How to Prevent No-Shows: Event Organizers

You've worked hard to get your event to this stage, and now you feel like a kid before their birthday party … will anybody show up? Most of the time, people that have booked a spot for an event turn up. Yet there is always a percentage of no-shows, and every empty seat is lost cash. Today we are looking at how event organizers can help prevent no-shows, with a minimum of fuss and cost.

Scheduling SMS reminders

When doctors, dentists and real estate agents choose to schedule SMS messages to remind their clients about appointments, they are usually sent several hours beforehand. If someone has truly forgotten about an event, though, they usually require more notice than this to organize their attendance. Schedule SMS messages both three and seven days in advance, as well as on the event day.

Allow replies to your scheduled SMS messages

In many SMS software programs, it is incredibly simple to allow replies. This is an easy way to discover if someone isn’t planning to come -- let them reply to the message and be taken off the list. If you’re going to use this tactic, make sure you let your customers know! Many people aren’t used to being able to reply to scheduled SMS messages. Simply advise them in the message body of how to reply with a cancellation.

Consider taking small deposits

If you are setting up a free event that requires registration, you'll inevitably find more no-shows on the day than for paid events … even more than paid events where no deposit is taken. This is because people see the seat or booking as less valuable to you, so aren’t as concerned about letting you know it won’t be fulfilled.

To solve this dilemma, charge a nominal fee upon booking. If you want, you can use the fees towards food and drinks for the event, or donate it to a charity of your choice. Make sure you let people know what you are doing with the fee.

Using Text Speak in Your SME Marketing Messages

In general, you'll find that most people advise you NOT to use text speak in your marketing messages. "You'll alienate the older generation," they warn you. "People won’t understand you, your money will be wasted!" While this is true in some cases, it certainly isn't unequivocally true. If you’re speaking to a younger audience, full words will look very stilted to them on a screen … and ironically, it is the younger audience that are more likely to engage with SME marketing promotions via text. So today we are looking at some common text abbreviations, and how far to go with your text speak in scheduled SMS messages.

Common abbreviations in SMS speak

Some abbreviations are more common than others in text speak. You'll find that young adults, teens and middle-aged people alike are comfortable with using terms like:

L8 Late

l8r Later

bcos because

no Know

lol Lots of laughs/Laughing out loud

omg Oh my God

brb Be right back

Especially since most text messages are limited to 160 characters, some of these common abbreviations can be useful for getting plenty of detail into your SMS marketing, without adding a second message. While one set of beeps might be interesting, a second set unfailingly annoys!

Emoticons

Emoticons are common among the younger generation -- if you are sending scheduled SMS messages to teens or tweens, it is entirely appropriate. You might use pictograms like

Less common abbreviations

Most of these are conversational and not used in text message scheduling for marketing. Some of these abbreviations include:

n and

atm at the moment

or+ awesome

btw by the way

def definitely

g2g got to go

hru how are you

imo in my opinion

jtlyk just to let you know

obv obviously

prbly probably

Demographically Targeted Promotion Ideas for the Hospitality Industry

Demographic targeting is the most important part of ensuring your text message scheduling and marketing campaign is working -- check out our earlier post on demographics in advertising and how to utilize them. If you're wondering exactly how you can apply these lessons to your own business (and you happen to be in the hospitality industry), we've done the hard work for you! Use these demographically targeted SME marketing and promotions ideas via text message scheduling for everyday success in your business.

For coffee shops

1. $1 Tuesday for cakes: This one would be targeted towards women -- yes, there are plenty of men with a sweet tooth, but the gals outweigh them by a mile in the sugar-licious stakes! You can expect quite a few coffee sales along with your cheap cakes.
2. 50% discount on lunch-hour coffees: You can frame this as a happy-hour-style SME promotion. You'd be targeting office workers, and those that you know work in your immediate area. Use phone number prefixes to determine who to send these scheduled text messages out to.

For restaurants

3. Kids eat free: Target this one to customers that you know have children -- an obvious one! If you have children yourself, you'll know how little they actually eat at one meal, and can safely offer tiny plates of food along with free refills of pasta, or nuggets and chips, or whatever you do at a very low cost.
4. Oysters and champagne night, $20 per head: If you have included marital status information in your demographic gathering activities, you can quite easily target couples with this text message scheduling promotion. Alternatively, look back through your old booking sheets and see who has booked tables for two. A male name on the booking sheet generally indicates a couple coming.

For bars, pubs and clubs

5. $3 cocktail night coming up: Women are more likely to drink cocktails than men are -- and big discounts on these traditionally expensive drinks will be a sure-fire pleaser. Make this SME promotion for a limited part of the night, so that you attract customers but don’t run a huge loss.
6. 24 beers in 24 hours competition: These will be legal in some areas but not in others, so that is the first thing you'll need to investigate before implementing this demographically targeted text message scheduling promotion. Once that's done, go for younger men (and be prepared to pull an all-nighter!).

4 Ways You Can Use Text Message Scheduling to Manage Employees

One of the biggest challenges and biggest expenses in running a business is managing the people within it. Wages make up a big part of expenses, and sick days and missed shifts not only cause headaches, but cost even more money. Text message scheduling is a great way to automate some parts of the employee management process, so that managers can focus on keeping the most expensive and important part of the business healthy and happy! Here are four text message scheduling techniques that apply to any business with employees.

Distributing rosters

Let your employees know their shifts as soon as rosters are completed with text message scheduling. You can input the data by simply copy-pasting the shift times in the appropriate format into a text message for your employees. A delivery report means that you have hard copy proof that your employees were notified of their shifts!

Even when absenteeism is not an issue, scheduled text messages informing employees of rosters eliminates confusion and cuts down on paper usage -- much more appropriate in the modern world.

Staff meeting notices

Text message scheduling to a group using web based software is extremely quick and extremely cost-effective -- much more so than ringing employees individually to let them know about an upcoming meeting. The cost for good text message scheduling will usually be around 10p per message, and you can request employees reply to confirm that they are attending. This strategy helps ensure everyone gets the message at minimal time and cost.

Social club events

Send out a reminder about Friday drinks, Monday lunchtime's trivia event, or an upcoming office birthday party using text messaging. Even people who aren’t working (and so won’t be checking their work e-mails or noticeboards) will get the message, and won’t miss out on the event.

Memos

Use this technique carefully; text message scheduling for memos sounds like a great idea for ensuring blanket coverage for management's message, but the practicalities can be a little restrictive. You only have 160 characters to get your message out, or else a second message will be sent. Sending two messages is unprofessional (and more than a little annoying for the recipient!). This strategy can be useful as a reminder for policies that everybody has previously discussed, but is rarely a good format to deliver more extensive new information.

Making Restaurant Reservations

My dream as a chef was to open up my own Italian restaurant. After many years of working under some of the top Italian chefs in the country, I was finally able to open up me own little piece of Italy in a busy downtown location. I could have not asked for a better location and an even better price on the building that was purchased.

After many months of renovations to the building and hiring a great staff, my Italian restaurant was ready for opening night. The first night we were open was extremely busy and we were surprised at the turnout. Everyone loved the food that we were serving and our staff was elated on the many wonderful compliments about the cuisine.

Since being open for the past three months, it seems that the newness of the restaurant has wore off and the struggling economy was having a negative effect on the business of my restaurant. We went from being booked for weeks in advanced and then business seemed to slow down a bit. My wife suggested that we look into subscribing to some small business tools to get the momentum back in our business.

We both did our research on the Internet and came across an interesting website. My wife found the website Pelican Txt.com. This amazing service provides text messaging to many of our regular customers and we can even send scheduled text messages to our talented staff.

My wife explained to me that this text messaging service provides our customers with the opportunity to receive up to date food promotions via cell phone or computer for our Italian restaurant. I even learned that the text messaging service would allow customers to make reservation at the touch of a button instead of waiting on the phone. This made perfect sense to use this service as a convenience to our loyal customers and to help promote our restaurant.

Since we have been using the scheduled text messages for our staff and customers, it has made our Italian restaurant one of the busiest eateries in the downtown area again. My staff is now constantly up to date on meetings and restaurant reservations. The service has saved my talented employees time on how many people to expect for dinner service every night. This has also helped me in knowing how much food to order from my distributors and helps keep our food cost down, and the savings are passed on to the customers.

How to Use Demographics in Your Text Message Scheduling

If you aren't already using demographic profiles in your text message scheduling and marketing, then you are wasting up to 90% of your budget! Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that their product or service would be good for everyone … even if that is true, your marketing budget can waste away quite quickly by not targeting your message properly.

Imagine if you were selling facial treatments, and were offering free eyebrow waxing with every treatment this month. Sure, there are some men who like getting facial treatments and eyebrow waxing, especially corporate type guys. But would you take out an ad for your services in a business updates magazine? Probably not! On a smaller scale, not paying attention to demographics in your text message scheduling is just as wasteful. So how do you collect and use demographics in your cellphone marketing efforts?

What are demographics?

There are several main ways to split your customers up into groups. Each of these must be useful in considering what they are likely to need or want. Arbitrary divisions are not useful. You'll want to maintain a database showing each customer's:

• Age, or age bracket (for example, 18-25, 25-35, 35-50, 50+)
• Sex, male or female
• Income level or bracket
• Education level
• Race and/or ethnicity
• Geographic location

How to collect demographics

Some lucky businesses collect these demographics as a part of their service. For example, if you sell products via the internet, you will already have your customer's geographic location. In some cases, businesses might take a date of birth to help verify customer identities (for example, internet providers and electricity providers), giving them accurate age data for creating demographic divisions. In other cases, businesses may be able to assume data based on their interactions with the customers -- but be aware that this is risky business!

A better way to collect demographic data is to offer a reward in exchange for it. Loyalty card providers don’t really need to know people's income or education level in order to give them a free coffee once they've bought ten. However, many stores require this sort of sign-up. There are many ways you can do this is your own businesses. You an also use:

• Suggestion boxes
• Post-purchase surveys
• Focus groups

Shaking what your research gave you

So, how do you apply all this newfound knowledge in your text message scheduling campaign? Many businesses will have only one demographic for their customers -- you might sell a product that only high-income, older females want. However, other businesses have a wide range of customer demographics.

When you design a promotion or special, keep a single customer demographic in mind. For example:

• Mechanics could offer promotions on tasks that men usually do themselves, but women often need help with
• Hairdressers could offer a promotion on a trim and shampoo aimed at their male customers
• Beauty therapists could offer an anti-wrinkle product sample free with a facial, aimed at older customers.

And then use your text message scheduling program to ONLY send this out to customers within your chosen demographic! Easy - and effective.

Top 4 Writing Tips for Scheduled Text Message Marketing

Almost the only form of marketing that is guaranteed to be read nowadays is scheduled text message marketing. People will delete emails without even seeing the first line, they're wise to pop-under ads and right click to close them, and even the most annoying blinking banners barely get a look in. Scheduled text message marketing is still fairly underused and a powerful tool for the right offer and audience. If you've got a powerful promotion, here are our top four tips for framing it in text message words!

1. Set the scene

Frame your offer either in terms of the problem it solves for your customer, or in terms of its benefits … using SENSORY language. This is language that evokes a feeling in your reader. "Save" and "discount" always arouse interest, but to be memorable you might uses words like:

• Warm and cozy
• Sizzle
• Dripping
• Laugh
• Fresh

You can see how these apply to many different contexts, and as you read them you can picture a feeling, a sound, a sight or a quality. This is what will make your scheduled text messages stick in customers' minds.

2. Calls to action

They are an essential part of marketing everything from hearing aids to handbags. Don’t just provide a website or phone number, TELL your customer to look it up or call it. If you have a physical store, say "Come and see us at…". You can also bring your sensory words into a call to action. For example, if you were advertising a steakhouse restaurant, you could say "Experience the sizzling flavors and juicy drip of our finest by stopping by 123 High Street, Downtown."

3. No txt spk!

Society is well and truly divided on the issue of text-speak. The bottom line is that it isn’t suitable for corporate communications. Even if you have a young audience or an informal brand, full words are safest.

4. Write about one thing only

You need to identify a single offer for your text message. Customers will only get annoyed if the first message is truncated, and then their silence is again interrupted by beeping, only to find more advertising. You need a single offer per scheduled text message for both memorability, and to avoid being an annoyance.

Be a Social Butterfly!

You've probably heard again and again the benefits of social networking. Social networking is an excellent way not just to maximize your own social life, but also to maximize your life and business. Utilizing a social network as a means of advertising, communicating, and keeping your business up and running will help you to develop a personal relationship with your staff, your clients, and other people involved in your organization on a day-to-day basis. We find that utilizing a social network is more beneficial if you can grow with the social network, such as, when you enter on the ground floor. Getting in on the ground floor of a building social network is an excellent way to expand your repertoire can get the word out before spam and other unnecessary messages become commonplace.

Basically, if you're part of a social network from its early stages, you'll notice you get more legitimate attention in both the social and business realms. Depending on the network, getting in early can mean some specialized added benefits as well. If you’re planning to join a social network, spend some time researching the opportunities available there before you get the ball rolling.

You may be curious as to what a social network actually is. Other social networks, you might be familiar with networks like Facebook, Myspace, and others of a similar nature. Social networking is a place where you can chat with friends, post information about your business, transfer information, share photos and messages, and keep your family and friends updated on your day-to-day living.

While simply signing up for a social networking will do little to promote your business, actually utilizing the services of a social network can be the perfect way to advertise new products get the word out about any business. Don't underestimate the benefits ofbeing part of a social network. We think in engaging in a useful nature of any social network is a wonderful way to stay on top of all the benefits modern technology has to offer.