Archive for the ‘Mobile Solutions’ Category

One of the things that Advanced Telecom Services’ president Bob Bentz does in his personal time is coach baseball.  Bentz is also a regular user of the 84444.com mobile messaging product to reach his youth baseball players.  In this blog post, Bentz wonders why every baseball coach doesn’t use text messages to reach their players when a rainout occurs.

The best way to notify baseball players of a rainout is by text message.

I have been coaching baseball for 16 years.  It has been a big part of my life.  Sure, it takes a lot of time, but perhaps I’ve made a small impact on young men in our area so that makes it all worthwhile.

My first opportunity to coach was in Little League.  One of the most fun evenings of the year was when the coaches got together for the preseason draft of talent.  In the early rounds, it was all business, with coaches monitoring spread sheets of ratings of pre-teens generated by their previous season coach.  The strategies used by the local coaches were not much different than the ones utilized by the general managers at the Major League Baseball winter meetings.

The later rounds were met with a much different rating system.  In the later rounds, the players were all inept so coaches were more apt to rate their selection based on GLM’s — good looking Moms.  But, no matter how good looking their Mom was, there was one kid that would never get picked until the final selections.  These were the ones that didn’t have email!  There’s no way a coach wanted to add to his work by having to make a phone call to notify the player’s family that practice or a game was cancelled due to rain.  Email was just so much…easier.

This weekend, my Junior Legion baseball team had a home and home series against another local opponent.  My club was home on Saturday and we were to play away on Sunday.  After the conclusion of the Saturday game (we won 5-1 by the way), the other coach and I talked about the impending rain storm predicted to hit the Philadelphia area on Saturday night.  We agreed that the outlook for playing the Sunday game was not promising.  The opposing coach lamented about how he dreaded having to call 18 players if the game was rained out!

“What year was this guy living in,” I thought.  I hadn’t been calling players for over a decade, or at least since every player on the team had email.  And, a few years ago, I even gave up email, preferring to send a broadcast text message instead.

Email is so yesterday with today’s teens.  If I were still sending email to my baseball players, they’d find out a week from now about the cancellation, because that’s about as often as teenage boys check their emails today.  That’s why I communicate with my players on the medium of their choice–text messages.  Moreover, a text message reaches the player immediately no matter where they are.  94% of all text messages are read immediately upon receipt.  Email certainly can’t make that claim!

If Little Leagues, Cal Ripken leagues, American Legion baseball teams, or travel baseball teams are looking for the best way to reach their players, then the only way to do that in today’s fast moving society is with text message broadcasts.  

I can’t imagine coaching a baseball team and having to make 18 phone calls when a game or practice was rained out.  

Perhaps, that other coach is still having his team use wood bats too.

By  Dan Curry

2009 showed huge strides in automotive marketing, Dealers are opening their eyes to more and more marketing options and not going the cheap route as over $20 billion is expected to be spent in 2010 on dealer marketing. The previous is great news but most dealers are beginning to lose grasp on customer retention. We all have heard the statistic that a previous customer is 67% more likely to buy than a new one yet dealers were only seeing half this number at best so what gives?

Coming from a dealership I hate to say this but we have flooded our customers with direct mail and emails to the point they trash it with out even reading your messaging. ( just picture your customer crumpling up your money and throwing it out- this is essentially what they are doing) The days of direct mail are numbered that is clear as day, but what many don’t see is that email is going down the same road in automotive – Check out the stats-

Email Open Rate	Direct mail Open rate
2008 -  23.3%	2008 – 3.2%
2009 -  19.1%	2009 – 2.4%

-Epsilon, Q3 2008 and Q3 2009 for automotive industry

A Subaru dealer in Florida recently ran into this problem when an existing customer was in for service,his vehicle was 1200 miles over factory warranty and needed $2300 in Power train repair, The service manager took the gentleman to the finance office to see what option he may have on a warranty or new vehicle. The finance manager asked Mr. Smith if he had gotten the 6 reminders  they Direct mailed and emailed to him, His reply in anger and confusion “What mailers!, why cant you just send something to my i-phone its always on me and I never miss a message” The finance manager looked at him puzzled with no answer for such a simple question.

Anyone who has ever experienced a similar problem from either side of the desk knows how frustrating these situations can be. Mr. smith brought up a great question  thats befuddled the dealer.  Why can’t we send something to Mr. smiths mobile phone would be an incorrect question- Why are we not sending Mr. Smith a SMS message to his mobile phone is the true question.

-SMS messaging has over a 94% open rate proving to Mr smith statement of:

“ My phone is always on me I never miss a message”

Mr. Smith is just one Prime example on how a dealer lost out on not only a warranty sale but a future vehicle sale.Although many owners realize regular maintenance will result in more efficient driving and higher resale, many simply feel in the dark about when and where to service their vehicle “I mean, have you taken a look under the hood of your vehicle lately? Americans are proven notoriously reactive people rather not proactive due to  busy lifestyles and lack of reminders – Big time executives have assistants for a reason, Do the same for your customer guide them in the right direction and keep them focused there.

-There are numerous ways to make SMS messaging perform for you and endless ideas on usages.
If you want your message read send it by Text message.

Service and Retention examples

Maintenance Reminders
Re-Finance Opportunities
Warranty Expirations
Customer Loyalty Programs
Service Text Coupons
Text2Win Promotions
Customer Alerts (sales and events)

Mobile money maker

Consumer is a king. He is the beneficiary of the competition among the businesses to sell more and earn more. Every other store is out with sale, discounts or offers. But, is the consumer really looking at the stores? Do they have time to check out with every store for the best deal? Are they aware of the happenings in the market, at the first place?

If not, what can business houses do to reach them and keep them informed? How can they be made aware about what your business is all about? How can a business house expand his scope of contacts with prospective buyers?

Mobile marketing: a tech-savvy solution

Mobile marketing techniques and associated tools like premium SMS, bulk SMS, mobile coupons, etc. are turning out to be the new generation marketing and advertising tools. The widespread network of mobiles is an effective means to reach the consumers and update them about the latest marketing news.

Mobile marketing has its own advantages like reaching a vast user base, saving the time that other conventional methods demand and doing away with any time constraints. It is the best solution so far that fulfils the requirements of both, the consumers as well as the businesses. Consumer gets the information and businesses get to reach the consumers.

Text message sweepstakes

Wooing consumers with mobile advertising and text message sweepstakes is the ‘in thing’. One after the other, business houses are gearing up to avail the advantages of mobile marketing. Text message sweepstakes are the rage amongst the new generation of mobile users who form an important segment of the consumer class. This is mainly because it offers two main advantages- one each from business and user perspective.

• Business perspective: The best way to build a database of consumers
  Offering an attractive text message sweepstake can enrich a business with a huge reservoir of database of consumers. Automated computerized database management system will gather the information about the participants in the text message voting and contests by using short codes. By gathering data about the participants, a business house can create a database of the prospective leads. Working on these will allow businesses to concentrate mobile advertising on the segment that will fetch maximum returns with minimum efforts.
• User perspective: Easy to enter contest from cell phone
  A user of a cell phone has freedom to enter a contest from her cell phone. She does not have to wait to reach the store or buy a literature to raise her chances of winning text message sweepstakes. Mobile advertising and mobile marketing is a round the clock feature that put the user at her convenience to use services. A consumer can ‘open sesame’ by sending a text message and keying a few short codes.

Indeed, mobile marketing and mobile advertising is becoming more user friendly than we could ever imagine.