More and more marketers are realizing that SMS is one of the immediate and powerful ways to reach mobile consumers. Due to the high rate of open rates and the ubiquity of mobile devices, text messaging is a powerful medium to break through the clutter of marketing materials that are vying for your customer’s attention.
One of the more interesting ways text marketing has been deployed is through last minutes offers. Bestbet Jacksonville recently used an SMS campaign to its advantage to drive attendance for a buy in poker tournament.
As Mobile Commerce Daily reports, Bestbet had the challenge of quickly acquiring additional players for a high-stakes poker tournament that had a short entrance window. Bestbet used SMS marketing to encourage last minutes sign-ups for a $500 buy-in poker tournament.
The text of the message read, “$50,000 guaranteed prize pool, $560 buy-in. Seats avail until 2:30 pm TODAY at BestBet Jacksonville. You have until 2:30 to register.” The text also included a phone number that consumers could call for more information.
The text message was delivered approximately two hours before the start of the tournament and according to the company generated 25 additional sign-ups for the event within the first hour.
The Bestbet SMS marketing campaign shows how consumers are not only responsive to SMS but are willing to take action based on the message they receive.
The case also demonstrates how context and timing play a big role in how consumers respond to a message. Because the message was pushed to users right before the event and was connected to a direct call to action, the recipients of the message had an incentive to visit the casino and sign-up for the event.
Additionally, BestBet was able to attribute specific ROI to the SMS marketing campaign by knowing how many recipients came into the casino as a result of receiving the message. The campaign was also able to reveal a number of key insights on Bestbets clients.
“We knew that many players wait until the last minute to enter, but since we had so much play during prior events we felt that an extra push would be needed,” says director of marketing, Dan Kossoff
.
“Within 15 minutes we discovered that players were signing-up well before they usually did – a quick survey verified that many players were indeed responding to the text,” he said.
“The tournament was successful, the players were happy and we were relieved.”