Three Ways that a Printer Could Benefit By Using SMS/Text
Posted by 
on Monday, October 31, 2011 
at 7:45 AM 
in 
If you have been to any marketing-related conferences over the past year, I’m sure you’d agree that mobile has been a very popular topic.
Companies of all sizes are looking for information on QR Codes, mobile websites, mobile apps, and more. In addition to those items, there inevitably is a speaker at these conferences that will say this: “Don’t ignore SMS/Text! More people use that than they do the mobile web”.
It certainly can be motivating to hear those quotes and to read articles like this one. But how can you actually implement SMS/Text into your business?
Here are three ideas on how a printer could incorporate SMS/Text into their marketing, sales, and customer support activities.
Notification When A Job is Ready
Most of the printers that I work with send notification via email when a job is ready. In addition to that email, it may be worth considering sending a text-message to the customer at that time as well.
Of course, this may not make sense for all jobs. But here are a few scenarios where SMS may prove to be helpful:
- When the job was flagged as Rush/Urgent
- When the job will be picked up by a customer
- When the job will be delivered by the printer & sign-off is required
Yes, email or a phone call could certainly be used in those situations too. But as more and more people turn to SMS to communicate about all sorts of activities, this may be a way for a printer to also share information with their customer in a channel that they may prefer using.
To Share Information About Specials
Certainly, a business does not want every marketing initiative to be related to pricing specials and discounts. However, those can still be used from time-to-time to create buzz, garner attention, and increase sales.
Many printers are using email and social media to promote their specials. Another way to do that would be through SMS/Text. Since most pricing deals only have a short-window of time, SMS/Text can prove to be an effective way to get your customer’s attention very quickly.
Of course, the message we send out should do more than just provide details of the discount… Make sure that you include a way for them to redeem it!
To Gain Feedback After A Job/Project is Complete
We all want to generate repeat business. To do this, we often have to reach out to customers after a job has been done, seek to get their feedback, and then offer/recommend other activities that we could help them with.
One challenge in accomplishing that is finding the time — both for us (in this case, the printer) and the customer. Using SMS to initiate that conversation could prove to be an effective option for us.
For one, the text message most likely will get noticed by the customer. Also, it may provide the customer with a very quick way to provide feedback. (Many post-job follow-ups that I have seen come in the form of an email that often link to a survey that ask 10 questions!)
———————————
These are just a few ideas on how SMS/Text could be used to help improve marketing, sales, and customer support initiatives.
Have you found anything else that works? If so, please let me know in the comments below!
Tags How-To: Add a YouTube Video to a Landing Page
One of the features within our ilinkONE Version 8 software enables you to easily insert YouTube videos into a landing page. It’s easy to do… and it also can help to make your landing pages a bit more interactive.
Using a Template
If you are building a landing page with one of our templates, you will see a “YouTube Video” button within the WYSIWYG editor. After clicking that button, you simply need to paste in the URL of your YouTube video.
If you’d like to do this, here are the steps involved:
- Create a Landing Page (using one of our templates) within our ilinkONE Version 8 Marketing Software
- Go to YouTube and grab the URL for the video.
For example, let’s use: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXEdwOkX-bM - Back in V8, click the “YouTube Video” button in the Landing Page editor, and insert the URL
HOW TO: Insert a YouTube Video into one of our landing pages
- After that, you simply need to save your edits. Then, hit the “Preview” button — the video will be embedded directly into the landing page!
Using Your Own HTML
Even if you are using your own HTML for a landing page, you can still embed YouTube videos. It’s real easy to do this as well.
Go to YouTube.com and find the video. Click the “Embed” button. YouTube will provide the exact code that you need. Simply copy that code, and head back into the “Edit Landing Page” section of ilinkONE Version 8.
Paste the code wherever you would like the video to appear, and hit Submit.
Shortcuts for Building Multi-Channel Marketing Campaigns
I’ve recently been able to spend time on the road, training new @interlinkONE customers on how to best use our marketing software.
I’ve worked here for almost 11 years now — thus, there are quite a number of features in the software that I’ve become very familiar with. I’ve also taken some of the granted. However, training new customers about these features certainly helps to re-kindle my excitement about the tools we’ve built over the years.
Here’s one of them:
We encourage all of customers to develop multi-channel marketing campaigns. For example, it certainly takes more than one direct mail piece to promote (and fill up the seats) a seminar. With our solution, we encourage clients to consider using a combination of direct mail, email, social media, banner ads, print advertisements, and other channels to promote their efforts.
If you do set up a multi-channel campaign in our system, you will have multiple legs in our Campaign Management view. You do have the ability to enter unique questions and answers for each leg — for example, you could ask people that visited your landing page via social media sites different questions than what you ask people that responded via the direct mail postcard.
However, if your multiple legs will have a number of questions in common, we have a shortcut.
- Via Campaign Management, click to edit the actual Campaign.
- Click the “Add New Questions” button
- Enter the common questions and answers that will be used in your multiple channels/legs.
- Then, as you build out the Response mechanisms for each channel, you’ll be able to click one button to bring the Campaign-level questions into each channel’s form.
This feature will absolutely save your crucial minutes as you develop your multi-channel campaigns. Rather than spending your time doing repetitive data-entry, you’ll be able to start planning your next campaign 
Three Webinars for Customers in March
Over the next few weeks, we will be hosting a series of Webinars/Lunch & Learns that will help demonstrate some of the new features in interlinkONE’s marketing software.
We hope that you will be able to take some time to join us. We truly believe these sessions will help you to take advantage of the new enhancements in our product.
If you can’t make it to one of the sessions, we will be recording the webinars and posting links to them in the Marketing Resource Center. (Please note: The Marketing Resource Center is available to interlinkONE customers only.)
Below is the schedule for our March 2010 webinars. If you are an interlinkONE customer, please click on a specific event to register:
- Marketing
Wednesday, March 10th, 2PM-3PM ESTWe will cover enhancements for building landing pages, emails, and more. - CRM/ Sales
Wednesday, March 17th, 2PM-3PM ESTWe will present new features within our Contact Management solutions. - Orders & Warehouse Management
Wednesday, March 24th, 2PM-3PM EST We will walk through some of the new reports and online ordering options.
Tips for Using Our Software – On Twitter
We are certainly big believers that social media can assist people with their marketing efforts.
Sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc., are helping people to find and communicate with prospects. They help people promote events. They help people “listen” to what is going on in their industry.
Social media sites can also help companies with customer service initiatives.
At interlinkONE, we have recently launched a special Twitter profile that is devoted to providing customer service. The account is http://Twitter.com/ilinkService.
The account will primarily be used to provide quick tips and tricks to help people get the most out of our marketing software.
For example, here are a few of our recent tweets:
Recent Tweets from ilinkService
We truly hope that by posting tips on Twitter, you’ll be able to find help when you need it. But we also hope that these tweets expose you to capabilities in our system that you may not have been aware of previously.
Of course, we still provide customer support through the phone, email, our ilinkProjects tool, videos, our Marketing Resource Center, webinars, and other methods.
Twitter.com/ilinkService is just one more channel to help.
