Marketing In Ireland: Reactivating old clients using SMS marketing

I used to be a member of Crunch Fitness Gym in Clonsilla, Dublin but my membership lapsed a few years ago. The other day I received a SMS message from them which said something like “SPECIAL offer for St Patricks day. Rejoin Crunch gym before 7pm Mon 19th and receive a free Nike Rockstar course and no joining fee. Only a few spaces remaining. 01 8025906”

I was impressed with this use of SMS marketing to try and entice me back to their gym, it was a good example of using direct response SMS marketing by an Irish business. It works on the theory that selling to existing or past customers is much more cost effective than it is to sell to new ones. This is due to the fact that you have a track record with them already and they know what you can do for them. SMS message marketing is also much more cost effective than traditional direct mail at a cost of only 5 cent per message as opposed to 80 cent to put together and post a mailer.

As SMS marketing in Ireland is still in its infancy response rates can often reach 40% or more, depending on the offer and target audience. The open rate for SMS messages is considerably higher than that of traditional mailings; however one downside can be the limitation in the number of characters that can be used in the message.

The sender of this SMS message did well to give a reason for the special promotion. People like there to be a valid reason for you to contact them and using the excuse of St Patrick’s day is as good as any.

Another positive thing about this message was the way a free offer was incorporated into it. By getting rid of the joining fee there is one less barrier for a potential customer to take advantage of the offer. To make the offer even stronger it might have been a good idea to offer the first months membership for free at no obligation. This would have completely removed all barriers to rejoining and got the prospects back in the door.

Incorporating a deadline into the SMS marketing message is also another good idea. By giving a deadline of when the offer closes prospects know that they need to act fast. It gives a powerful call to action.

Having seen this example of the gym using SMS marketing in Ireland perhaps you can see how you could maybe incorporate SMS marketing to promote your Irish business. This type of campaign can be very straightforward to implement. You don’t have to use SMS marketing solely for reactivation of old clients; there are many other business promotion uses for it. One example might be to use inbound SMS messaging to make it really easy for your customers to request your sales materials. You could do this by simply including instructions to text your name and email address to a specific free text number.

The use of text messaging as a way of communicating with existing customers is well suited to offers that are time sensitive in nature. For example the owner of a pub which is running a comedy night could let his regulars know and also perhaps include some kind of offer such as first drink free to attract customers. Other businesses can use SMS marketing to fill spaces that once past can no longer be sold. For example appointments at a beauty therapist that are not taken could be offered to regular clients with say a 20% discount.

Article Source: http://www.yourarticle.info

Author: Matthew Eve is a writer and owner of a specialist marketing company in Ireland.See more articles at his irish marketing blog
Get a unique version of this article from our marketing article directory

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated