2011 June

Let me guess, you have been researching mobile marketing and you get more and more confused every day.

You’re thinking, “with so many options, how can I be sure I choose the right one?”.
Just like a marriage, this decision is crucial; the wrong partner can be a big mistake with lot’s of expenses involved of $ and time.
But if you look at the right parameters, and eliminate the noise – you will be pleasantly surprised to learn that it’s not all that difficult to choose the perfect solution for your business.

So let’s begin:
Short code or Long code?
Very simple: stay away from long codes! They are inconvenient to the customer and more important they are NOT carrier approved.
Carriers are only approving short code programs. Don’t work with amateurs – use a certified platform that will be there tomorrow.

SMTP or SMPP?
They may look similar but they are really not even related. SMTP is the protocol used for sending emails, when sending an email to a phone # the carriers are translating it
to a text message. The result, low delivery rate, not 2-way (people cannot respond) and most important YOU ARE EXPOSED TO SPAM REGULATIONS WHICH CAN PUT YOU IN A BAD LEGAL SITUATION. These programs are also not carrier approved.

See & Touch before you purchase.
Many platforms offer ‘many’ features but when it comes to the actual usage it is very poor and the abundance of ‘features’ offered are using the same tools in the back end.
For example: Text for Church, Text for restaurant, Appointment reminders and even Coupons at most cases are still a simple text message been delivered.
Simple text with a discount on it is NOT a mobile coupon! Where is the redemption? Barcoding? POS integration? Tracking?
An appointment reminder should not be a one-way scheduled text message only! Where is the management tool and the client confirmation?
Don’t be lazy and listen to sales people or sales materials, test it yourself! You are about to use it everyday and sell it so you better be comfortable with it.

Mobile Marketing as a business.
Make sure you have all the tools you need to run a business with and not just text messaging gateway to send campaigns.

• Is the platform offers each of your customer a dedicated dashboard?
• Do you have tools to give to your sales agents?
• Do you have the tools to create sign up pages on your website and Facebook pages?
• Make sure the system can take care of the billing, collect credit cards and send invoices. Once you have more than 10-15 accounts, it becomes a large task to handle billing manually.
• Support  can you offer support to your customers? Does the platform provide you with the tools?

Features
Make sure you have all the features you need and also make sure that the company that you choose is still focused on developing and improving the platform.
You don’t want to stay behind the competition.

Vendor or Competitor?
Is your vendor also selling the same service and basically competing with you? This is a very important point that most prospects are not paying attention to!
A simple google search can show anybody who is the owner of the shared short code you are using, this mean that customers can find who YOU are using
as your white label vendor and pretty much easily can bypass you and and all your efforts of educating them will end there.

Vendor or another reseller?
Most vendors will tell you that they own the platform – make sure that’s correct. When you search on google you will find hundreds of them,
but there are only a handful of REAL platform owners.

Pricing
Does the pricing allow you to be competitive? Do the math! You need at least 65% profit to be able to pay commissions and maintain a healthy business.
This post has been provided to you as FREE advice and is based on real life experience and real questions that we receive every day.

Best Regards

Yuval (U.V) Madar
Founder, Lime Cellular