Bulk SMS Campaigns
Hi, this is the next post in a series of papers about how the return on investment in software development programmes can be calculated.
Businesses who do not efficiently calculate the return and viability of their businesses do not have an easy means to change their business model or expand it. To take this further, the return of all the multiple market operations should actually be calculated by firms.
In this post, we are very clear on how the exact return on bulk SMS campaigns can be calculated efficiently. Note that this is just the opinion of the author, please feel free to comment and give your own ideas in this respect, all about learning and sharing to enhance the working of industry.
First a piece of history. Most people would accept that SMS has become massive, that the technology is easy and very short, most notably, forcing you to get to the point quickly with what you communicate.
However, having said this, corporations see SMSing as a big advantage
How to measure
We are going to use the example of supermarket firms selling a variety of services and goods to their customers.
Step 1: Your current customers are like diamonds, make sure that you know as much about them as they let you know at least ask every customer for their cell number and first name, so that you can give that person a perfectly personalised SMS and make it look like you typed it yourself. On that customer, you can create a sales profile, purchasing trend, etc.
Bulk SMS Campaigns
Step 2:Decide what kind of campaign you would like consumers to give. Making sure any SMS that goes to a customer has an offer/discount or something in it that will guarantee that your customers are still excited about your company getting SMSes. SMS details or announcement style is never a good idea, they will irritate the customer, lose a customer or the customer telling you to stop SMSing them. In other words, my advice is that if you’re going to send a campaign, give something to consumers you know are interested in that programme, for example 10 percent off a certain service for a week, come get a gift because it’s your birthday soon. However the argument here is that an SMS campaign that gives a customer anything back will always see a far higher return than a campaign that just offers details. Experience has also proven that by comparing total market volume and purchasing amount, the expense involved in selling anything is better than offering none at all.
Step 3:Add to each SMS a special code and state that the user must send the code to redeem the 10 percent, donation, etc. You know where I’m going with this now, but you’re already saying customers are not going to come to the store to show the number. The fact of adding a, say 5 digit code to the end of an SMS means that the consumer now has to take an intervention and this can be seen as bad, but note that the aim is to measure just how many people come back as a result of the SMS, curious consumers who get the SMS can come to your store to display the code if they are very intermediate. You will also get those customers who come to the store and say they have got an SMS, a successful system will allow you to take the cell number of those customers and check if they have received the sms and then get the code sent to them.
Step 4:Your point of sale software package must have a section built in that allows you to insert SMS codes into the device, and then tests against the cell number for that customer and most significantly, get the programme to automatically either offer the gift (product code, service code), automatically give the goods or service discount etc. The customer can then see that this SMS code really helps to get what is offered to them very easily, thereby making the customer more responsive in the future to the same campaigns. However most significantly, the software would have reported that a discount or item was granted as a result of an SMS code, oh, and I said that anything else purchased on that invoice can also be safely linked to that SMS directly! About why? Well, it’s all about the impulse buying syndrome that many people show, now not only have you got the customer to come back to your shop, but as a result of your location, they have bought additional items and services
Bulk SMS Campaigns
Step 5:
Finally, the software package has to provide a detailed report based on a date range and or SMS campaign that displays ROI in SMS campaigns. This is not such a difficult report, the cost price consists of:
The price of all the things on the invoices attributed to the campaign – the expense of the SMS campaign as a whole –
The sales part consists simply of the purchase price of all the products on all the invoices for that SMS promotion (i.e. real selling price minus discount if that is what was provided)
The study then subtracts revenue from sales expenses to give the campaign benefit and then shows a clear percentage of ROI.
That’s it, you now have a manner to provide an exact way to track the exact return on an SMS campaign, importantly however you need to have software that is able to offer these capabilities. Most clients (businesses) discover that the hit rate of clients responding to the quantity of SMSes sent is probably lower than 10% but that the return and profitability of the campaign far outweighs what looks like few people coming back on your campaign. Remember it doesn’t take huge quantities of people responding to turn a good profit, in most instances it only takes 2-3 clients returning to accept your offer. 10% of 10 000 clients coming back is serious profit for any business, considering it took a well thought out SMS and 5 minutes to send 10 000 SMS’s to clients, that’s probably the best money you could have spent on marketing ever.
Also remember that a report displaying ROI on an SMS campaign will greatly assist you in becoming even more effective with SMS campaigns, ie what time of the month has a better return, what season, time of day, what sorts of discounts client like best etc, all of these business decisions can be taken very easily with a report such as this in front of your eyes.
A final note:
If you notice that your hit rate is too poor for your taste, the chances are that your campaign is a bit to broad, rather send some more focused customers more specific promotions, that will definitely make your numbers grow, if that doesn’t work then maybe the problem is in the service you provide customers, better service often brings customers back. I had customers who had absolutely no return on SMS campaigns and they sent the same SMS campaign that other customers had sent with great results, but without asking them, it was obvious that in any case they simply could not give there customers a decent service, so no amount of SMSing and discounts would benefit them.
I hope some individuals and firms have benefited with this report. Annotations are always welcome
