[Guide] Text Message Marketing For Dummies

what exactly is a short code?

Socialmediaking

I have a few questions, I operate a call center that cold call people to generate Insurance leads, call center agents then collect the peoples contact info ..... email address, phone numbers, etc

Since I have these peoples cell phone numbers in an excel file, I want to upload a list of cell phone numbers to a company or someone who can bulk SMS message these people a text message about insurance.

I cant work with company's that want the cell phone user to opt-in.

I know this might be considered spamming by some people and illegal but the prospect has already given their phone number to a call center agent for being interested in insurance.

I am interested in having a company or person overseas in a third world country or something to send the SMS messages to avoid USA SMS laws or repercussions.

What is the best course of action to achieve this type of operation?

Thanks in advance bro for your help to fellow board members.

good post. I'm interested in more about how you market and sell your services to businesses. Which businesses are best suited for text marketing and what is your sales funnel like.

You mention you have your own short code, what system are you using to manage it?

I dont understand why there is not software that will link to a throw away mobile phone and take hold of the phone and force it to send texts 24/7 ten at a time for a year..

I'd like to see a sort of offline sales pitch outlining an organized approach to customer like First we're going to start with your phone list, Mr. Customer,if you have one,then we're going to place some small ads or flyer's promoting people to text in for a benefit to gather more numbers who we can text before special events and leading up to slow times at your business etc.

What is a good sales approach to help them see the light on this quickly?

zb.ouykcuf said:

I dont understand why there is not software that will link to a throw away mobile phone and take hold of the phone and force it to send texts 24/7 ten at a time for a year..

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You have to do this through a wireless provider through a device called a GSM modem. The software to connect to the modem can be very complex to set up, and you have the pay monthly fees to the provider like you would for any regular phone plan, except you pay them for the ability to use the GSM modem to send out text messages.

socialmediaking said:

I am working on it, but there really doesn't seem to be the enthusiasm I had hoped to see. I thought there would be lots of questions and I could compile the list just by answering everything on there. It's not exactly motivating to spend my free time writing a guide for people who won't even write in to ask their questions, when i invite them to.

I will answer the other questions asked above, but I am going to be traveling to san francisco next week, so things are a bit hectic. If you have any other questions be sure to ask here or pm me your suggestion. all questions, even noob questions are encouraged. please let me know what position you are in and what doesn't make sense.

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I'd love to see a guide. We pretty much have a business in a box, but are wanting to build our own list to provide to businesses who are on the fence or something like that.

Any methods for building our own list locally without tremendous hassle?


Thanks

I am totally interested in a guide. I am still debating a white label vs using twilio for my new biz

artizhay said:

You have to do this through a wireless provider through a device called a GSM modem. The software to connect to the modem can be very complex to set up, and you have the pay monthly fees to the provider like you would for any regular phone plan, except you pay them for the ability to use the GSM modem to send out text messages.

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There is an existing software called SMScaster but I keep hearing how buggy it is. What you are saying may very well exist but you are thinking of something too high brow for my needs.

So lets walk through this

1) There are several local cell phone providers that offer "unlimited" texting for a flat monthly fee on prepaid phones right?

2) These prepaid phones require no identification to get the phone. My friend got a phone in the name of Obama Fuck so now when he calls people it shows "Fuck Obama" on their caller Id. Hence using a prepaid phone would theoretically be untraceable.

3) There is open source software readily available like bitpim to upload contacts into a phone right?

4) Most phones are no manufactured to send a text to everyone in the contacts list right?

So what we need is a version of bitpim that will feed chunks of a .csv file of contacts into a phone send a stored text message to all those contacts erase the first set of contacts rinse and repeat.

You could get crazy with this and have the software controlling 10 phones at once.. you would only be limited by how many USB ports you can come up with right? So 10 prepaid phones blowing out 400 texts a minute 24 hours a day for a month. 4,000 texts a minute times 43,200 minutes in a month right? That is theoretically 172,280,000 texts

You could blast a text to every phone in your areacode..

Ill tell you specifically what I want to do and thus far it seems that SMTP would be my solution.

I am involved in politics. I have been told several times now that Political spam is exempt from canned spam since congress often likes to exempt themselves from laws. So I could in theory send out 5 trillion text messages saying "Vote Obama"

This might backfire as some people would think "fuck you I'm not voting for Obama cuz you spammed my text message"

However it is still doable.

If I wanted to do something like this in my own area code how would I go about it? I tried to do some mailing with email marketing director but I had a problem. I use Comcast as my ISP and they block port 25

I tried connecting through a bunch of other SMTP servers and couldn't get it working either. Anyone help me?

socialmediaking said:

Hey all, I am sorry for the delay, I have been traveling like a mad man. I'll be in Chicago tomorrow and should have time to put the finishing touches on the guide over the next few days. I also have a couple of other surprises, and will update soon.

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Great man thanks! Can't wait!

Which mobile reseller program should I choose, if I want to a membership site that allows my clients to build their mobile lists. So basically that they can advertise on my mobile list.
Is Trumpia sufficient enough. Anyone tried them?
Thanks for any kind of information.

little bump on this one, sounds good!

VerteX said:

Which mobile reseller program should I choose, if I want to a membership site that allows my clients to build their mobile lists. So basically that they can advertise on my mobile list.
Is Trumpia sufficient enough. Anyone tried them?
Thanks for any kind of information.

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I'm with trumpia white reseller program and my opinion they are the best in the industry for your buck! It cost more to get started but you get all the features you could think off. And their customer service is awesome!

i would really like to know how the hell u get started in this as i have a business i want to promote via sms / txt services and do not have a clue where to start or how to get the phone lists or even what service to ask a provider to provide.

totally lost on this but i would love to learn it more. thanks in advance for the guide.

How's the guide coming??

Here is a good question:

What would you do when you would like to offer your site members to send individual SMS to the number of their choice ?

Explanation:
I will take care of payment, they will either pay for credits they will spend, or they will have a certain number of messages per monthly fee, that's my concern.
I want them to write recipient's number and their message and press Send - I don't event care if the senders number will be always the same (it would be even better if sender can show as string, for example "MySite.com SMS")

Thank you in advance!

Where is this so called guide? Did it ever come out?

initially the thread started on 08-29-2011, 02:03 AM
.... no, I do not think the guide will be coming out :/