A guide to Marketing Communications through SMS (Short Message Service)

"Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, services, organizations, and events to create and maintain relationships that will satisfy individual and organizationalobjectives." - Contemporary Marketing Wired (1998) by Boone and Kurtz.

As a starting point, there are three key goals that all marketing should strive to achieve, in order for it to be considered successful:

• It should generate more new clients in new markets,
• More business should be generated from existing clients, or
• Gross profit margins must be improved

The marketing message that you deliver will be determined by the goal in mind. For example, the way in which one communicates as well as the message communicated, when trying to find and create new clients, will be very different from a message sent to existing clients to stimulate additional business.

Although succeeding to achieve all three simultaneously is advantageous, trying to do this will most probably blur the message that you send out. For this reason it is vital for the goal of the "campaign" to be clearly understood before the message or medium is established.

With SMS, the situation is no different. Before designing an advertising or marketing campaign using SMS we need to consider:

• Who is the message addressed to? [New clients and markets, or existing customers?]
• What response is required? [Is there an action that we want customers to perform?]
• What is the message? [What is the gist of the message that you want to carry across?]

How does SMS work?



The chart above illustrates the basic message flow of an SMS. A keyword/message is sent to a Short Code (eg. 55355) from a mobile user through wireless carriers' network (Telus, Rogers, Bell, Virgin, etc.) to NexusM's server that holds the programs set up according to the specs of a campaign. The message is then processed before sending back a requested content/message to the sender.

Short Code
To start an SMS marketing campaign, one requires to apply for a Common or Private Short Code. A short code is numbers to which a text message can be sent, in order to participate in some type of automated application. These applications include information retrieval, TV and radio voting, direct response marketing and purchasing of goods or services.

A Common Short Code is 5 or 6 digits in length and cannot include zero or four as leading digit. Digits may correspond with your company Tradename (eg. 639876/NEXUSM). A Private Short Code is 5 or 6 digits in length starting with a four, and this code only works for subscribers of the carriers that "privately" leased you the code.

Types of Common Short Code
There are two ways of setting up your Common Short Code: dedicated versus shared. To find out more about the difference, the pros and cons, please contact us at sales@nexusm.com or call (403) 209.5988.

Content is King

Regardless of your chosen media, the content that you deliver is vital to your success. It doesn't matter whether you are delivering a full multimedia boardroom presentation, a newspaper commercial or an SMS - if your message is not clear, your goal will not be achieved.

Bigger is also not necessarily better. Yes, the larger the medium the more likely your audience may be to see it. But your aim is not merely for a message to be seen. The message must also be understood, remembered and acted upon. SMS places an interesting challenge on us in this respect. With a limitation of only 136 characters, we are forced to think very clearly about how we are going to phrase our message. There are also occasionally restrictions on the special characters that some networks and systems support. For example, when sending Unicode characters most providers will limit the characters to 70.

136 characters is not a lot of space to write a message - this sentence is itself 196 characters in length - so you will need to be economical with the wording that you choose for your messaging. Be sure that the message which you write is clear and to the point. If there is a call to action, then this should be kept simple and concise. Although the number of characters is limited to 136, it is possible to spread a single message across multiple messages. In other words, you could deliver a 272-character message, which would simply arrive as two messages. This is done through a process called Concatenation. The majority of NexusM's products & services support Concatenation, either by default, or as a preference.

Database Marketing

One of the benefits of SMS as a marketing tool is that it does not always require you to posses a customer database or client list in order to benefit. Without a database of your own, using NexusM's solutions you can enable any web site so that site visitors can send SMS messages and spread your brand. This is a great starting point for using SMS as a marketing tool, which requires no prior database.

Of course, with your own database there is virtually nothing that cannot be done.

SMS Branding

Few global providers currently offer the ability to brand the sender ID field of each outgoing message. This means that the space on each message, usually reserved for the mobile number of the originating mobile phone, can be replaced with the name or brand of the company sending the message.

Using the SMS Branding feature means that there is inevitably more space for text in the body of the message. Since you do not have to include the message sender in the body text, this leaves more room for the important content.

The SMS branding is also a helpful branding tool, which adds credibility and status to the message when it is received, through source validation. Even without the sender ID, identity is extremely important! You should always try to include some sort of contact form or identifier (such as a contact number, company name etc.) in the body of the text message. However, it must be noted that not all networks, and not all mobile phones support this SMS Branding feature. If a message is delivered with the Sender ID branded to a phone or network that does not support this feature, then the message will arrive with a number in place of the name or brand.

SMS Golden Rules

• Permission based marketing only
• Customize, personalize and give people what they want

Anti-Spam Policy

NexusM subscribes to an Anti-Spam policy for all its communication protocols. This means that we do not condone unsolicited messages, notifications, alerts or any message that you may receive from someone who should not have your contact or mobile number.

Privacy Policy

At NexusM, we respect and take steps to protect your privacy. We strive to make our site a safe environment for everyone who visits and uses NexusM services. We are committed to providing you the best possible mobile Internet service and experience as well as the best products and services.

Protection of Database Information

Any information sent to NexusM for text messaging and or storage purposes will remain the property of the account holder. NexusM will at no time collect or redistribute this information without your consent, except where legally required by law to do so. This is with particular reference to any database, numbers and/or recipient details that you may deliver to us, or store on our databases.

For more information on how you could use SMS marketing for your business, please contact us at sales@nexusm.com or call (403) 209.5988.