Mobile marketing can be a huge boon to your business, and we’ve got five tools you can use for improving your mobile marketing game.
We’ve reported previously that mobile marketing means big business. 79.4 million people will be using mobile devices to shop in 2013. That’s over 50 percent of the digital marketplace. You can’t afford not to invest in mobile marketing technologies. Here is Mashable’s list of five tools you can use for improving your mobile marketing game.
1. Mail Chimp – Email marketing is one of the most popular ways to use technology for keeping in touch with your costumers, and there are many mobile tools for managing email.
MailChimp, for example, is an online tool for email campaigns. They’ve recently added mobile tools that let you view your email stats, check Twitter to see who is tweeting about you and manage your mailing and subscriber lists.
You can also build mobile friendly newsletters, for users who read your emails on their mobile devices. They can also use Chimpadeedoo to sign up for your newsletter via iPad. One company, Monkey Joe’s, used this app to grow its subcriber list from 250 to 10,000.
MailChimp has a free plan in addition to their pay plan. The free plan allows you to have 2,000 subscribers and sent up to 12,000 monthly emails. It includes all of their mobile-friendly features.
2. Red Stamp – For those of you seeking to add flare to your digital messages, Red Stamp enables small businesses to create and send personalized emails with letterheads, business cards, notes, invitations and announcements using your mobile device.
If you’re looking to make an impression with your digital correspondence, check out Red Stamp –- the company just launched Create Your Own Collection that enables small businesses to create and send custom, branded letterhead, business cards, notes, invitations and announcements from mobile and desktop devices.
To use Red Stamp, you must pay a one-time fee of $29.99 for custom design and set-up, and a 4.99 monthly fee for unlimited sharing. You can also order paper postcards for 99 cents, including postage, and Red Stamp will ship the cards for you.
3. Swipely – Swipely makes it easy for customers to join mobile loyalty programs by sending a text message, working seamlessly with the payment cards customers already use, rather than requiring paper cards, punch cards or key chain cards.
One restaraunt in the San Francisco Bay Area uses Swipely for its mobile loyalty program. In only one month they found that 60 percent of customers that who accessed the mobile signup page also joined the loyalty program. Hundreds of customers signed up, allowing the restaurant to market to those customers with email.
Swipely’s loyalty program is free, but you must be an existing Swipely customer.
4. TextUs.Biz – According to Time magazine 32 percent of people would rather text than talk on the phone. TextUs.Biz facilitates texting between businesses and customers via computer or iPad. Agents can use the service to keep in touch with customers by sending appointment reminders or promotional offers, and customers and text agents to request appointments or reservations.
You can send up to 100 messages for free with TextUs.Biz, but after that, the basic cost is $24/month for 1,500 messages, $44/month for 5,000 messages, and $74/month for 10,000 messages.
5. Facebook – According to research reported by Mashable, mobile users check Facebook approximately 14 times a day. You probably already have a Facebook page, but here are some new products you might not be familiar with.
Facebook Offers are virtual coupons. They are available on mobile computers as well as desktop options. Promoted Posts allow you to promote certain posts so they appear higher in your customers news feeds. Facebooks Pages Manager App allows you to manage these features on your mobile device.