KITS-FM LIVE 105 Mobile Campaign

Every month, the campaigns that we power at Waterfall Mobile range from small test promotions to massive ongoing programs, and we often encounter marketers new to the mobile industry that are surprised at how effective targeted regional mobile promotions can be at building mobile subscriber lists and extending brand awareness.

One recent example that demonstrates the power of a targeted local promotion was a mobile campaign for KITS-FM LIVE 105, an alternative/modern rock radio station based in San Francisco. The campaign was conducted over five days as part of a give-away promotion that offered five weekend getaways stays at The Resort at Squaw Creek in North Lake Tahoe.

KITS-FM wanted to grow its mobile subscriber list and engage listeners with the brand on alternative platforms – in this case via its growing mobile marketing efforts.  Squaw Valley USA & The Resort at Squaw Creek hoped to get information on North Lake Tahoe out to listeners and encourage them to visit the area.

Together, the companies prompted listeners via on-air call-outs to text in the keyword of the day for a chance to win the “Woody Show Field Trip Package.” Each text received a reply with information on North Lake Tahoe and Squaw Valley and was enrolled into the radio station’s mobile subscriber list to receive further information from the station.

After the winner was selected each day, a text message was sent notifying other entrants they did not win and a second text offered additional information about North Lake Tahoe.

By the end of the campaign, KITS-FM’s recorded its largest-ever response to an on-air mobile promotion: nearly 200,000 texts received over the course of the five-day program. Listeners engaged each day with the radio station, which was able to further build its opportunity to interact with avid fans in the future (over 14,000 unique users were added to their subscription list), and KITS found a convenient way around typical phone contests that often greet callers with a non-interactive busy signal. The station’s partner, The Resort at Squaw Creek in North Lake Tahoe, also received a significant number of impressions and drove wide awareness of its brand across a major metropolitan market area.

Thank You E-mail Marketing!

According to Internet Retailer’s new survey of retailers and manufacturers, a variety of innovative e-mail marketing tactics are increasing the effectiveness of the medium. Following up on a recent blog entry about the importance of CRM, these tactics are all fantastic additional ways to further extend your company’s relationship with its customers.

And the best part – the tactics mentioned in the article don’t need to apply exclusively to e-mail marketing. Rather than wait two years for someone to publish the same results and guidance on mobile marketing, I’m going to go out on a limb here and propose that these very same tactics can hone your mobile marketing as well!

Each of the tactics mentioned in Internet Retailer’s survey would also increase ROI for mobile marketing efforts and require very little effort to execute:

• 38.8% are triggering e-mail marketing messages based on behaviors or events.
• 36.5% are personalizing messages (such as by addressing customers by first name)
• 28.2% are adding Forward-to-Friend links
• 22.7% are leveraging transactional messaging for marketing communications
• 18.4% are providing multiple options during the opt-out process (for ex., opt out of promotional e-mails but receive newsletter)
• 17.6% are including customer reviews
• 14.1% are adding Share This links to social networks
• 13.3% are adding more video-related content

If you’d like to learn more about how Waterfall Mobile can help your campaign leverage some of these tactics to extend your company’s relationship with its customers, hit me up at msilk@waterfallmobile.com.

Don’t Focus On Acquiring New Customers

Given slashed marketing budgets in the current economy, much recent industry talk has focused on CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and the potential return on investment from focusing on increasing revenue from existing clients versus the higher cost of acquiring new clients.

Now more than ever, every company should spend time taking a good look at sales and marketing budgets to determine the true cost of acquiring new customers and balancing that cost against  how effectively your existing clients are being managed and potential  for up-sell or new services. Each company has a different ideal balance between attracting new clients and extending existing client business, so there is no right answer unfortunately. But, I would argue that in this economy, many companies should be focused on better CRM and really lessen the focus finding new clients.

Ask your sales team a few questions:

• How many qualified leads did you get referred from existing clients?
• How much easier was it to close those “referred” deals?
• How much did current client case studies and testimonials affect your sales cycle?

If they answer “a lot”, “a ton” and “they were a huge help” then you just confirmed my point.

One of the first lessons of business is that it costs more to win a new customer than keep an existing one. But when every dollar counts and budgets are meticulously scanned, how much of a cost savings are we talking about?  A study from Bain & Company found that acquiring a new customer costs six to seven times more than retaining one and that a five percent increase in customer retention yields profit increases of 25-100%.

So why are many companies throwing their money towards finding new customers when increased customer loyalty can be such a key to growth? Why not save money on the sales efforts and shift efforts to client satisfaction? It is time for companies to come up with new product offerings and innovative ideas for the clients that they have been doing business with for years. There’s nothing worse than getting a call from a current customer who heard about special opportunities or offerings promoted to new customers that aren’t extended to existing clients as well.

A recent Returnity study with tips on making e-mail marketing more effective could be applied to client-focused mobile marketing techniques. Engage your client database with targeted, relevant communications using creative mobile campaigns that offer a snippet or tease about new products and services and have a call to action that encourages a website visit to learn more.

It is easy to assume that in a bad economy, companies need new business to survive, but CRM might actually be the best, low-cost way to keep your revenues thriving.