Choosing a Text Message Marketing Company

When choosing a text message marketing company there are several considerations you must make. The company you choose to help with your SMS campaign can determine the outcome of your advertising and marketing.

First, look for a company with experience and a track record to support your marketing needs. About a year ago, it became feasible for smaller companies to get their own short code and beginning a SMS company. There are a lot of fly by night computer companies that started text marketing businesses, but the have no real world marketing experience.

Text message marketing is not a one size fits all approach to marketing. Each business has different needs and the SMS company you choose to work with must be able to relate their experiences with past campaigns to suit your business needs.

Make sure the company has a text marketing free trial available so you may test the system on your customers and staff before having to make a buying decision. Again, what works for one business in one city, may not work for another. Text marketing is one of the few try it before you buy it marketing systems out there. Take advantage of this. Also get a real trial. 15 messages and 7 days won't allow you a real test period. You need at least 30 days and 500 test message credits for your business to properly build a list and test a couple mass text blasts to your subscriber list.

The SMS company should also have the ability to send bulk text messages in a short period of time. You don't want to time your text blast for 10 am, so your customers may take advantage of a lunch special and then find out your list didn't get the message until 2 pm.

Be sure the company not only collects the cell numbers, or opt-in through the SMS channel, but also sends the messages through the SMS channel. This is easy to determine. You want their to be a small charge, usually a couple cents, for each outgoing text message. If there is not, the messages are being sent through SMTP and are likely to get buffered by SPAM filters.

Pricing levels are all over the place. Make sure the pricing of the text message marketing company matches your advertising budget and provides the ROI you need to make profits.