Monthly Archives: February 2012

Feb 24 2012

No Vacancies

How a hotel is integrating SMS into their entire customer journey
Phillippa Clark

We all know that SMS is a fantastic way to get direct communications to your customers. So it begs the question as to why people aren’t using SMS more in their entire customer journey.

There are lots of ways that SMS can play a massive part in a customer journey from generating new leads to rewarding all those loyal customers. In this blog I will use a hotel as an example and explain how they are seeing the benefits of integrating SMS into all stages of their customer journey.

Lead Generation

With the use of Shortcodes and keywords on all of their marketing the hotel was able to generate and easily collated new enquiries. One example of how they did this was to advertise their short code on all newspaper and magazine adverts:

“To book a room text BOOKINGS to 60000 and a member of our team will call you back”

This brought in lots of new customer enquire and often resulted in the hotel getting completely booked up. The hotel were also able to build a substantial database of numbers that they could send SMS messages to at certain points in the year- they are currently promoting available rooms for the Olympics.. A really good way to generate more leads!

During Registration

For those customers that booked with the hotel online a Number Validation Widget was integrated behind their registration page, this enabled them to capture all of the mobile numbers that were submitted and check to make sure that the number entered was a valid working mobile number. The results? Fantastic quality data and great delivery rates for SMS campaigns

The Hotel also used SMS during the registration process for their general customer service, ‘Text HELP to 60000 and a customer service representative will get back to you’. Txt Chat made the 2 way conversation a really easy feature to include in their registration process and the customers found that their questions were answered almost straight away and did not hold up the booking process. For reassurance, a text message was automatically sent out to the customer to confirm that their hotel room booking was confirmed.

During their Hotel Stay

It’s always best practice to give the customer the best experience possible when using your service and a great way to do this is to text them some tips or some really useful information to make their experience  much more enjoyable. During a customer’s stay the hotel sent them updates on local taxis, places to visit and even what the weather was going to be like the next day! This received some great feedback from customers who appreciated getting this information without having to go down to reception to ask!

Loyalty and Retention

So once the customer has finished using your product or service how do you imprint that lasting impression on your customer?  There are lots of ways to do this; the hotel decided to give their customers a special offer or promotion to say thanks for stopping with them.  They also sent out some satisfaction surveys by SMS a few days after their customers visit and were able to easily reporting on and identify areas where they could improve the quality of the hotel and the service.

So whatever the stage of the journey, SMS can prove to be invaluable!

Feb 13 2012

Valentine’s Day

Liz James

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone, we thought we’d give you some ideas for how you can use SMS to maximise the day of love…

Dynmark is gearing up for its biggest year ever in 2012, and as some of you may already know, we are revamping our current offerings and bringing out some new ones to drive more value to you. We’ll have more on this soon, so keep your eyes peeled, but until then we’re going to keep you going with some great ways to leverage SMS as part of your business and marketing strategy.

One of our customers, a florist is gearing up for Valentine’s day by texting daily offers on specific flowers and bouquets to its customers, in an effort to spread the purchase of flowers and avoid running out of roses. Why not message people today, and let them know what you are doing as part of the fun?

We have also found that Hairdressers hold events for some special days, such as Valentine’s Day, they are running SMS campaigns to their most loyal customers to offer deals on up-dos and styling for the evening. Customers will be provided with a code they can quote to get a reduced rate on their appointment. There are all sorts of appointments, events and purchases this could work for. Make your brand exclusive by sending the offer to just your most loyal customers.

So what we’re saying is, make the most of the holidays with SMS, because it’s quick, easy and intimate. Contact your customers with information they will want and appreciate to encourage them to spend!

Have a wonderful Valentine’s Day!

Feb 3 2012

Get Connected

Esme Deackes

On Friday 27th January, we were lucky enough to be invited by Carphone Warehouse to an event for their charity ‘Get Connected’.

Get Connected is a charity for young adults under 25, it covers a very wide range of issues whether it be drug abuse, depression, bullying, relationships, or just needing someone to talk to that isn’t a teacher or a parent.

It’s a fantastic charity that is always in need of donations, so please take 5 minutes out of your day to go online and have a look around their website and support their cause. http://www.getconnected.org.uk/

It was an absolutely fantastic night and was held at the famous Mayfair Hotel in London, who generously supplied cocktails and canapés throughout the evening.

We also had a fantastic prize draw with CPW Account Manager Caroline Topping winning an unreleased Nokia Lumia!! Then on with an empowering speech from the fantastic inspirational speaker Sharupa Shah, who had us all thinking we could take over the world by the end.

Afterwards it was down to the Palm Beach Casino, for further drinks and a play at gambling, it was a short lived venture when we all realised we hadn’t a clue how to play, and were quickly losing all our money! Swiftly we then went to Aura Nightclub for a bit of a boogie and then a taxi home!

The night was a complete success and we are delighted to announce that Get Connected raised over £1,000! This will allow the charity to continue to offer support to vulnerable children and young people across the UK
If you would like to view some photos from the event you can see them on our Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/DynmarkInternational

Feb 2 2012

Mobile Marketing Tip

Caroline Roche

This month’s mobile marketing tip is on Sender IDs, the various options available and what they mean for you.
Did you know that you can set the Sender ID as your company name? This is great for appointment confirmations and reminders which require no response and your recipients instantly know who the text is from.

You can have anything up to 11 characters as your sender ID and can even have different ID’s for different departments within your business or for different campaigns.

If you want people to reply but still want you company name as the sender that’s no problem, just put your long number or shortcode in the message for people to reply to, if they have a smartphone they can simply click on the number to instantly send a reply!

Alternatively, if you are looking to increase your inbound messaging and want to make it as easy as possible for people to reply you could set your long number or short code as your sender ID, that way recipients will simply be able to hit reply and their message will come straight into your account.

By encouraging this two way communication you not only help increase loyalty but also improve the quality of your data and the deliverability of your campaigns.

You may also suggest that your customers save your long number in their phones, that way your company name will appear on their handsets and they will also be able to reply instantly to your texts!