According to the Mobile Marketing Association, 89% of companies use text and multimedia messaging to reach their audiences.  Nearly one third of those companies plan to spend more than 10% percent of their marketing budgets on advertising in the text SMS marketing medium.

Short Message Service (SMS) is a low cost way to reach a large number of your customers through a device that they are sure to always have with them.  You can reach your customers during those key times when they are out holiday shopping to promote special deals and offers – or you can insert coupon codes directly into your message so that your customers can redeem them in-store.

So how does Definition 6 help customers implement SMS as a low-cost solution to direct marketing?  We offer 1-way and 2-way SMS text message campaigns, leveraging your existing web applications using SMS as a front-end.  In just a brief 2-3 week engagement, we can deliver a landing page with an opt-in and sign up form, an interface to be used to send out SMS messages to registered users and all the necessary underlying infrastructure and services as part of a SaaS model.  For more information and to talk to someone on our Business Development team for pricing, please visit the Definition 6 Contact Us page.

Here's something that caught the attention of our Definition 6 mom's and dad's...

The New York Times recently published an article related to kid social networking sites.  The article addressed the fact that babies may not be able to read or write, but thankfully some have tech-savvy parents who do their social networking for them.

Websites like Kidmondo, Lil'Grams, Odadeo and Totspot allow parents to share stories, milestones and photos about their little ones without having to overload the e-mail in-boxes of friends and family.  Similar to Facebook, Twitter and the like, the number of users who are signing up for these sites is growing at an exponential speed.

Also like other social networking sites, and even email marketing campaigns, these sites carry a huge viral marketing component - a key benefit to marketing and advertising gurus.

You can check out the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/fashion/11Tots.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

At Definition 6, I get this questions quite a bit, as an Interactive Advertising Agency we are often on the front lines of business managers arsenal of what to do during troubling times.  Most organizations have a flight or fight response to troubled times and we help both type of customer's needs with our core services.  I wanted to just provide two examples of why I feel the Interactive Ad Agency is a critical strategic asset for marketers today.

If you are one who is looking to "run from trouble", and I mean this to say you are thinking; "The economy is in trouble and I need to pull in the reins on spending and cut costs".  I would suggest you talk to your agency about search engine optimization solutions and move away from paid search as your only expenditure. This will allow you to earn traffic instead of pay for traffic. The effort might take a few months to begin seeing results, but the cost savings over a 6 month period will be dramatic.

If you are inclined to believe that in hard times it is time to pump up the effort. We would recommend that you look closely at leveraging your in-house email lists and focus on email marketing. By simple taking some of your existing offers from your direct mail budget and rapidly moving them to online email marketing you should be able to impact sales within 3-4 weeks and reduce costs per sale by 1/3 to 50% just by channel shifting your efforts to online.

These are certainly simple examples, but I wanted to just wanted to start a thread about what to do in uncertain times. For additional points of view on this topic check out http://www.beyondmadisonavenue.com/2008/10/invest-in-online-advertising-now/ by Brian Yalung.

More to come soon.

Mike Reese, an Associate Architect for Definition 6, recently initiated a conversation with the Client Services group on how to drive users to a website and how to keep them coming back.  He quoted an article he read on www.websitemagazine.com which says "The best ways to capture a users’ attention and keep them coming back are to strategize and plan your content architecture, leverage technology to assist in the effort, and incorporate the user’s voice."  Mike shared with the group a few of the article’s key points:

1. Keep the initial interaction SIMPLE.  Home pages are often complicated with slow-loading flash movies, informational ads or pop-ups.  By limiting these “bottlenecks”, users see content quickly and will stay on your site.

2. Do the research – review your search engine optimization campaigns as well as your web analytics.  If 20% of your traffic comes from email marketing newsletters or promotional campaigns, make sure you are providing content that is relevant to that 20%.  For example, users who are specifically looking for travel and lodging information have a variety of ways to get to your site.  Third party aggregators such as sidestep.com and kayak.com make up a large percentage of traffic.  It is important to understand where your users are coming from and then modify initial page visits from those sites. Get the user into your purchase funnel as quickly and easily as possible.

3.  Keep content fresh, relevant.  By incorporating rich CMS tools, business owners and marketers have the ability to push timely content.  Leverage blogs to drive online discussions and allow users to interact with the website and with business stakeholders.  It is also important to show that you care about your customers’ opinions.  You can accomplish this by offering online surveys or feedback submission forms.  Put the power in the hands of the user.

In summary, users have a variety of resources to find the information they are searching for.  Therefore you need to provide content in a seamless manner in order to promote engagement.  By creating interaction with the user, you build a level of loyalty and provide a place for their concerns and questions to be heard -- which is very different than the type of interaction they will receive from any third party site or aggregator.  Utilize exclusive web content and leverage your email marketing campaigns to grab customers and keep them coming back for more.

We encourage you to read the full article, titled “10 Ways to Increase Website Stickiness”, at: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/articles/Increase_Website_Stickiness_10_ways.aspx

I recently "opted-in" to an online retailers email list. The experience was underwhelming to say the least. After I optedin, I received an immediate email welcoming me to their distribution list. Six weeks and counting, and I have yet to receive another communication from the firm. At another e-tailors website, I opted in while looking at some of the services that they offer - in this case looking to replace some windows on my condo. Several weeks later I began to be run over by emails offering discounts on hand tools, consumer electronics, and large appliances. There was nary an acknowledgement that my reason for opting in had to do with their services rather than their products.

At a team meeting with another large internet retailer, I asked the online marketing manager if they documented where a user was on the website when they opted in. Blank stares all around. Then the question, "Why would that matter?" I asked, "Wouldn't you want to know what someone was looking at when they decided to opt in?" To me it was a totally obvious connection; to my client it was an irritating question. Further research showed most e-tailors clearly in my clients’ corner. Opting in was good enough. No reason to know more. I pose it as the complete opposite. And the difference is the ability to easily begin a 1:1 customer dialogue over the web; or not!

If the web retailer mentioned above had documented that I was looking at a window installation when I had opted in to receive additional communications, they would have targeted messages to me for window installation services, window treatments, perhaps shutters and other products that showed they knew what my specific interest in their firm was all about. Instead, I was lumped in with the several other million email optin's who apparently have an insatiable thirst for inexpensive hand tools and cheap consumer electronics. I no longer read that firms email marketing promotions, as they contain nothing I am interested in. 
 
So the light bulb clicked on. How many firms on the internet try to map where a user was when they opted in so they can create better email marketing campaigns or email marketing services. If my experiences over the past two years are any indication, the answer is not many. So here are a few simple steps that a firm can take to integrate their email campaigns in order to move towards a more customer centric 1:1 dialogue.

1. For the easiest level of integration, firms with multiple products and services can provide users with a checklist of items for which they are interested in receiving email and other interactive marketing communications. A few large computer hardware vendors are already adept at this. 

2. For sites with multiple products and services, they should capture where a user was on the site when they opted in. This could be at a category level, product level, or possibly a business unit level.

3. Create interactive marketing promotions that correlate to the distinctly different parts of the site where users opt in. For example, if I was looking at "services" at least send me email messages that show awareness that I was interested in services rather than products.

4. If product categories are highly differentiated, than the corresponding email campaign should be too. For example, if hand tools and power tools are in different categories, and I opted in looking at hand tools, than a subsequent email marketing campaigns should contain some elements related to hand tools.

5. Over time, an "opted-in" customers' sales activity should be added to their profiles so that over time the firm can know what they were viewing when they opted in, what online promotions had a high click through and/or conversion rate and which products were ultimately purchased.

At that point, the sponsoring site should have all the information they need to have a robust 1:1 customer dialogue with an engaged and nitrated client. And all because they captured what page a prospect was viewing when they opted in to receive additional information. Sometimes, the missing link doesn't have to be missing at all.