Bulk SMS marketing for Easter

by ZimHost

Bulk SMS simply put is the sending of an SMS to a large number of recipients at one go.

This could include churches, banks, organisations sending out up to 100 000 messages, marketing, advertising or even running promotions about some Easter holiday function or church service etc.

The messages can be personalised addressing the recipients by name and demography according to location, profession, age, sex etc.

Like any business, Small to Medium Size businesses and large businesses including banks are always seeking innovate ways to communicate efficiently and effectively with their customers.

While postal mail, phone calls and email newsletters have been utilised to maintain good customer service and increase sales, text message (or SMS) is evolving as the preferred method of receiving “information updates” and promos.

Although text messaging started as a peer-to-peer communication, businesses are adopting this practice in order to keep in touch with their customers.

The advantage of text message marketing is that the message arrives in the recipient’s hand with no spam, snail mail, junk mail or hang-ups to worry about; it’s read when it’s received. Broadly, it’s all about the “psychology” of text messages. They reach people wherever they are, anytime, day or night with a sense of personal communication. Research shows that:

1. Text messages have a 94 percent read rate!

2. Twenty-three percent of text messages are forwarded to other users who can alternatively forward to others and so forth. When the message contents are particularly interesting then the forwarding rate can easily reach 40 percent.

3. Offers sent via text convert 10-20 times higher than email/direct mail.

4. Ninety-five percent of all cell phones in Zimbabwe can be reached via text.

5. Approximately 12 percent of mobile subscribers who receive a text advert respond to it.

6. Text messaging campaigns increase customer acquisition by 5-15 percent.

7. Over 90 percent of Zimbabweans will not leave home without their cell phone.

eTEXT Zimbabwe (www.etext.co.zw), a subsidiary of the 14 time award winning ZIMHOST Webdesigners, is a bulk SMS text facility that allows users to send bulk sms to any number; Econet, Telecel or Netone or international numbers at a minimum cost of less than 2cents/SMS. For users without a database eTEXT Zimbabwe offers its demographic database of subscribed recipients and can either send on the client’s behalf or create a login portal for client to send and manage.

Customised SMS Advertising

With Customised SMS Advertising, custom messages can be sent in bulk to targeted customers addressing them by their full name, giving them updates of their balances, due dates etc.

The data is first loaded into an excel sheet/csv file and can be as long as 100 000 rows with variables used as place holders to be replaced by the values of the customer in question. For example, a bank might want to send 10 000 customers’ updates on their balances, due dates and account numbers.

The customer database is loaded into an excel sheet and uploaded on eTEXT Zimbabwe to send the personalised information within a couple of minutes.

Advanced Users (API)

Our system allows advanced integration for those clients who want to have the sms portal integrated into their existing applications or prefer connecting to us using an API (Application Programmable Interface).

This is quite convenient for those clients who have their own mobile phone database and prefer to either purchase the bulk SMS from us or use our API to integrate onto their systems.