Using SMS4PC to Highlight Products
One of the things successful businesses do well is create unique branding. When a company has successfully created branding, the public in general is aware of the company and what products it provides. This is true even if the company does not provide a service all persons utilize.
Manufacturers can use SMS4PC to help create branding by highlighting products via SMS messaging to the retail businesses who sell them. In order to have a product worth branding, a business doesn’t have to be a multi-million dollar company with factories world-wide. The business may be a single craftsperson who creates handmade items for sale in local store fronts. No matter what sized manufacturing operation is involved, SMS4PC can help keep the product in the mind of retailers.
Use SMS4PC to send text messages from a computer to the phones of store owners and operators. As business partners, retailers want a product to succeed too. Manufacturers can help retailers promote products by offering constant communication and product information. Retailers can be made aware of new marketing campaigns or product benefits via SMS messages. Those stores will pass the information on to customers, helping to create product branding.
SMS4PC can also be used to send messages about product recalls, answers for frequently asked questions, and product line expansion. Offering advance information on new products through SMS messaging can also be a good idea. Informed retailers make better business partners.
Product branding messages don’t have to be limited to retailers. Companies can consider offering an option online for individual customers to sign up for information about their products as well. Sending end users information about upgrades and new products helps generate word of mouth advertising. All companies know that word of mouth is one of the strongest marketing tools available! With SMS4PC, a manufacturer can easily send messages to thousands of customers at a time.
Please share with us your success stories on how you use SMS texting from computers to make your business more competitive and successful!
Copy Contact Lists Directly to SMS4PC
SMS4PC supports standard address books such as Outlook, Windows, Mac and Google. But what if your contacts aren’t in one of these formats? No worries! You can copy thousands of numbers at a time from a spreadsheet or CSV file directly to SMS4PC. Send an SMS message to hundreds, or even thousands, of users with just a few clicks.
What is a CSV?
A CSV, or comma separated values file, is simply a simplified spreadsheet, which can be opened by most spreadsheet applications. Many times, a CSV file has less formatting than an Excel file would allow, but the information is still in rows and columns. Because it is easy to convert text or data strings into CSV files, many vendors and data warehouses offer users the ability to export data into CSV. If you utilize these types of services, you may receive phone number lists in CSV format.
How to import contacts from a CSV file into the SMS application
In order to import a list of phone numbers and contacts, ensure the list is in a CSV file. You simply go to “Contacts”, “Import contacts” and select the CSV file you want to import the contacts from. After choosing the appropriate columns to import you can also define a group where the contacts and numbers shall end up.
How to Copy Phone Numbers into SMS4PC
In order to copy a list of phone numbers, ensure the list is in a spreadsheet file. If you can open the file in Excel or Open Office’s spreadsheet program, then you can copy the numbers to SMS4PC.
Once you have the data opened in a spreadsheet, identify the numbers you want to copy over. It will be easiest to do this if all the numbers are grouped together.
Put your mouse cursor over the cell with the first number. Left click and hold while you drag the mouse to cover all numbers you want to copy. Once all desired numbers are highlighted, release the left click. Right click and select copy, or use the keyboard shortcut Control-C for copy.
Go to SMS4PC and open a new message. Click in the “To” box. Use the shortcut Control-V for paste. You will note that the numbers you copied are now loaded into the SMS message. Enter the text for your message and click send.
To see more information about how to copy/paste contacts from a spreadsheet into the SMS4PC application see this video
SMS text messaging makes your business personal
Ever since man lived in caves communication has been the primary tool for survival. This is still true today. But today survival communication takes place not only between people but even more so between people and organizations, and companies between companies. Communication and information has become the most important modern day tool for companies that want to survive and stand out from the crowd.
When the telephone was invented over a 130 year ago (by Graham Bell), it was not long before it changed the whole world economy. It was now easy to pick up the phone and talk to people that it would have taken weeks to reach by mail before. Business agreements, mergers, economic information and relations were maintained and strengthened by the telephone.
In today’s society, the choices of tools for communication are many. Besides the standard telephone you have the internet, e-mail, mobile communication, social media and some companies actually still use the fax machine. The constant information flow seems, at first glance, to be exclusively positive, but as we in an evolutionary aspect still “live in caves”, we can only process so much information at once. So, people invented ways to protect and streamline the information overflow with e-mail filters, voicemail and RSS-feeds that let us choose what information we read and process. The rules of engagement have changed, as it has become more and more important for companies to be present where the consumer chooses to be, and not the other way around.
This can be tricky for companies that want to reach out. Making fantastic websites or eye catching videos on YouTube, fun Facebook pages and exclusive e-mail marketing send outs just doesn’t seem to be very effective in many cases, and many companies struggle with their primary tool for survival – communication. Everybody is on the internet, everybody have the possibility to make beautiful marketing almost cost free, and the clutter is making it hard for both information consumers and companies to reach their target groups.
According to many recent studies the fastest increasing tool for getting in touch is the mobile phone communication. You might think that it means iPhone or Android, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube on the mobile, but actually it is SMS. SMS is regarded as the single most personal way to get in touch with someone, and the most reliable tool of all. People trust the SMS, as it is – personal. The reason why the SMS is still so popular is that it can be described as a “permission based” form of marketing, which means that before a company sends a text message to you, you must have initiated the relationship by opting in to receiving the information from that company. This simple fact creates trust – opting in is what we want people to do.
A study of how teenagers prefer to communicate confirms this – despite all social media that is available to them, they still prefer SMS. Get the slide share here:
Trends in Teen Communication and Social Media Use, by Kristen Purcell
The conclusion is that the more personal communication gets, the more impact it has. And today, SMS text messaging is the closest you can get to face-to-face communication. As a company looking for ways to break through the information clutter – SMS is your best bet.