Free Marketing: 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business, Online and Off

CHAPTER 30

TEXT MARKETING CAN'T BE IGNORED

Text messaging doesn't require you or your customer to have a website, a smartphone, or even Internet access, and it has more than a 90 percent read rate.

Proceed with caution though.

Rule 1 with text messaging is: Send only what prospects and customers want to get.

Text messages are far more likely to be read, and get read far more often than any other form of marketing that is discussed in this book (for example, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and so on).

If you can give your customers an incentive to opt-in to your valuable text message campaign, you can begin enjoying one of the highest response rates for marketing that is currently available. Use texting for automatic reminders, coupons, special event announcements, and so on. I am aware of several emerging services and technologies that are aimed at helping you tap into the full potential of the text marketing opportunity, but I'm hesitant to put these into the book because several of them are such new services that I want to let them prove themselves first. The book resource page will have the most recent recommendations and suggestions that I find in the cell phone text-marketing arena. Come share with us what you are finding as well!

TEXT MESSAGES SELL PIZZA?

As I was in the middle of writing this very chapter I was contacted by a student of mine named George. He had found himself let go recently from a corporate position he'd held with a cellular company, and was so willing to do ...