By Dan Slavin
For retailers and marketers to take full advantage of SMS marketing, plans must start with building quality SMS subscriber lists. This is the starting point to delivering more personalized text message marketing promotions and building an effective bridge between text lists and CRM systems.
Quality vs Quantity
For several years now, SMS marketers have been content to gather as many phone numbers as possible, without regard to building quality contact records behind the phone numbers. The process was straightforward; text a keyword and get added to the list. This made sign-ups easy, for consumers, marketers got lots of phone numbers but, again, without regard to list quality.
Today, marketers are recognizing the value of quality over quantity when it comes to building their SMS lists.
Double-Qualifying Prospects
The solution lies in a two-step process that collects data from those who opt-in to an SMS list. And it’s a simple process. Once an opt-in text is sent in by the consumer, a text is sent back immediately with a link to a sign-up page, where marketers can collect name and address – and even other info. The information gathered during sign-up can be added to a CRM system to give marketers more data on each subscriber, resulting in a higher quality list that is far superior to a mere phone number.
Marketers may at first be reluctant to adding a second step to the SMS list sign-up process, feeling it may be a barrier resulting in fewer sign-ups. The fact is that consumers have become used to verifying sign-ups and, appreciate the secondary authentication to prove their identity. In the case of retailers using CodeBroker’s SmartJoin SMS List Sign-Up solution, we’ve been able to achieve a 90% SMS list sign-up completion rate due to the fact that CodeBroker’s proprietary SmartJoin can pre-populate the sign-up form with the consumer’s mobile number received in the initial opt-in request, eliminating the need for any further confirmation. This high sign-up completion rate combined with the far superior quality of subscribers is proving valuable to retailers.