We’ve teamed up with PosterOven to allow you to print professional-looking signs to promote your TextMarks keywords along with all the other social media you use: Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and FourSquare.

The signs incorporate instructions for liking the businesses on Facebook, following them on Twitter, checking-in on FourSquare or finding them on Yelp. Additionally, custom QR Codes for each social media platform are automatically generated. PosterOven includes numerous ready-made templates and generates PDF and PNG files for printing and sharing online.

While we’ve had the ability to promote your TextMarks group on Twitter for a long time, we’ve been getting a lot of requests to allow our users to automatically post all of their updates to Twitter.  Well, it’s here!

How it works

Once you connect your Twitter account to your keyword/group, all of your updates will automatically be posted to Twitter.  This includes updates scheduled for the future and alerts sent from phones via our co-manager feature.  If you do a lot of promotion on Twitter, this can be a really valuable feature, as you can update your group via SMS and Twitter with one action rather than having to update both your SMS list and post to Twitter.

Schedule posts for the future

There are several services which allow you to schedule Twitter updates to be sent in the future.  With TextMarks’ ability to schedule alerts in the future, you effectively replace these services.  So, if you have several alerts you want to send out in the future, let’s say for a week or monthlong promotion, you can schedule them all at one time, and the SMS alerts and Twitter posts will be sent out at the same time!

How to access the feature

Existing customers can simply click here to connect their Twitter account.  Or, login, choose a keyword you want to connect to, then in the settings menu, choose “Twitter auto-post”.

Our primary business model of charging on a per-user basis is great for most of our customers, but there are certain circumstances where it’s better to pay on a per-message basis.  We’ve responded to these needs with new plans that allow you to pay on a per-message basis.

• All plans include a fixed number of messages.  There is no rollover, and if you exceed the included messages, you are charged at roughly the same price as the included messages.  Unlike the cell phone companies, we don’t try to “gouge” you for going over your plan’s limits
• We charge only for sent messages, not for incoming messages, unless you somehow manage to have more incoming messages than outgoing messages.

One feature many of our customers have asked for is the ability to know how many messages were sent out from each of their keywords.  This gives you a lot of visibility into the usage for each of your keywords.  It’s particularly useful for resellers who want to bill each customer based on message usage, and users of our new per-message plans.

You can access the feature by logging into your account, and selecting “Manage Account”, and in the “Reports” tab, select the “Message Usage” report.  Or, just go directly there by going to: https://www.textmarks.com/manage/account/reports/message_usage/ (link will open in a new tab).

Before you start spending your hard earned money in ads, you ought to think about a new way of attracting new customers, and bringing back your existing ones, using the one thing they always have with them – their cell phones. And the new way to communicate with customers is to use SMS/Text Messages.

If your business has not yet begun to use SMS marketing, you are probably giving away quite a bit of business to your competitors who do use it.

Ads in newspapers, magazines and coupon paks like Valpak are not only costly but, for the most part, a waste of money. Email ads rarely work anymore because of the abundance of spam, not to mention spam blockers. Text messages, however, are opened almost 100% of the time, and most of them within the first few minutes! So, if you are not using SMS to promote your business, you are not getting your information (offers, discounts, etc.) in front of your customers.

Offer incentives and discounts for the consumers who opt-in to your business SMS. Promote your SMS program on your social websites, in your business with signs and placards, on your website, etc.

Think about how powerful would it be to send out text incentives to your customers to tell them about your extra discounts and the perks they will get. You could literally drive more traffic to your business.  Most of our customers are seeing over 400% ROI on their SMS marketing investment.

Interested? Sign up for a free trial now – click here.

How can you send information to millions of people at the same time?  SMS, of course!

The company that owns the famous glittery New Year’s Eve ball in Times Square, along with those huge TV monitors, just announced its new app.  They wanted a way for everyone who is watching – in person in Times Square,  on TV or watching it stream live to be able to easily download the app.    The solution was to use TextMarks – just text BALL to 41411 to get a direct download link to the app.  It’s super easy and immediate.  No  long website addresses to type, and very easy to display on the large TV screens.  You can also download the app here.

Here at TextMarks we are thrilled to be such an important part of this monumental event.  As 41411 lights up the screens over Times Square, people can text in to download this new app in real time.

Need a million new customers fast?  TextMarks is the name companies trust for ease of use, reliability and scalability.

Creative Marketing Ideas to Boost Sluggish Sales with TextMarks

Smart business owners know that in order to run a successful business you have to watch your customers.  That’s exactly what the owner of Pizza Tower did.   What he noticed is that customers get bored while they are waiting on their food.  The problem is simple common sense, the solution is a bit trickier – but Pizza Tower found the key and increased their monthly sales by $2,000.

After noticing that most of the customers started reading the dessert menu and the table topper advertisements, he came up with the idea to combine the two by offering a free dessert on the table topper for customers who texted to his TextMarks group.  When they texted in for the first time, the response was a coupon that they could redeem right away.  The ingenious part of this marketing strategy was building a list of Pizza Tower’s best customers at the same time, with minimal effort.

Very few businesses realize the potential right now in text marketing, but Pizza Tower didn’t just want to email customers messages that would end up in spam folders.  So they looked into the SMS marketing services of TextMarks and found a perfect and easy to use solution by offering customers a free dessert for subscribing to their SMS service while they wait.

The setup for Pizza Tower was as easy as eating dessert, maybe easier.

1. Register with TextMarks
2. Select an appropriate group name (ie. Pizza)
3. Create the table topper advertising an instant free dessert just for texting the keyword PIZZA to 41411 (the Textmarks SMS “shortcode”).

The bottom line is that if you sit in any restaurant, in any city, state or country – there is 99.9% chance that you will see somebody texting or using their cell phone while waiting to be served.  This is exactly the type of consumer trend that business owners need to start paying attention to in order to increase sales in a tough economy.

Table toppers are just one idea of how to build your business’s VIP customer list, some other ideas to build your subscriber list by promoting your SMS group include:

• Adding it to Print and TV Ads
• Including it in Newsletters
• Customizing Printed Receipts
• Promoting on Social Media and Networking Sites (such as Twitter and Facebook)

By using this easy and low-cost SMS service, you will be able to notify all of the important people in your circle of influence about every event, special and promotion in less than a minute.

THAT is smart and economic marketing at it’s best!

Does your business have a presence on Facebook and Twitter?  Do you have a big following and lots of activities on your accounts, or do you hear crickets?

Here are three quick tips on how to increase your social media engagements and build your fanbase.

1. Offer a gift card to a randomly selected fan or follower every month.  This helps you grow your fan base and keeps them coming back to your page.
2. Communicate and interact.  As you grow your list of fans and followers – talk to them.  Respond to their tweets and Facebook comments.  Don’t just talk about your products and services.  Ask interesting questions.  Answer their questions.  Communication is a two-way street.
3. Have a strong promotion and make it easy to share.  Tie it to all your marketing channels: social media, website, print collateral, text messaging service, etc.  For instance, if you’re a pizza restaurant and you have a weekly promotion of “buy one large pizza get a dozen wings for free”, do broadcast it across the board on Twitter and Facebook, and via SMS to your list of subscribers.

Ready to roll up your sleeves?  What other ideas have worked for you in the past?  Please share them by leaving a comment below.

One key to success with SMS Marketing is to build your list. After all, if you’re sending out messages to a small number of customers, you can’t expect many sales.  We’ll use a fictional pizza restaurant who has the keyword PIZZA as our example and show you a few ideas on how to grow your list.

1. Add your group name to your receipt.
   Almost all cash registers these days allow you to customize what is written on your receipt.  Likely your receipt says “Thank You, Come Again”.  Turn your receipt into a marketing channel!  Change it to “Text PIZZA to 41411 to get coupons and deals via SMS!”
2. Promote it on your website.
   If you already have a website, add a simple call to action on the homepage.  For instance, “Text PIZZA to 41411 to get text message coupons from us!”  It could sit right next to your Twitter and Facebook buttons.
3. Promote your SMS list in your print advertising.
   If you’re already spending money promoting your business via print, you can squeeze additional effectiveness out of it by simply adding the call to action of “Text PIZZA to 41411 to get coupons and deals via SMS” in addition to your web site URL.  The big difference here is that sending a text is very simple and immediate, and once they send the text, they’re subscribed.  They don’t need to go to your site and find and fill out a form or anything, it’s just a quick, simple action someone can do from anywhere.
4. Promote your SMS list on the radio.
   Radio can be a very effective way to build your list because people have their phones with them all the time.  If you promote a strong offer on the radio that people can simply text in to take advantage of, your response rate can be higher than you think.
5. Get your customers to share!
   We have several customers who are party promoters, so it’s important to them to build a large SMS list and invite people to their events.  One thing they do is include the phrase “Please Forward” or “Please Forward to Friends”.  Depending on your target customers, you might be able to shorten this to “Pls Fwd”, which is only 7 characters at the end of your message.  Watch your offers go viral!
6. Promote your list in a way that’s unique to your business.
   If you’re a pizza restaurant, print it on your pizza boxes.  If you’re a plumber, promote your SMS list in your Yellow Pages ad or on your trucks.  If you’re an insurance agent and give out free pens, print it on your pens!
7. Sweeten the deal.
   Give customers an instant reward for signing up.  If you’re a pizza restaurant, give them a free dessert.  If you’re a retail shop, give them $1 off their purchase.  The idea is to give them an immediate incentive so they’ll join your list.

Most of building your list is about using your existing marketing channels to get the word out.  Our customers are telling us text coupons bring them twice as much business as email promotions.  Start building your list today and watch your business grow!

Did you know that you can use SMS to measure the effeciveness of your other marketing channels?  It’s easy.  Here’s how:

Let’s say you want to compare your print with your radio campaign.  You can do this using two TextMarks groups.  Just sign up for two words, let’s say BUSINESS1 and BUISNESS2.  In your print ads, you promote “Get special offers – Text BUSINESS1 to 41411″.  In your radio spot, you promote the BUSINESS2 group in a similar manner.

As the campaigns run, you can measure the number of users who join BUSINESS1 vs. BUSINESS2, and use that as a measure of how effective one is compared to the other.  If you want to then communicate with these people, you can easily send the same message to both lists.  Alternatively, you can further test the quality of the people each channel brings by sending the same offer with different offer codes to the various SMS lists.