Changes to Facebook Fan Pages Breathes New Life Into Email & SMS Marketing

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If you are the CEO or owner of a business, or are in charge of your company’s marketing efforts, you are probably already aware of Facebook’s recent algorithm changes and how they are dramatically affecting the reach of your Facebook page. It used to be that you could market your products or service on Facebook virtually for FREE and reach a HUGE audience without paying anything. You simply needed to post content that people would react to and engage with. However, Facebook has throttled down reach SO much that it has become almost impossible to reach the same numbers of people with your Facebook page, especially if you are refusing to pay Facebook for sponsored posts and advertising. It does not matter if you are still creating original and engaging content; yes, it does help a little and you will notice your reach go up a little bit, but there is no way you are going to reach the same numbers of people you did before Facebook’s algorithm change on April 14th. So how do you combat this dramatic change in your company’s brand exposure? You would be surprised where we found our answer.

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Facebook Fan Page Reach Drops to below 3% on Average

First, let’s take a look at the numbers. Due to Facebook’s recent changes to reach, you now reach about 1-3% of your total audience with any given post. That means that if you have a page of 200 thousand Likes, you are reaching a little over a thousand of those people with any given post. That is PUTRID compared to what you used to be able to reach.

In fact, we actually did a data analysis regarding this using our sister companies’ Facebook pages which have a cumulative total of 1.4 MILLION fans. Historically we used to be able to post something on any one of those sites and we would reach a vast majority of our fans, or even more through sharing! However more recently, after finding out the total number of people we reached per post, we then divided that number by the total number of people who saw ANY post we posted during that particular time period. The resulting number is the AVERAGE PERCENTAGE of the people who saw the post who also LIKED the page. We ran this test in the month following Facebook’s change on April 14th and the results have been staggering. Of the five pages we ran this study on, NOT ONE post on any page even hit 3% of our audience! To be specific, the average percentage of the people who LIKED our pages who actually SAW our posts on each page read like this: 2.9%, 1.3%, 1.3%, 2.3%, and 0.069% respectively!!! That is an average reach per post of 1.574%.  No, we are NOT kidding. Also, keep in mind that we changed NOTHING as far as what we posted, when we posted, and how we posted.

Along with this startling information, any post you put on Facebook will die within 2-3 days, or even sooner! So not only are your Facebook posts reaching far fewer people, but they are also being erased from the socialsphere much quicker than ever before. So how do you reach these people when you don’t have the gigantic Facebook megaphone you used to have?

So where do you turn? Many marketing directors and agencies have begun to fall back to Email and SMS Marketing.

Email Marketing Advantages over Facebook

Email marketing has a relatively strong reach, or open rate in email speak, when relating it back to the reach you are currently getting on Facebook. Email open rates are generally 15% of your database, which means that about 15% of the emails that you send to your email database will actually be opened by the receiver. Knowing that you are barely reaching even 2% of your audience on Facebook, email marketing has experienced a rebirth due to its reliability and efficiency relative to the results you will get on Facebook.

It is also important to note that email open rates also experience a diminishing return. This means that with each email blast you send out to your entire database, your open rates will gradually diminish. This is due to people either unsubscribing from your database, trashing your email, or your emails are being sent to people’s spam folders. So you will either have to switch methods again to make up for this loss, or find a way to consistently grow your email database while you are employing email marketing as the driving force behind your marketing campaign. Regardless of how you look at it, it would be extremely difficult for any marketing campaign to survive on Facebook and email alone, so where do you turn next?

SMS Marketing Advantages over Facebook

SMS absolutely CRUSHES Facebook when it comes to effectiveness and efficiency. Think about it; SMS has a 99% open rate and a 97% open rate within 3 minutes! This means that almost literally EVERY message you send yo your SMS database WILL be seen by your subscribers. They HAVE to! Have you ever been able to delete a text message without looking at it? Exactly, you can’t. Additionally, SMS messages NEVER die until they are deleted by the receiver. That means that ANY message you send to your subscribers WILL be read. They HAVE to be read to even be deleted!

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So STOP banging your head against the brick wall Facebook has built when it comes to exposure. You WILL NOT get the same reach you did before, Facebook has made it a point to make that absolutely impossible to attain. Switch your marketing efforts to SMS and send messages that you KNOW people will see! To put it simply; SMS will ALWAYS reach 99% of your audience, NO MATTER WHAT! Can you possibly think of a better medium to market to your audience through?

We couldn’t either.

Mobile Alerts for Conference Calls and Meetings

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A majority of the articles we write are related to mobile marketing and how you can leverage mobile in your favor to promote your brand, product, or service. However, mobile offers so much more than just the power to market directly to the hands of your subscribers. You can also use mobile to improve communication within your company and encourage more participation and input from your employees and coworkers. The great thing about this is that there are a number of different ways you can choose to do this.

 

The first thing you want to remember is that over 90% of text messages are read by recipients within 3 minutes of delivery. This means that if you want to get in touch with a particular person, or a particular group of people, mobile messaging is the quickest and most effective way to do this. People have a tendency to become preoccupied with whatever they are doing and may not check their emails or answer their phones when they are busy, yet they will still read and respond to text messages. So if you are wanting to announce an impromptu meeting or conference call, sending a text message to the desired participants is your best bet at getting the attendance and participation you are wanting. Employees and coworkers will receive your messages in real-time, wherever they may be, and will respond and react.

You can also encourage active participation and engagement from your attendees by setting up a mobile alerts program which will allow attendees to send and receive text messages about things happening during the meeting, conference call, or event. You can also set up a display screen, or even multiple screens, in which participants can send messages and images to so that it broadcasts to the entire event. This will dramatically increase participation and engagement from your employees and coworkers and will ultimately result in much more productive and effective meetings and conference calls. When everyone is participating, things get done!

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Once you have concluded your event, you can also choose to get some feedback from the participants using your mobile platform. Text surveys and polls can be sent to attendees afterwards and their responses can be collected, tabulated, and utilized for future adjustments and improvements. Not only that, but your participants will take note of this and feel like their opinion matters and is being heard. This grows employee morale and ultimately leads to a much more productive and happy company.

The beauty of everything we just talked about is that it is simple and easy! It does not take much effort to set up a mobile alerts program for your company, and once it has been implemented, it is even easier to run! Stop having ineffective meetings and conference calls. Implement a mobile alerts program into your company today and reap the benefits!

 

 

SMS Marketing Statistics 2013

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They’ve always said, “Numbers never lie.” Here at Anchor, we strongly believe in this concept along with the fact that metrics are the best measurement to prove that ANYTHING works. Luckily, we’ve been able to come across a ton of information directly related to the success of mobile marketing and SMS marketing, and we’d like to share this information with you. These SMS marketing statistics and numbers are a great way to get a better illustration of the mobile marketing landscape we see today, and how consumers are using their phones, smartphones, and text messages to access information, get deals and discounts from brands, and research and communicate in general. So, without further ado, let us launch into the numbers!

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SMS Marketing By The Numbers

-The average person looks at their phone 150 times per day! (Tweet This!)

-SMS produces 6-8 times MORE engagement than email! (Tweet This!)

-Only 20% of all emails are read. (Tweet This!)

-Only 12% of Facebook posts are read. (Tweet This!)

-Only 29% of tweets are read. (Tweet This!)

-A whopping 98% of SMS messages are read! (Tweet This!)

-70% of people in the United States have stated that they would like to receive offers from brands on their mobile devices. (Tweet This!)

-68% of people in the United Kingdom have stated that they would like to receive offers from brands on their mobile devices. (Tweet This!)

-The average response time for an email (business to community) is 2 days. (Tweet This!)

-The average response time for a text message is only 90 seconds! (Tweet This!)

-Email only experiences a 4.2% click-through rate. (Tweet This!)

-SMS experiences a whopping 19% click-through rate! (Tweet This!)

-SMS coupons are 10 TIMES more likely to be redeemed! (Tweet This!)

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If you would like to get the inforgraphic with all of these statistics on it, then be sure to check out ourinforgraphics page. These SMS marketing statistics can be used for a number of things, especially to give statistical and numerical evidence that SMS marketing DOES, in fact, work. It isn’t a secret anymore that everyone is using mobile devices, so if you’re not mobile yet, you are only asking to fade into the sunset, forgotten by anyone and everyone who is relevant in the industry, including your customers. Go mobile TODAY and harness all of these people who are using mobile. These numbers don’t lie, so you don’t have to either.

Helfrich SMS Patent Licensing Lawsuit FAILS – NY TIMES & CBS Win!

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Today an Illinois Federal Judge tossed 5 law suits alleging that brands including NY Times and CBS had infringed the Helferich Patent Licensing patents by sending text message alerts (SMS) to mobile phones including a URL, ruling that the patents are EXHAUSTED when the manufacturer sells a phone to the consumer.

US District Judge John W. Darrah rejected the patent troll’s position that the defense of patent exhaustion did not apply to infringement allegations since it only licensed the handset portion of it’s patented inventions to mobile phone manufacturers and not the “content” claims.  The defendants’ SMS infringed those content claims the troll contended.

“Once the handset manufacturers sell the handsets which embody HPL’s patents, HPL’s patents are exhausted as to all third parties, including defendants,” Judge Darrah said in granting a joint motion for summary judgment filed by the New York Times, CBS, G4 Media LLC, NBC’s Bravo Media LLC unit and JC Penny.

Allowing the troll to “carve out individual claims from a single patent” and recover financial gain from downstream third parties that send SMS content to a licensed handset device, he said, “would frustrate the purposes of the doctrine, including an efficient method of determining that a patent had been exhausted.”

“To the contrary, the confusion that would be created by HPL’s model would produce uncertainty regarding the rights of third parties and end users and potentially deter further innovation,” Judge Darrah warned.

This case is part of a lawsuit blitz in which the troll has accused many media companies and other brands of patent infringement causing much angst in the mobile marketing industry.  Many companies just paid for licensing rather than fight.  Other mobile marketing software companies partnered with the patent troll to use fear in generating new business.

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According to HPL, it has sold licenses for its technology to the entire cellular handset industry, constructing the agreements in such a way that it could recover multiple royalties on the same patents from a single sale or use.

Because of the distinction between its handset and content claims, HPL argued, patent exhaustion did not apply under the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Quanta Computer v. LG Electronics, which held that when a patented invention is sold, all of the patent’s claims are exhausted, regardless of any narrowly tailored licensing agreements.

But Judge Darrah said HPL could not “avoid patent exhaustion by attempting to shield some of the claims within the patents-in-suit from being covered by licensing agreements.”

“Once HPL licensed its patent portfolio to, for example, Motorola, downstream customers and third-party users of Motorola devices employing HPL’s patents cannot be found to be infringing,” he included in his order.

The judge also made mention that there would be little value to mobile phone makers to purchase licenses to receive content from a third party “if the content provider, like the defendants, could not send the message to the licensed handset device without infringing the patents.”

Source: http://www.law360.com/articles/464984/ny-times-cbs-escape-mobile-alert-patent-suits

Is SMS Marketing Too Invasive?

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Mobile and SMS marketing have been around for awhile now, so obviously marketers have been learning how to implement them more efficiently into their overall marketing campaign. However, it still seems to be unclear whether SMS marketing is too invasive, or not invasive enough. Looking at companies who have enacted SMS campaigns, it is apparent that some of them are sending way too many text messages to their subscribers, while others are clearly not sending enough. SMS marketing can be your most effective marketing tool, but marketers are going to have to learn how to find a happy medium between too much, and not enough.

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SMS marketing has always been a great way for marketers, companies, and agencies to create ongoing dialogue with their end users. However, the industry is still learning how to use it more efficiently. “The SMS industry has come a long way in diminishing spam and improving relevancy,” said Shuli Lowy, Marketing Director at Ping Mobile. “However, we all still bare the scars of a dark past time when unsolicited and intrusive text messages were rampant in the kingdom of mobile.”

This has obviously changed over the years. Mobile and SMS marketers now need to follow strict guidelines when it comes to the opt-in and opt-out process. “Marketers engaging in SMS marketing now have to begin their consumer dialogue with clear instructions on how to opt out,” continued Lowy. “As well as information about message charges, frequency of messages, and information on how to get further assistance. Opt-in consent that is received via non-mobile portals need to be confirmed via mobile and premium SMS campaigns need to exercise a double opt-in process.”

Since there is a clearly defined opt-in process, end users can choose which brands and companies they want to receive messages from. Best practices say for businesses to text their subscribers around 3-4 messages a month. Many companies, however, are exceeding this rate or not even meeting it. Too many messages will only annoy and irritate your end users, but not enough messages will cause your end users to forget about you, completely defeating the entire point of an SMS campaign.

“Marketers must remember that the goal is not to dangle a piece of candy in front of consumers and then trap them into a mobile relationship prison,” Ms. Lowy said. “Instead the goal is to invite consumers in to engage with your brand through mobile and make sure to offer compelling content to keep the consumer interested and strengthen that relationship, but always leave the door open should they wish to leave.”

Lowy also said that it is important to exercise a double opt-in process for normal campaigns. This isn’t required, but it is highly recommended. She also recommended closing messages with a restatement of how to opt-out.

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“The second most important strategy tip to create a powerful SMS experience is to ensure that your text messages don’t repeat information that consumers already know,” she continued. “Do not send consumers the same content via email, social media, and mobile. Your marketing channels should work together and weave into a multi-faceted brand relationship.”

Since 97% of all SMS messages are read within minutes of being received, we are starting to see smaller businesses adopt SMS into their marketing campaigns. “SMS marketing has already been used by large brands for years,” Lowy said. “Those brands are already moving on to more complex forms of mobile marketing which are propelling the smartphone era. However, small businesses are still very new to mobile and SMS is the most sensible place for them to dip their toes in the mobile marketing pool. Small B2C facing businesses have a lot to gain from SMS and we will see them starting to adopt it as a marketing tool in 2013.”

The general consensus among marketers is to take into account several factors when deciding when and when not to text their subscribers. Time, location, and interaction all need to be considered before sending messages, and agencies need to think about when and where their subscribers will be when they receive their messages. Determining whether or not you are sending enough or not enough is tricky, but keeping these factors in mind can help make that determination much easier.

Alex Campbell, Co-founder and Chief Innovation officer at Vibes, commented, “People text with their friends, and if you as a marketer are let into that circle, you’ve really earned someone’s trust. Once you build trusting relationships, that’s a powerful – and winning – connection for you and your customer, which often leads to brand loyalty.”

Remember that SMS messaging is a real-time marketing channel that works most efficiently with ongoing messaging. However, if you are doing it too much, or even worse, not providing value to your subscribers with your messages, you are fighting a losing battle. Keep your messages to 3-4 a month, only going over if you feel you have real value to offer the customer. Include multimedia in your texts, brand logos, product images, or even how-to videos. All of these have been proven to increase returns on SMS marketing. You also want to promote your SMS campaign anywhere and everywhere. SMS marketing success increases as your database gets bigger. The more people that are receiving your texts, the higher chance you have of one of those subscribers coming to you for business.

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SMS marketing can be your best and most efficient tool if you use it right. The funny thing is that it’s not that hard. Companies who use SMS inefficiently simply did not educate themselves properly or didn’t even take the time to educate themselves. Follow SMS marketing’s best practices, and what you’ve read in this article, and you are sure to have a very strong and effective SMS campaign.

SMS Marketing Software Improvements

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In a world where everything is constantly evolving, we thought we’d keep up! We’ve recently made quite a few improvements to our SMS Marketing Software to stay up with mobile marketing trends.

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For starters, the whole statistics reporting system has been upgraded. Within the system, you now can go 18 months back into your records from the statistics search page. This lets you see just how well mobile marketing is working for you.

You now have the power of image uploads from the wysiwyg (What You See Is What You Get) editor on mobile landing pages and the Applications tool.

Speaking of the Apps tool, it’s got its fair share of upgrades as well. Now, within our platform, our apps tool has a template system, footer images and descriptions, domain masking, and more.

In the upgraded QR Code portion of out SMS Marketing Program, you can now have colored codes and vCards. So, instead of havng just the standard black and white QR codes, you can add that little “something extra” in QR Codes with a pop of color.

Overall, system throughput has increased substantially. (Throughput meaning the average rate of successful message delivery–this means more messages getting to where they need to go and getting your marketing messages out there!)

In our SMS marketing Software, we offer our digital publishing tool. We’re currently working on a few more nifty bells and whistles, including a QR Code based coupon redemption system. Stay tuned for the latest and greatest with our platform changes!

Not a user of out SMS Marketing program yet? Give us a yell and get started today.
Not sure about mobile marketing? Check out some stats and see for yourself: mobile marketing is a smart choice for any marketing plan. Own a small business and still not convinced? Check out our recent blog post about how we can help you work mobile marketing into your plans today, without breaking the bank.

Getting Maximum Profits out of your SMS Package

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If you’re looking for ways to maximize profits on your SMS packages, it’s vital that you price them adequately.

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With our SMS Reseller web-based Platform, we give our resellers access to grow their own SMS marketing business for long-term success. Our private White Label Resellers are able to offer outstanding benefits to their customers with unlimited keyword access, multiple SMS billing options and numerous mobile marketing services. Our billing model has proved time and time again that doubling SMS rates isn’t the way to go.

Following a few of our CEO’s simple tips, you can easily learn how to price SMS Packages for Maximum Profit effectively. By taking this advice and applying it to your SMS packages, you could be earning up to a 400% profit! Give it a try, we dare you!