Experts in the Field - Pedowitz Group's Sweet Platform for 2-way SMS

Many times when we're thinking of marketing automation, we're thinking of interacting with users while they are on their computers - email and the web being the main forms of interaction. However in some situations, your audience is not at their computers, and new approaches are needed.

The Pedowitz Group has developed their Sweet platform for just this purpose. It enables (among other things) 2 way SMS (text message) interaction, so if you have an audience at a tradeshow, a conference, a sports venue, or anywhere they are not at their computers, you can quickly and easily enable them to interact with your via their mobile device.

Quite simply, the Sweet platform allows you to promote a text message address (known as a short code) such as the following wherever you are at:

text TDGARDEN yourname@yourdomain.com to 37619

(Go ahead and try it if you are interested - US #’s only - and the campaign is no longer active so you won't win anything)

This can be promoted at your tradeshow booth, on the big screen at a game, or on a bill-board, however you decide to promote it, and with whatever offer you want to make.

What happens next is where Eloqua gets involved. The Pedowitz Group's Sweet platform captures the inbound messages, and processes them, handling all of the data and subscription management. It then passes those messages to Eloqua as standard web form submits.

Whatever you can do with Eloqua forms or a marketing automation program, you can now do immediately when a person text messages you based on your promotion. Outbound SMS messages can be handled via the Sweet platform, or via Eloqua's SMS capabilities within a marketing automation program - whichever is appropriate.

The possibilities are endless, and quite interesting. I look forward to hearing what campaigns you've run using mobile marketing and text messaging solutions.

Creatively using SMS/Text Messages with Marketing Automation

Multi-channel marketing can be an excellent way to gain a stronger connecting with an audience. By moving outside of the normal realm of email communication, or emphasizing a message with a combined campaign, the effectiveness of a message can be significantly increased. SMS messaging can be an effective part of this strategy in certain circumstances.
For online events such as webinars, an SMS channel can provide a near-real-time reminder of the event’s start, upping participation rates among existing registrants. For face to face events, such as tradeshows, an SMS campaign can be used in order to drive booth traffic, especially when tied in with a contest for a booth prize of significant interest (perhaps through providing a code each hour that can be used to re-enter a booth draw).

Tying in SMS campaigns within Eloqua is easy. The general structure is very similar to the use of voice messages for marketing reminders that we discussed a while ago. In the Communicate->SMS area, create a new SMS call. Within the call, you can specify the text of the outbound SMS message and the sender number. Note that you can use similar field merge techniques to what you would use in email to insert first names, last names, company names, or any other key data point.

With the SMS call created, you can then either use the call in a batch, by defining a distribution list, and sending to that distribution list, or you can insert the call within a marketing automation program. If used in a marketing automation program, as contacts flow to the step, they will be automatically sent an SMS message. Used this way, SMS messages can be delivered automatically, in the hour or two leading up to an event.

Many B2B marketing organizations are unlikely to find that SMS is a core part of their go to market plan, but used selectively and creatively, it can add tremendously to an existing campaign.