Real-time Direct Response Marketing

Ten years ago, email marketing was pretty much the lone real-time direct response marketing channel. In the intervening time, search engine marketing and mobile marketing have joined the family. Being from the same family of real-time direct response, there are numerous ways that mobile marketing and email marketing effectively complement each other.

For example, mobile marketing is a fantastic way to grow your base of email marketing subscribers. To those of you who are experienced interactive marketers: you already know that growing your email subscriber list plays a very important role in your strategy for revenue growth. Using a mobile marketing campaign as one way of growing your subscriber list is a really good idea. It's really simple 'cause it's pretty basic to implement.

Start with a simple text-to-reply offer. You can have it displayed on your website, printed promotional pieces, ad banners, sponsored web search ads, and on your tradeshow signage. The type of offer will depend a lot on your situation. For example, if you're exhibiting at a tradeshow, it's common to have a text-to-register for a free prize. If you are a retail shop or an eatery, you display in your shop window a text-to-reply offer for a discount coupon for in-store purchases. Regardless of the offer, in your reply text message, invite the person to sign up to receive your email newsletter.

One way that the person would sign up for your email newsletter would be for him to text back a defined keyword (like "EMAIL") followed by his email address. Another way would be for him to enter in his mobile browser the URL that you provided to him in your reply text message. And speaking of URLs, use the shortened version that services like TinyURL and others will give you.

While you're at it, make note whenever people sign up for your email newsletters from their mobile devices. Why? Because chances are, they'll be reading your emails also on their mobile devices. This means that you have the opportunity to craft highly targeted and highly relevant email campaigns just for your mobile subscribers.

Any other ideas of how you can combine email and text messaging? Leave your comments!