Mobile Marketing company reviews
If you've been alive in the past few months or so, you've probably noticed a lot of businesses that are advertising placecards or signs that state something like: "Text 'Specials' to 41645" or similar. This is the new way of marketing that is gaining momentum. It's called text message marketing or mobile marketing. This way to marketing your company or service is to send a quick text with a single word usually to a company. The company in turn captures the user's name and phone number, these are stored in their texting list. Then when the company wants to ramp up his/her business, they just send out a broadcast text to all their customers or a select few with a message that may say something like:"Tonight only, 15% off your meal, show this message to your server!"etc. Then presto, the word gets around and instance business boosting has begun.
And it works, here are a few stats that were accurate at the time of this writing, but will change as this starts to saturate society. About 22% of people read their e-mail messages that are newsletters, etc. But about 96% of people will open a text message, at least to see what it says. There are roughly 5 billion cell phones in the US alone, while only about 1.5 billion internet users in the US. And most people I know won't leave home without their cell or smart phone. So most folks are out in the world with their devices on them at any given time. This all could add up to a huge new trend!
Below are some brief articles about the various text marketing companies I have checked into. It's not an exhaustive list, nor the write-ups, but you should find some value in them. Check them out thoroughly and good luck if you plan on starting a mobile marketing campaign. If you don't want to fool with doing this yourself, send me a message here and I'll be glad to quote you some prices for me to run this for you.
(See April Special 20% off link below)
Yep Text is the brain child of Adam Horwitz and Tim Donovan. It is a simple system that uses what they call a 'Yep Word', this is like if you are a restaurant owner and you want to give folks a way to get their burger specials sent to them, they would get a 'Burger' word, or Specials or Updates, etc. Then as you pick a plan you want to use, you are given generally (for now), a five digit number for your customer to text the word to.
This is a great way to start to build a customer database list and send out messages to them as you want to. But you have to pick a plan that is beneficial to your business or personal needs. hey have many plans to choose from, below is a list of the main ones listed on their 'Pricing' page:
>$1 Trial (2 weeks) for 25 messages & 1 Yep Word
>$14 (per month) for 150 messages & 1 Yep Word
>$39 (per month) for 750 messages & 1 Yep Word
>$79 (per month) for 1500 messages & 2 Yep words
>$99 (per month) for 2000 messages & 2 Yep Words
The plans can go up from there in certain multiples of $100, but the one call "The Monster" includes 24000 messages & 10 Yep Words. So you can see that there is a plan for everyone, I like the fact that you can try it out for one dollar. But I think if you are serious about going forward with this type of marketing campaign, you should consider getting a larger plan or simply hire someone else to do this for you so you can focus on other aspects of the business.
Adam and Tim's mobile marketing company seems to be a good and credible business, and will possibly be one of the biggest growing companies out there right now! Try them out if you want to, here's the link to their site if you want to check it out. Look for their logo on the right side of this page and for links as well.
Use this link to get 20% off your 1st month, only for month of April, 2011, go here to get your discount today!
Here' is another mobile marketing company. It was originally set up and started for the broadcast/ radio sector, to help radio stations get out contests and receive requests, etc. They are very similar to Yep Text, but their rates are a little different, but not much though. They do pretty much the same service as the others. One thing I noticed is that their rates start at the $79 price, so there's no cheaper plans. There is a free trial plan that also like Yep's $1 plan, that gives you 25 messages to see if you like the service.
They also let you work your list of customers and send texts as much as you've paid to send each month. They also have some other interesting services, such as 'Text Interactive', 'Text Broadcast', Text Vote', 'Text Contest' and 'Text Coupon', which are all pretty much what they say. Below are the rates as stated on their site:
>$79 (per month) for 1000 messages and 1 keyword
>$99 (per month) for 2000 messages and 3 keywords
>$229 (per month) for 5000 messages and 5 keywords
>$399 (per month) for 10,000 messages and 10 keywords
>$2,999 (per month) for 100,000 messages and 25 keywords
To find out more about their services you can visit go here to visit their site. See their logo and other links to the right side of this page.
Here is a new text marketing system set up as a tool for Real Estate sales. It appears to be a great tool for the people in Real Estate. It sends out specific info about a house or property listing, including links to pictures of the house right on your phone (if you have internet access on your phone). I would think you could use the service for other types of advertising, but not sure if you can change the fields that they use, such as Address, Price, Bed/ Bath info, etc. Look at the video for more details on how it works.
They seem to be fairly new, but from the looks of the site and looking over their pages they have so far, they know what they are doing. And have a system set up to adhere to the Real Estate market, with custom info on advertising on signs, and other real estate ad areas as well. If you have a need for this market or know someone who does, pass on this link to them, might very well help them out in their real estate ventures. Below are their prices which depend on the number of listings you would want:
Number of Listings / Full-Year Activation
1 / $79.95
3 / $139.95
5 / $179.95
10 / $279.95
15 / $399.95
20 / $499.95
25 / $599.95
50 / $999.95
75 / $1,439.95
100 / $1,759.95
Make sure to check the current price listings on their page, as they can change without any notice, and as with most pricing for services, they can and will go up with time. Look to the right for their company logo and another link to check them out.
Text Marks
These guys have also put their hat in the ring for mobile (SMS) marketing. And they seem to know what they are doing at that! They focus to market this type of marketing to areas such as restaurants, retailers, political campaigns, small business, teachers, churches and party promoters.
Their home/ landing page seems to get to the heart of what you may be looking for in this type of marketing. It's main tagline states, "Get More Customers and More Repeat Business than e-mail or print with SMS Marketing". This should hit the hearts of business owners and marketers to prompt them to get into this while it's hot. There are a couple of examples shown with pictures, one is a bus stop sign that shows the message,"Text CTABUS to 41411 for arrival times", and another one showing teens in a school hallway, with caption, "Send messages to your entire group".
Text Marks also has a '14 Day Free Trial' button, also stating 'no credit card needed'. This should appeal to many people wanting to give it a try. And I always have believed that you need to give your customers something for free to at the least show them that you have something of value and want to share it with them. They also highlight some of the organizations that use their services, such as Little Caesars, Jiffy Lube, ebay, Toshiba, Microsoft, FedEx, Papa Johns and Kaiser. This alone is an impressive list of clientele.
Their current pricing structure is listed below, note that they use different terms than others listed above, they have Users, which are the amount of text customers; Groups, which is the keyword for new customers to text to. Below are prices:
>$19 per month, 1 group for 100 users
>$49 per month, 3 group for 250 users
>$99 per month, 8 group for 500 users
>$199 per month, 18 group for 1000 users
>14 day Free trial, 1 group for 100 users
And all plans have unlimited texting to those users. There are other plans for say 'pay per text' or higher user or group plans, you would just need to contact them for additional needs pricing. It also appears from the price page that Sprint users will have a 1/2 cent per text charge, but that Text Marks will waive this surcharge for 30 texts per subscriber per month. Go to their site here if you want to check out this up and coming SMS text message marketing company.
This service is unique in a few ways from the others listed here. One of the major differences is that they offer a 30 day free trial, to test drive the service. Plus they also offer to give you 2 months free with an annual plan! The other major difference is how your service credits are used in your plans. A little explanation is needed here, but I learned something from this and you might as well. They explain that there are 2 different types of text messages that can go out to subscribers: 1) SMS messages, which are sent from their dedicated gateway and are guaranteed to be delivered because they are more reliable, so they cost 1 credit per message to use; 2) SMTP type go out similar to your ISP email provider, going through your carrier's delivery service to get to their receiver, this way is a little less reliable and because of this, they are free and unlimited.
And Universal claims in their explanation of this that most text messaging services out their use the SMTP delivery method, so this might be worth checking into when looking for a mobile marketing provider. From what I've seen from these guys, they seem to know what they are doing as well. Below are the pricing plans currently found at their site:
PLAN $/Month Monthly credits
UA-0 $49 0 (for SMTP)
UA-400 $99 400
UA-800 $149 800
UA-1250 $199 1250
UA-2250 $299 2250
UA-4000 $469 4000
UA-6000 $599 6000
Here are the costs for an annual subscription, which include 2 months free, and I assume each amount is for another year, like 1 year for the first price, 2 years at the second price and so on. And not sure about message credits, they are not listed in this section.
$490 $990 $1,490 $1,990 $2,990 $4,690 $5,990
Be sure to check with them about these rates if you want to look into signing up with them. You can go to their site here to have a look at their service.