Mike Agerbo: Well as a business, you’re always looking for unique ways to advertise and market your products and services and increasingly more popular one is text messaging. We’ve got Ross Gordon from YesText Mobile Marketing. Thanks for coming on the show.
Ross Gordon: Oh, my pleasure.
Mike Agerbo: I find this fascinating because we’ve actually started to try this with a radio show with a mobile contest. I know over in Europe text messaging has been really popular but we’re starting to receive more and more of it here in North America now.
Ross Gordon: Certainly! We’re seeing the numbers really escalate and Canadians are now sending 45 million plus text messages everyday.
Mike Agerbo: Wow! 45 million.
Lindsay Smith: That’s a lot of sort of fingers. So, what are some of the benefits to text marketing?
Ross Gordon: The biggest benefit right off to bed is the consumers are opting in. They’re choosing to participate, which means that you have their attention and that’s really critical compared to the other forms of advertising where you don’t have the same agreement going on.
Lindsay Smith: This almost reminds me of like new age email marketing. We saw email marketing come in, it was really effective and people overtime now. We’re bombarded with it. It almost seems like text messaging is a new form of this world but they’re embracing it. They’re seeing it completely different. They’re interacting on a new level.
Ross Gordon: Absolutely! And this is very different because with email marketing, there is no control. Anybody could send there the million messages but this is promotion based which means people that are going to received these messages are saying yes I want them. Now, the Canadian telecom industry regulates this very carefully and spam is not allowed.
Lindsay Smith: So, what are some of the examples of companies that are using text messaging right now? Like obviously we’ve tried it out and we’re loving it, so we’re using it for contest but what are some of the other uses?
Ross Gordon: Very diverse actually. We’re seeing advertising companies and media organizations use it to integrate into campaigns that they’re running right now for their clients. We see retailers, restaurants, consumer product, the companies are using it to run promotions to interact with their costumers to get product feedbacks surveys, all sorts of things like that, we see real estate agents use it to make that first contact instead of subscription list and send also note of their list. When they get a new list and make it send it out to their people like in seconds.
Mike Agerbo: So, what are some of the metrics that you know a marketer could get from this?
Ross Gordon: Metrics are a key part of text messaging because our product YesText delivers graphical interface to our clients that measures the number of messages they sent, the number of responses they get, the number of subscribers that they have on the list and if people are opting out, that’s all listed as well, both graphically and numerically so you can get a very good feel.
Mike Agerbo: How much is the cost to get started with mobile text messaging? Is that a big cost or it just depends on how much you’re doing?
Ross Gordon: It’s basically over the gate, it’s going to give you a hundred dollars for a business. So, it was very affordable. We have something we call the YesText—that allows the businesses to go in and enter on messages and change them well. So there, the campaign is not working and they’re not getting responses they want. They can go back in and adjust it within a matter of hours, it’s up and running for such—it’s not working well.
Lindsay Smith: But some of the good or great benefits because I know a lot of people when they’re looking at technology or new ways of marketing, it sometimes it can be completely overwhelming, so it’s refreshing to hear that it’s so simple and really quick.
Ross Gordon: No, hi-tech skills required.
Lindsay Smith: Totally! That’s fantastic. I think that’s the thing that will make a lot of people happy.
Ross Gordon: Well, I think so. In fact if you like, we can actually send one right now.
Mike Agerbo: Yeah sure, it’s better.
Lindsay Smith: Oh, let’s do that. Okay, let’s get that out with our little devices.
Ross Gordon: Yeah and viewers could send one as well if they want. Go in to their cellphone and go into text messaging and send a message to 74747 and just put the word GO into the subject body and you should see a response, just to give you a feel of what it looks like—
Mike Agerbo: I see, I have got that already. Visit us online at www.yestext.com or call us at the number here, apply, join, go to subscribe to yestext product updates. So, you can start building up a whole subscriber base as well.
Ross Gordon: Yes, in this way, our costumer if they’re interested in the product then they’ll just press join, entering your subscriber base list—
Mike Agerbo: And so I can text them any time I want?
Ross Gordon: Respectfully!
Mike Agerbo: Respectfully? Or they’ll unjoin my subscriber base list. I mean that’s kind of the cool thing because I know like I get emails and text on my phone but don’t you typically check the text messages first?
Lindsay Smith: Oh, for sure. I mean that’s the benefit of having these full keyboards right? It’s not really about the email. It’s about the constant connection with people, so do we able to have that gap between the company and their clients, I think that’s important.
Ross Gordon: Well on the messages, only maximum of 136 characters. So, you know if you’re going to read it. It’s not going to take for long.
Mike Agerbo: Exactly!
Lindsay Smith: It’s true.
Ross Gordon: And it also—
Lindsay Smith: Yeah, it’s good for short attention spans.
Ross Gordon: You really noticed.
Mike Agerbo: Well, this is a fascinating stuff. Where can people find out more information about this?
Ross Gordon: Well, they can go to our website at www.yestext.com. And there’s a form there to send in more information and the site is quite rich as well. And we’ll be happy to talk to the businesses that are interesting.
Mike Agerbo: Well, thanks for joining us Ross Gordon from YesText Mobile Marketing. If you want to try some unique new ways to market or advertise your products and services, you’ll want to check it out.
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