by Natalia Klishina


One of the things CallFire does is mass text messaging — which we also call SMS marketing, SMS for business, and many other things. Text messaging is a technology that’s exploding lately, and the best marketers are taking advantage of all its opportunities. It’s instant, it’s affordable, it’s highly effective at reaching people. There’s nothing else out there that can really compete. The days of traditional marketing using snail mail, radio and TV ads, and printed advertisements are over. Even email can’t compare. In case you’re not convinced, here are some concrete reasons why you should be incorporating SMS into your business’s marketing efforts. And when you’re ready to start, just sign up or contact us with questions.

1. People always have their cell phones on them.

   According to last summer’s Conversational Advertising report conducted by Single Point for mobileSQUAREd, we all spend about 16 hours a day with our cell phones. Hell, I even sleep with mine.

2. Voice is dead. SMS is on the rise.

   According to Nielsen Media, even with cell phones, voice spending has been trending downward, and text spending is expected to surpass it in the next three years. Why? Phone calls seem rude and intrusive, always catching us at the wrong time. Many people also consider them awkward and just prefer to communicate in text form, where they have time to contemplate everything being said. Think about this for a second: 8 TRILLION text messages will be sent in 2011. That’s HUGE!

   Just check out this visualization of data from the Pew Research Center on smarphone usage if you’re still in doubt:
   

   

3. SMS is becoming a well-accepted form of advertising.

   Consumers are increasingly proving to be willing subscribers to opt-in services — as long as the message is relevant and some sort of value/incentive is provided. In fact, A2P SMS (application-to-person, like with bank alerts and offers from retailers) is expected to overcome person-to-person SMS by 2016.

   Just take a look at these recent infographics. For example, YouGov recently conducted a study that revealed that 65% of people actually like offers on their mobile phones, and that the most effective mobile marketing medium for eliciting response is SMS:
   

   

   And Promotional Codes compiled data to show the growth of the mobile advertising market, which is expected to reach $3.1 billion by 2013. Mobile coupon redemptions alone are expected to bring in $6 million in 2014. Examine the closeup for a breakdown of what consumers want to receive on their smartphones (grocery coupons, scannable barcodes, movie theatre promotions, retailer advertisements, etc.):
   

   

4. SMS is highly convenient.

   Unlike the phone calls mentioned above, text messages are convenient. Both parties don’t have to be available at the same time, and your recipient’s phone doesn’t even have to be on. If your customer (or potential customer) receives a coupon, promotion, or event reminder from you, they can see it once they turn on or look at their phone, and reference back to it at any time. You don’t need their undivided attention or active response right when your message goes out; they can come back to it when it suits them best, like when they’re shopping online or passing your store.

5. The open rates for SMS are incredible.

   Close to 98% of all text messages are read, and 90% are read within the first three minutes of being received. Compared to emails, which — according to MailChimp — usually only have about a 1-in-4 open rate, that’s incredible.

6. The redemption rates are also incredible.

   Redemption rates for text message marketing range between 20% and 70%. Before you think 20% is low, compare it to the 1.5% average for TV, print, radio, and direct mail.

7. It’s instant — both to send and receive.

   You don’t need to spend extensive amounts of time creating an ad and then waiting for it to go out. Just compose a short, relevant message, click send, and it should be received by your audience in a matter of minutes. No one has to wait anymore!

8. It’s short, it’s simple, it gets the point across.

   At least if you do it right. Your customer doesn’t need to sift through tons of material or useless information to get to what they want. It drastically increases the chances that they will actually act upon the information you give them.

9. The results are measurable.

   You can track the responses you receive, how often a certain promo code is redeemed, etc. I know there are few things more frustrating to a marketer than not being able to track ROI, so you can rest easy here.

10. Texts are cheap.

    You only need to pay a couple of cents per message (think, just $30 to contact 1000 people), and the recipient essentially pays nothing.

11. SMS campaigns can be extremely targeted.

    You’re not just blasting your message out at anyone and everyone, wasting time advertising to people who might not even be interested in your products or services. SMS campaigns reach people who have opted in to receive your messages, meaning they’re already interested. They can also be further segmented by specific needs, maximizing redemption rates — and thus profits — after each text blast.

12. No, it’s not just for teenagers.

    Over 72% of adults are text messaging, and nearly 65% of mobile users in their 40s and 50% of users in their 60s regularly send texts. And those are last year’s figures, which are rising with every year.

    Just take a look at this data from a Tatango poll on text message advertising. The group that’s most likely to opt into text message campaigns is actually between 25-35:
    

    
    
    

13. SMS is great for interactivity.

    It’s easy for customers to text in a reply, or text-to-win, or text-to-donate, or click-to-call, or click on a link in a message they receive, or any other of a million interactive actions. And when it’s easy, they’re much more likely to do it.

14. You’re not limited to just text anymore.

    A simple SMS message can contain links that smartphone users can open to go to your site, view a picture, watch a video, etc. — making it much more powerful than just a 160-character bit of text. And these capabilities are sure to increase astronomically, which brings me to my last point…

15. It’s the cutting edge of technology.

    At least in the business world. Companies that are implementing SMS into its marketing campaigns are seen as tech-savvy, hip, and highly involved with their customers. That’s a good image to have.

So don’t wait another day. Get started now with CallFire’s text message marketing services.

by Natalia Klishina

Here at CallFire, we’re always listening to your comments and suggestions, and that’s why we’ve decided to add a “Build My IVR” feature to our Hosted IVR service. To get started, just log into your CallFire account (or create one for free now), go to create a campaign, select the Hosted IVR option, and then click the “Build it for me” button. Our team of IVR specialists will do all the work for you!

What is an IVR? We explain it on our IVR Designer page: IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response. It allows our system to read custom information using text-to-speech and to detect keypad inputs. IVR can be used to build systems such as virtual receptionists, custom appointment reminders, and advanced telephone surveys.

We realize that building your own IVR can be confusing, especially when you want to take advantage of our more advanced capabilities like creating and stashing variables, or integrating with Google Analytics. So if you want to build an advanced IVR that conducts surveys, routes calls, reminds customers of appointments, or any of a thousand other options — stop worrying that it may be too difficult. Now, all you have to do is fill out a small text box describing what you want to do, and one of our IVR specialists will be in touch shortly to help create it for you. For the next month, they’ll even do it for free, so don’t miss out on this opportunity to leave the hard stuff to us, at no cost to you.*

And a special thanks to Shannon — one of our wonderful Customer Service specialists — whose perceptive feedback was a large impetus for our development team in creating this feature. We hope it makes many of your lives easier!

GET STARTED NOW

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*Signed service agreement may be required. CallFire Terms of Service of Agreement applies. Restrictions may apply, or charges may be subject to change. Available for a limited time and may end without notice.

by Kimberly Kohatsu

Last Friday, about 80 business leaders assembled at the Huntley Hotel in Santa Monica, CA, for CallFire’s first ever conference, which we called Biz2Beach. The invitation-only attendees included founders, business development leaders, and marketing directors from companies big and small, including NBCUniversal, Mobclix, DDB Los Angeles, Airpush, adly, Mobile Roadie, Disney Animation Studios, BetterWorks, and more.

By design, the conference was kept small in order to facilitate lively, engaging conversations between the attendees and featured speakers. Hailing from LA and San Francisco, the six speakers were Tony Adam, CEO and Founder of Visible Factors and Eventify, Matthew Arevalo, Founder of Master Works, Garth Holsinger, VP Global Sales and Business Development for Klout, Van Jepson, Founder and CEO of GroupPrice, Krishna Subramanian, Co-founder of Mobclix, and Robyn Ward, Director of Sales and Business Development for BetterWorks. At their respective discussion tables, they spoke about online marketing, mobile marketing, company culture, and social media ROI, among other topics. These discussions will soon be archived on TechZulu, who was one of the event sponsors and who live-streamed Biz2Beach to an audience of about 45,000 people.

“I go to a lot of conferences,” said David Henzel, VP Marketing at NetDNA and longtime CallFire customer. “But I loved the intimate format of Biz2Beach; the ‘unconference’ is way more interactive because participants can easily steer conversations with the speaker to get the most value out of it and make deep, meaningful connections.”

CallFire also used Biz2Beach to provide a sneak peek into CallFire Version 3.0, the latest iteration of our voice and SMS messaging platform. Presented by our CTO Vijesh Mehta, CallFire 3.0 includes improvements to reporting and data visualization, an easier, sleeker user interface, and increased back-end efficiency. Existing CallFire clients from companies like 8×8, Amacai Solutions, GeoDecisions, Ipsos Loyalty, and BrightArrow Technologies were among the attendees at Biz2Beach, and they got to see many of their feature requests in action. News of private beta access to CallFire 3.0 is forthcoming, so stay tuned.

After a closing discussion of the cumulative takeaways and general good vibes of Biz2Beach, guests moved to the penthouse of the Huntley Hotel, the Skyline restaurant, which overlooks the ocean and the whole of Los Angeles. There, they enjoyed cocktails, dinner, and networking into the late evening. As she left, Jennifer Kelton, Founder and CEO of BadOnlineDates.com, tweeted she felt “Gratitude for an absolutely amazing day. Filled with wonderful people, and many thoughtful conversations.”

We couldn’t have said it better. We’ve since started a LinkedIn group for past and future Biz2Beachers, as we hope to make Biz2Beach LA’s premier networking unconference, “drawing a mix of the brightest minds in technology, advertising and anyone in the B2B space,” in the words of our CEO Dinesh Ravishanker. There are also videos and photos which we’ll be posting soon.

Many people came together to make Biz2Beach happen, including the entire CallFire team (special shout-out to the devs), our event sponsors, the guests and speakers, the staff at the Huntley Hotel, and the LA tech and business community as a whole. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this enormous effort. We hope the conversations facilitated and the connections made prove all that hard work was worthwhile.

by Kimberly Kohatsu

We’re about a week away from Biz2Beach, CallFire’s first executive networking conference, and frankly, it’s overtaken my life. I go to bed still thinking about invitation lists, to-do’s, and logistics. It’s given me a new appreciation for wedding planners, event coordinators, hotel staff, and producers.

In the process of organizing an event like Biz2Beach, tools that help to streamline event planning become indispensable. Some of tools we’ve been using include

Eventbrite – for ticket registration and payment processing. PROS: Easy to use, with a lot of nice features like discount codes, ability to set different ticket tiers and early bird dates, and email functions. Free to use if your event is free. CONS: Among the more expensive ticket platforms if your event is not free, some attendees reported difficulty in registering and paying (which makes me nervous that some people may show up and I don’t know they’re coming), and some features I would actually like to use (like printing a check-in list of attendees or printing name badges) are buggy.

MailChimp – for email promotion and communication. PROS: Integrates with Eventbrite and gives you more flexibility than the basic email functions in Eventbrite, ability to create groups and segment lists has been awesome for me. Nice UI and free up to 2,000 contacts. CONS: I wish there was a plugin or something that allowed me to instantly move someone from a status like “Invited” to “Confirmed attending” when they RSVP’d. Right now I do that manually. Also, just as an aside, it was a pain to get our account approved to use MailChimp because our initial list of email addresses was so large.

Google Forms – for collecting info on people who were interested in attending. PROS: Free and simple to use. CONS: Not enough flexibility in the design/layout of the form itself, and sometimes I had to re-copy and paste the same embed code whenever changes were made.

These tools are all very well known, so I won’t take more time expounding on them. But what about CallFire as a tool for event planning? Turns out, there’s a number of things that our own software can do to help make event planning easier.

Use the Cloud Call Center for personalized telephone outreach.

For instance, we wanted to invite customers who have been most actively using our system. So we logged into our CRM system, exported a report based on certain parameters, and then uploaded the contact list into CallFire. For the invitees, getting a phone call from CallFire’s CEO Dinesh is a much more personal touch than an email, even an individualized one. But the Cloud Call Center also made it easier on Dinesh’s part to make the outreach more efficient. The autodialer meant that he didn’t have to dial phone numbers by hand (potentially mis-dialing in the process), and he automatically skipped over any bad phone numbers or busy signals.

You could also use the Cloud Call Center if you’re contacting large lists of vendors, venues, or potential sponsors. Create a target list (an Excel spreadsheet or .csv), and include any relevant info that would be helpful as you make each call. For example, if you’re calling potential venues, you could include a link to each venue’s website so you can quickly access it as you’re speaking to the contact. Then, if you need to ask a standard list of questions, create multiple-choice or open-answer questions. Once you’ve finished all your calls, you’ll be able to sort through the answers you’ve collected more easily. An example multiple-choice question might look something like this:

To learn how to set up a virtual call center with CallFire, watch this video.

Use text messaging to send updates and reminders.

This is especially helpful on the event day, when attendees, staff, and volunteers aren’t in front of their computers or regularly checking email. This month, for instance, the largest bike ride in LA, Critical Mass, plans to use CallFire SMS to send riders notes like “We’ll be leaving in 2 minutes” at the start of the ride. You can also include a link in your text message, such as maps or directions.

Create a simple IVR for quick RSVPs, follow-ups, or to confirm volunteer registration.

This video will show you everything you need to know:

Other ideas for using CallFire for events? Throw’em in the comments!

And don’t just take my word for it….

“My company has been using CallFire for a couple years now. We use the Voice Broadcast campaigns to announce upcoming events to previous customers and send reminders to registered attendees. At a recent trade show, I had an attendee approach me and say, ‘Thanks for the phone call reminder – keep it up! I would have forgotten all about your event were it not for the call.’” – Carol Hill, On Time Media LLC

“I LOVE CALLFIRE!! My customers do too! Our dealership holds an event every Saturday and we utilize CallFire to get the word out! Customers personally thank us for giving them a call notifying them of upcoming events and specials. I have also saved a ton of money by using CallFire in place of my direct mail pieces. Great product!” – Erika Harris, Adventure Harley-Davidson

“CallFire was the fastest and cheapest way to get the word out about special events at our retail store. I love it and refer my friends.” – Aliki Gable, Aliki Yamani Creations

by Natalia Klishina

Today we sent out an email to our most-active customers from the last 3 years asking them for their feedback. (If you didn’t receive the email, you can always access the form here.) One of the reasons is that we’re including a lot more customer commentary in the revision of the CallFire site we’re currently working on; and the other is that our team usually doesn’t get to read reviews until a customer takes the initiative to contact us or post online, but we really want to know what our customers think.

We got 20 entries in just the first hour. Here are some highlights that we really enjoyed reading and will be sure to include on our new site.

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“CallFire has been a lifesaver, being that I used to spend a good portion of my day manually making back to back phone calls to accounts with order updates, which are now automated with just a click of a button! Great service and I have never had any problems.” -Nichole Eskridge, PromGirl LLC

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“I have used CallFire for my political campaign as well as for community organizing. I have used other companies to make robocalls throughout the community, and no other company has provided the quality, low cost, high speed or ease of use that CallFire does. My technical support issues have been resolved with a single phone call, and the online prompts for help have been easy to follow, even without a technical background. As a result, I have been able to establish a relationship with thousands of people in the neighborhood from the comfort of my home office.” -Valerie F. Leonard

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“CallFire is a great way to notify our members about programs and specials. We have been using CallFire for over three years with great success. It has made a big difference in ensuring our programs are well attended.” -Bruce Stapleton, Chief Club Officer, Five Seasons Family Sports Club

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“Our experience working with CallFire has been exceptional. It has made our communication efforts a breeze. The flawless execution of the setup is a dream come true. It has freed up so much of my time and has saved our company money because we’re no longer doing mass mailings. Our recruitment efforts are cleaner, smoother, more manageable and our membership has skyrocketed and I contribute a large part of that increase to the number of Scouts we’re now able to reach using CallFire.” -Tina Brendle, Office Manager, Bay Area Council of Boy Scouts of America

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“CallFire has become an essential tool in our efforts to communicate with current employees and recruits. We communicate with hundreds of current merchandisers and potential applicants each week. Our Recruiters know that as soon as a CallFire broadcast is launched their phones will ring with call backs. We could not imagine doing business without CallFire. Plus – their Customer Service people are great!” -Ronni Sheppard, Media Coordinator, Apollo Retail Specialists

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“There is no way I could achieve my current sales volume without using CallFire. The system is very user-friendly, it is very inexpensive, and I can always reach a live person if I need help very promptly. If you are in sales (and you are not my competitor), I would highly recommend CallFire.” -Chris Burt, Owner, BrotherLife

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“I added CallFire to my sales arsenal and in the last several months our outbound sales calls have skyrocketed. We used to make about 25 outbound calls per day, yesterday with two sales producers we made 353 calls, spoke to 179 live, left 169 messages and sold 9 Standard Autos and 1 Homeowners. CallFire should be mandatory for any new agent. My sales have doubled in the last 3 months.“ -Mitch Biggs, Owner, Biggs & Associates Agency

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“I have had a great experience working with CallFIre. I really appreciate the thought given to their API. I find many companies in the TelCom space simply have an API that was hacked together by some developers with little or no professional software development background. As a result, many of the APIs that you find are difficult to use or to expand upon. CallFire’s API is easy to use and apply to your business needs. With CallFire, you know you are working with professionals and a solid API.” -Ronnie Andrews Jr., Founder, Devil Dog Software, Inc.

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Almost all responses have been 100% positive, but we’re happy to get even the ones that aren’t. We can then figure out what we need to focus on improving and make sure to contact the customers that have been having issues. So keep the responses coming!

by Kimberly Kohatsu

Last night, about 30 startup entrepreneurs visited CallFire HQ for Poker Startups, a monthly invitation-only poker night and networking opportunity for tech founders and employees, execs, and investors. The stakes are kept low “in deference to the bootstrapping startups,” but pride is a hefty price to pay.

Some of the represented companies included ShareSquare, a QR code company, NextSpace, a local co-working space, Kuzic, an online music licensing startup, and Extra Lunch Money, which… well… let’s just say it’s an adult-themed venture.

There were three games of no-limit Texas Hold’Em with blinds increasing every ten minutes. Only two members of team CallFire sat in on the games, and it just so happens they were both girls: Lezlie, our superstar accountant, and yours truly. In fact, Lezlie and I were the only two girls at the whole event, which just means we need more female tech entrepreneurs to step up to the tables!

But not to worry. Lezlie and I represented our gender honorably. Early in the game, I hit a full house three separate times, taking a sizeable portion of the pot. Lezlie opted to slow play, strategically folding good hands to let the other players at the table knock each other out. In the end, Lezlie’s strategy paid off. I was all in with two-pair, and got knocked out by Alex Chen’s flush on the river. There were only three people left at that point, and that’s when Lezlie went in for the kill. In the end, she won heads-up play against Romy Maxwell of ShareSquare.

It was a great night of networking, ping pong, and poker, and we hope to host more get-togethers at CallFire for the Santa Monica tech community. Thanks to Rohit Jain and Phil Yang for organizing, and to all the sponsors who furnished prizes and pizzas. Most of all, thanks to Dinesh, CallFire’s fearless CEO for the beer run. And congratulations, Lezlie! You truly earned the Poker Pro badge, designed by CallFire’s own Natalia Klishina.

by Natalia Klishina


Last Friday, CallFire helped sponsor Philanthro Connect 2011– a great invitation-only event put on by Philanthro Productions in order to connect emerging technology companies with the non-profit community. Since we work with hundreds of non-profits, we were interested in the idea as soon as we heard about, and we’re glad we had the chance to make the event possible (as well as attend it). We even roped our CEO, Dinesh Ravishanker, into booth duty. That’s him on the left holding up our awesome “I SHAPE DEMOCRACY” T-shirts. There were some great companies there with wonderful ideas, and we really enjoyed meeting them. Here’s 2 of my personal favorites:

ONEHOPE Wine

ONEHOPE Wines is definitely one of my favorite discoveries of all time, because 1) I love wine, and 2) I love good causes. ONEHOPE combines the two by partnering with winemaker Rob Mondavi, Jr. to resell his award-winning wines under the ONEHOPE label and donate 50% of their profits to charity. Each type of wine stand for a different cause: Chardonnay for Breast Cancer, Merlot for AIDS, Cabarnet for Autism, Sauvignon Blanc for the Environment, Zinfandel for Supporting the Troops, and Pinot Noir for Children’s Hospitals. Here is an excerpt from their Vision:

“Now when people gather and drink wine, they can talk about vintage, appellation and the cause on the label. Putting ONEHOPE Wines on shelves and in restaurants across the country keeps causes in front of consumers year round. Moving forward, the ONEHOPE brand will grow to include other causes, and eventually other products. We’ve been laughed at, and called crazy for giving away half of our profits, but why wait until we’re old to do it? Why not make money and give at the same time? It makes perfect sense to us. It’s true that we’re young, and idealistic. Some even suggest we’re naive, but the positive impact on people’s lives and results don’t lie. To put it into perspective, if just one in four, out of the estimated 19.5 million women who are or will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. received one bottle of our ONEHOPE Chardonnay every month for one year, ONEHOPE Wine could raise $70 million dollars for breast cancer research.”

I was definitely inspired and promptly ordered a bottle of Zin on the spot. I also might have at times been mistaken for an employee since their booth was right next to CallFire’s and I couldn’t stop talking about it to passerby.

Roozt

Roozt has a great idea and also some great reps with creative marketing ideas, which you might be able to infer from the photo of 2 of them on the right. Yes, those are chicken hats they’re wearing. They were asking people to put them on and take photos to enter a photo contest to win credit on their site. They were also serving shots, which just might have encourage people to put on funky hats and take silly photos in them.
As for what Roozt does, they apply the Groupon limited-time and limited-quantity discount deal to the world of good causes:

“Roozt helps ethical shoppers discover and save on socially responsible brands that make a positive influence on the world.

We give consumers up to 80% off retail price of our featured products, exclusively socially responsible companies… By doing positive things for their communities, their employees, the environment, or humanity as a whole, Roozt brands allow customers to feel confident that their purchase not only gets them an awesome product, but is also helping to make the working a better place.”

It’s a great way to discover new companies and products that are more than just about profits.

There were definitely a lot of other awesome companies at Philanthro Connect, but there are just the 2 that stuck in my mind the most and that I really wanted to share with our readers. Hopefully, you’ll like them as much as I did.


If you’re a non-profit interested in working with us, shoot us an email at sales@callfire.com or call our sales line at 877-897-FIRE and ask about our non-profit pricing.

by Kimberly Kohatsu

Last April I wrote about Marketing your Business, and Yourself, through Events. This week is a shining example of how the CallFire team is doing just that.

Last night, CallFire hosted a networking mixer called Wine++ at a wine bar down the street called Pourtal. The genesis of the Wine++ idea occurred by happenstance; Dinesh, Chathri, and Natalia were having a drink after work at another bar. Pourtal, taking advantage of social media, tweeted at one of them to come down. So they did. Once there, they met the great staff, got to talking, loved the Enomatic wine tasting machines, and thought, techies like us (or winos like us, you pick) would love this.

So we started planning. We enlisted Code for America as our charity of choice, so that 15% of tasting proceeds would go to help technologists working in the public sector. We outreached to our friends (at another networking event, no less) at upStartLA, who generously sponsored tasting cards for the first guests to arrive. And then we spread the word and waited to see what would happen.

Well, the Wine++ mixer went swimmingly. People from the tech community gathered, ate, drank, and had a great time. We heard people say it was nice to see new faces, try out a new place, and that the networking was valuable. They got to learn more about CallFire, and put faces to names if they were already somewhat familiar with us through Twitter, Facebook, or Namesake.

But the week isn’t over yet. Tomorrow night, we’re headed to Caltech in support of Spotlight:LA Tech put on by our friends at TechZulu. New tech startups will demo their products in front of local businesspeople and students. Dinesh is sitting on the judge’s panel, and will present the winner two tickets to our upcoming conference, Biz2Beach.

Then, on Friday, we’re sponsoring Philanthro’s Connect 2011, an event at the intersection of technology and non-profits. We’ll be showing how CallFire has helped hundreds of non-profits with phone banking, volunteer organization, get-out-the-vote efforts, and fundraising. Attendees will have the opportunity to text to donate to Doctors without Borders, and hear a bit about how CallFire has powered campaigns for MoveOn.org, No on Prop 8, and many more.

Events are certainly keeping us busy at CallFire, but it’s the best kind of busy. Meeting, connecting, learning, and sharing is a proud part of our company culture, and our calendars are a testament to that.

by Kimberly Kohatsu

We’re proud to announce a new feature to CallFire SMS: text replies.

If your CallFire account is SMS-enabled (call 877-897-FIRE if it’s not), simply log on to your account, and scroll over to Inbox. There, you’ll notice not only your regular CallFire alerts, but also an option for “SMS Replies.”

Now, you can manage texts you receive just as you would your email inbox. You can converse with your contacts and see how they’re reacting to your promotions and campaigns. If a contact replies STOP to unsubscribe from your text blasts, you’ll see DNC in your inbox, and that person will automatically be added to your account-wide Do Not Contact list.

Try SMS for customer surveys or polls. Get feedback on new products or on your business’s customer service. Confirm appointment times. Now that you can receive text replies back, you can get even more creative with your SMS campaigns.

Incoming texts are billed at the same rate as outgoing texts, at 3¢ per text message.

This is just the first of many forthcoming features to CallFire SMS, so stay tuned.

by Natalia Klishina

Generation G(enerosity)

In one of my recent posts, I briefly mentioned “Generation G” — a growing contingent of Americans described by trendwatching.com, where the G stands for Generosity. These Americans are increasingly “disgusted with greed” and its effects on society and the economy; they long for more generosity, for “institutions that care,” and for for people who “share, give, engage, create and collaborate.” Generation G is made up of anyone from the old to the young — from billionaires pledging half of their wealth to charity, to the average blue-collar American.

When it comes to businesses, however, it’s not enough to tout a “social responsibility” program comprised of various initiatives that at times may be a forced response to outside a pressure. A business should seem like it genuinely wants to be good and generous — towards customers, towards employees, and towards the world. This doesn’t mean forgetting about profits and bottom lines, though. Check out the entire trendwatching article to read about their “8 ways for corporations to join Generation G” — from co-donating, to eco-generosity, to random acts of kindness. With dozens of past examples, you’re sure to find something to inspire you. And for a more recent example, read today’s Mobile Marketer article on how Coca-Cola is pairing up with HMSHost for a mobile sweepstakes campaign and giving program that will benefit Feeding America.

The Cold, Hard Numbers

Want a more obvious business incentive other than warm fuzzies? A Duke University and Cone survey found that nearly 8 in 10 consumers say they would switch to another brand if it was associated with a good cause. A PR Week and Barkley Public Relations survey corroborated the findings when they found that 88% of millennials say they would switch to brands supporting causes. The latter study also discovered that more than half of American moms say they would pay more to for a brand that supports a cause. And these will undoubtedly be growing trends in today’s society. As a business, you cannot afford to ignore them.

CallFire

So what’s CallFire doing for our part? Other than providing discounts to the many non-profits and charities we work with, we’re also working to provide text-to-give programs to our customers (if you’re interested in participating, please give our sales line a call). Also, we’re currently devising our own social and environmental responsibility program, as well as a donation program where we’ll give 1% of our profits to employee-picked charities. If you weren’t (or aren’t) a CallFire customer, would you be more likely to become one if you knew CallFire was a B Corporation? We’d love to get your input on the subject, so let us know!