speaking next month. Here are five of the top tips from Jeff’s post and...

There’s no doubt that today’s consumers are mobile. They’re constantly on-the-go, sending and receiving communications of all types, and they’ve come to expect that information be (literally) in-hand at all times. Consumers in the UK and around the globe are no longer sitting at their computers searching for information—instead, they expect information to be available all around them. At the same time, they expect that information to be relevant to their lives.

The hyper-connected consumer expects brands of all sizes and industries to start meeting them where they are. It also provides new...

As a member of ExactTarget's Global Support leadership team, I see a lot of examples of how not to do things. Most of the time, my team can help you reverse-engineer the issue and align your work to industry and ExactTarget best practices. There are some mistakes, though, that even we can't help you come back from--and that can be disastrous to your marketing program.

Here are the top five that I've seen from my time at the support desk, and how you can avoid being a victim:

1. Location location location: Know your source of truth for subscriber information. Is it your internal CRM database? Is...

What happens after your customer engages with your mobile program? Your welcome strategy for any new mobile customer should include a combination of channels—email, mobile, and social—to support consumers’ cross-channel behaviors.

Don’t think of “welcome” as a single message. Whether your welcome strategy covers the first 10 days or two months, as with any relationship, it takes some time to get to know each other.

Here’s a sample step-by-step welcome campaign. We’ll use a retail company’s mobile app as an example, but you’ll see how these basic ideas can apply to almost any industry.

Day 1:...

I would like to think we all agree on the ability for the mobile environment to affect marketing strategy. It is a fact of nature, the nature of change. It is a solid fact that the majority of consumers don't leave home without their mobile devices (whether a tablet, mobile phone, or smartphone). Yet mobile is still a relatively young marketing channel. How can you step up your game to gain more mobile customers and interactions?

Promote your mobile program through other channels! You’ve invested resources to improve your mobile presence—whether with a responsive website, mobile-optimized...

Over the past couple of months, it seems the majority of buzz and conversation in our industry has been related to mobile. From our Inspired Marketing Predictions for 2013 to redefining strategy, everything is related to the idea of mobile becoming increasingly important to the strategy of every marketer... especially retail. I debated calling this blog post "The Power of Now," because frankly... we are dealing with the idea of now. 

Give me my product now.

Let me browse products now. 

I want pricing on your product (and all your competitors) now. 

Not long ago, social changed the way people...

Today we're pleased to present a guest post from Morgan Stewart of Trendline Interactive, the firm behind the numbers of our SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, & FOLLOWERS series. Morgan's unique behind-the-scenes perspective on this report is sure to provide some interesting insights!

As marketers, we live, eat, breathe, and sleep marketing.  We are always on the lookout for new tools and channels to use in our efforts. 

As we started our research for Marketers from Mars, we predicted that marketers would be different from consumers in terms of both how often and why they use communication channels such as...

This week, I'm presenting a series of posts that reveal some of the top things consumers want from marketers—backed by solid, statistical data. Then we take it a step further by providing real, actionable recommendations to help you improve your cross-channel marketing program.

Check out Part 1 of this series, then read on for today's tip!

TIP #2: Consumers want to buy from the brands they interact with

Online interaction has a direct impact on purchasing behavior. Our research tells us that , while email and direct mail have the strongest impact on purchase decisions, other channels...

Over the next several weeks, we will be sharing predictions on the future of marketing from 25 industry thought leaders. These predictions have been compiled in our new whitepaper, Inspired Marketing Predictions for 2013. Today, our own R.J. Talyor shares his thoughts.

Mobile ROI Takes Hold

2013 will be the year of the mobile return on investment (ROI). Marketers have already invested the resources into experimenting with mobile. In 2013, they’ll use data to prove what works, and what doesn’t.

No matter the sophistication level of a mobile program, marketers can calculate its ROI. And the good...

More than half of consumers owning a mobile device plan to use a smartphone or tablet to tackle their holiday shopping this year. According to Prosper Mobile Insights’ online poll of 333 smartphone users, among those 55.3% of mobile holiday shoppers:

• 62% say they plan to use their devices primarily to purchase products and compare prices
• 50% say they are most likely to use their devices to plan and research while making their holiday lists
• 43% say they are most likely to use their devices while shopping in-store or online

eMarketer shares a statistic from Chase Paymentech that US retailers with a...

Each Thursday at 11am EST, marketers from around the world join the ExactTarget user community on Twitter for a conversation about trends and campaign ideas across the interactive marketing industry.  We call the virtual coffee chat the ExactTarget Café. 

I don't mean to scare you or create undue cause for alarm, but there are enemies in our midst. Enemies that operate with such stealth that we fail to see the power they wield over the majority of our marketing efforts today. Enemies so cunning they have convinced us that they're on our side--like Nationwide. Enemies that are here with us now...AS WE SPEAK!

To catch a glimpse of these marketing enemies in all their crooked glory, just slowly glance down your arms to your hands--no sudden movements! Do you see them there? All cool and akimbo? 

Thumbs.

Yes, thumbs. The mortal enemy of marketers...

Connections 2012 brought together over 4,000 interactive marketers from around the globe. For us ExactTarget employees, the huge event is a time to focus on our world-class clients. That’s why the Client Experience Team launched first-ever Client Listening Lounge at Connections – an oasis where we could interact with our clients and listen to their stories.

We leveraged surveys at iPad kiosks to gather insight from hundreds of people, asking about their current and future planning. How much did they expect their companies’ totally interactive spend to change in the next 12 months? As it turns...

What do I need to know BEFORE I invite people to opt in to my SMS program?  When do I need to put “Msg & data rates may apply” in my text messages?  Who makes the rules and who enforces them?  What happens if I don’t follow them?  Read on for the answers to these fascinating questions and more.

Who developed the SMS marketing standards?

The Consumer Best Practices were developed by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and served as the first set of regulations.  Since enforcement is the responsibility of the CTIA, they have subsequently developed the CSC Monitoring Compliance Handbook. 

Who...

It’s amazing to think that just a little over two decades ago, consumers had only two options to communicate across long distances—telephone and mail. In today’s mobile, post-PC world, consumers have countless ways to communicate with each other—and they have similar options when it comes to communication with brands. The question is how do consumers determine the proper channel for their communication needs. The decision appears to boil down to six factors:

1. CONTENT

Is this a marketing message?

Consumers are much more selective about the channels through which they will allow marketing...