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Mass texting has become a popular method of communication in recent years. It’s fast, convenient, and free. But what is a mass texting service exactly?

What is a Mass Texting Service?

Mass text messaging is a communications strategy that lets organizations, businesses and brands send SMS messages to large groups of people at once. With Raange texting service, businesses of all sizes can send mass text campaigns to any number of mobile subscribers. From 100 to 100,000 at a time, our mass texting service has your back.

Mass Texting is a quick and easy solution to get a consistent message to a large, targeted audience. Customers use our mass text service to share weekly promotions, online sales, event registrations, and more. On top of that, customers send mass sms to customers, employees, supporters and more. And with 98% open rates for SMS, it’s the quickest way to get a hold of a lot of people.

SMS Marketing – The Basics

There are several reasons why businesses should consider mass texting as part of their marketing strategy. First, it’s cost-effective. Sending out texts is cheaper than sending emails or making phone calls. Second, it’s more personal. People respond better to messages sent via text rather than email or voicemail. Third, it’s easy to set up. You can use a service like Twilio to send out texts without having to build your own system. Fourth, it’s scalable. If you start small, you can scale up later when you need to. Finally, it’s highly targeted. You can segment your list based on location, demographics, interests, etc., so you can reach people who will actually read your message.

Can I legally send mass text messages?

Yes, you can legally send mass text messages TO YOUR CONTACTS. Depending on where you live (Country, State or Province) there are different regulations for sending text messages to your contacts. The most important rule is you can only send text messages to people who have opted-in to receiving texts. 

The more transparent you are with your customers the better off you will be. Once you have consent, you must use an unsubscribe mechanism for contacts to opt-out at any time. 

Remember you have to ask permission to send mass texts, be clear with what people are signing up for and provide a way for people to opt-out. Any mass texting service should be able to provide you with clear instructions on the rules in your area.

What to look for in a Mass Texting Service?

It’s really important to do your due diligence before picking the best mass text service or platform for your organization or business. So whether you want to go with one of the big international sms marketing platforms or a local sms marketing platform make sure to be spend some time researching these specific topics:

Integrations – most businesses are using different types of marketing systems like CRMs, Email Platforms, etc. It’s important that you understand how your mass texting service integrates with your current systems. In the end it will save you time and effort to find something that works within your current activities. 

Scheduled Text Campaigns – this is very standard, but you want to be able to schedule your messages to go out at a certain time so that you don’t need to login and send a message just in time. You’d like a mass text service that sends messages based on the recipient’s time zone. 

Volume – businesses and organizations with lists of over 100,000 contacts sending multiple campaigns per month should be certain that the mass texting service that they choose can handle the volume. The last thing you need is for messages to go undelivered or take a lot longer to send than anticipated. Talk to the company about their SMS throughput and partnerships with carriers. 

Carrier Fees – Talk to your mass text service about pricing, specifically how they charge for carrier fees. All text marketing platforms are charged fees by the big telco companies to send messages through their systems. Most platforms won’t advertise the carrier fees on their public pricing pages, which could double the price per SMS as advertised.

How to Send Mass Texts

It’s not hard to get started sending mass texts. The Raange SMS platform is easy to use and set up for you to get started in only a few simple steps, let’s check it out:

Import Your Contact Lists

Stay connected with your customers: one of the first questions we always get is, what if I have a list of numbers? You can import a list of numbers as long as you have the proper permission to text those contacts.

Send Bulk Personalized SMS Messages

Are you having problems engaging with your younger members? The average person checks their phone more than 150 a day. What better way to communicate with your youth than by sending important information and updates directly to their mobile phones.

Grow Your Contact List

The next step is to grow your contact list. You can promote your text to join keywords, subscriber links online and QR codes to collect more email and mobile numbers for your mass text campaigns.

Mass Texting Service: Industry Use Cases

Agencies

Impress your clients with new mobile services and revenue channels, all from one easy-to-use platform.

Restaurants

Connect with your loyal customers, increase online orders and reduce reliance on delivery apps.

Retail

Increase repeat visits and revenue by sharing promotions, VIP information and special events.

Nonprofits

Engage with donors, volunteers and employees quickly and easily.

Faith-Based Organizations

Share important information such as live stream prayer services, invitations to special events, links to online readings, and donation requests.

Government

Send pertinent messages to your stakeholder groups quickly. Rest-assured that nearly everyone will receive and read the message.

Gyms

Keep people coming back to your gym by sending relevant information, updates and offers.

Charities

Increase donations by staying top of mind with your donors. Send timely information on events, causes and request for donations.

Auction Houses

Get more people online or in-person to your live auctions. Share upcoming events, links to online auctions and any relevant updates or changes. What is an auction house?

How Much Does It Cost To Use Mass Texting

The cost of our mass texting service depends on the volume of messages you plan to send. Our plans start at $24.99 (CAD or USD), plus SMS usage. We have no prepaid credits. Cancel anytime.

We make it super simple and easy to get started with our mass texting app. Get in touch!

With Twilio’s Zipwhip acquisition, it’s time to start looking for a Zipwhip alternative. 

We have been talking to a lot of Zipwhip Canada customers, especially with Twilio Zipwhip’s End of Life happening on Dec. 1, 2022. Zipwhip messaging has been a staple of the text message marketing ecosystem for a long time so it makes sense that businesses are starting to get concerned about its closure.

We’ve put together some key information for current Zipwhip users and why Raange is a great alternative for you. 

Key Dates and Deadlines (From Zipwhip)

Businesses are rightfully concerned about the closure of Zipwhip while trying to find a similar business texting service which they can migrate to.
We’ve put together a quick comparison of Raange features that makes us a great alternative to Zipwhip.

Canadian Zipwhip Alternative: Raange

Are you looking for a ZipWhip alternative with SMS Chat and SMS Messaging capabilities? Time to do some research. 

At Raange, we don’t limit the number of contacts, keywords or users per account. And all new accounts come with ALL OF OUR PREMIUM FEATURES – soak that in for a second. 

Raange offers everything you had at Zipwhip – and more!

• Business messaging with one-to-on SMS Chat
• Bulk text messaging to everyone on your contact list
• Unlimited keywords creation – easy and fast
• French platform for businesses in Quebec

Raange is an affordable solution for businesses of any size. We offer simple, affordable pricing for our SMS and text marketing services. Check out our pricing page for more details. 

We know at some point soon your Zipwhip login isn’t going to work, so it’s time to do your research on other business text messaging platforms. Check out this article on G2 for more information.

How to Get Started with Raange?

If you think Raange is the right business text messaging platform for you, then read on! How to get started with Raange:

1. Schedule a call with our Team

We like putting a human touch to our service so we offer any new prospects a personalized demo and consultation with one of our product specialists. 

During your demo, we’ll take you through the Raange platform and show you how to create keywords, play with the SMS Chat and send a test campaign right to your phone. 

You can book your demo here. 

2. Pick your pricing plan

Our pricing plans are pretty simple: you pay a flat monthly fee that covers your toll free number and platform features and then you pay per message sent. Our monthly fee starts at $24.99 and we offer discounts on sms based on your volume. We can also charge in CAD or USD based on your preference. 

All accounts include all our premium features. No prepaid credits. Cancel Anytime. Only pay for text messages you send….

You can visit our pricing page or talk to one of our sales representatives for more information.

3. Upload Your Contact List

Once your account is set up, you can upload your list of contacts from Zipwhip to Raange. It’s our understanding that it can be challenging to get your contact list out of Zipwhip, so we found this “export workaround” video on Youtube. 

Raange’s Contact Import feature allows you to upload all of your contacts from Zipwhip in short period of time and then start messaging with your contacts right away. 

4. Bring your Zipwhip phone numbers with you to Raange

You are able to bring all of your Zipwhip phone numbers from your account with you to Raange. The Raange team will set up the numbers in your account. As a result, we provide a seamless migration from Zipwhip to Raange. It can take 2-3 business days for the numbers to be switched over. 

We make it easy to switch over and get started

Our team will be there with you every step of the transition from Zipwhip to Raange. You will work directly with our passionate results-focused team.

Our mobile experts will help set up your account and first campaign on the platform while providing strategic guidance on your program.

Our team is available to answer any of your questions. You can email, call or text to get started.

Get started now

Are you ready to get started? Well, let’s go:

Tel: 1.844.472.2643

Email: info@raange.com

Schedule a Call

Does your business use SMS for marketing? If so, you’re in good company! The ability to send bulk SMS messages is essential to a successful marketing strategy as having the right tools. Bulk SMS messaging has its downsides. Sending too many messages at once can cause lags and slow responses. Sending individual messages can be time-consuming when you need to do it frequently. However, when appropriately executed, bulk SMS marketing can effectively drive people towards a product or service. If you don’t already use SMS for marketing, you should make sure that you have the best message distribution system available. However, this article will teach you how to send bulk SMS for marketing with different SMS marketing tools!

Check Out: Top 5 Best SMS Marketing Software to Send Bulk SMS!

What is Bulk SMS Marketing?

It is a quick and easy way to message large numbers of people. You can send large numbers of messages to your target audience at once, rather than having to send them individually. Bulk SMS messaging lets you target your audience with ease, as you only have to send one message to every person you want to reach. Bulk SMS messaging is an effective marketing tool that can help you increase your sales and has helped several businesses increase their sales. SMS marketing messages can be sent to a large number of people at once, rather than sending individual messages to each person.

Why Do We Use SMS Marketing?

SMS marketing is very effective. You can send thousands of messages per day with minimal effort. This also means that you can send small, targeted batches of messages without spending hours replying to every single one of them. SMS messages are cheap to send, easy to set up and use, and can be automated with ease. Plus, these messaging tools can be used on almost every mobile device.

How to Do Bulk SMS Marketing?

To do bulk SMS marketing, you’ll need to develop a plan. Start by researching which messaging tools work best for your business and your goals. Then, you’ll need to decide which tools you’ll use. Once you’ve chosen your favorite tools, you’ll need to learn how to use them effectively.

What Are the Best Bulk SMS Tools?

You can use several different tools to send and receive bulk SMS messages. The best bulk SMS tool is RAANGE! You can also try using a third-party app like Hubspot‘s LeadGen, which lets you create unlimited campaigns and send and receive unlimited messages easily. You can also use the free texting tool on your computer or the built-in messenger app on your phone.

Check Out: 7 Best SMS Marketing Services For Small and Enterprise Businesses

How to Send Bulk SMS for Marketing?

Well, the first step in bulk SMS marketing is to set up your account with the appropriate messaging tools.

If you proceed with RAANGE, plenty of nice people are available 24/7 in the support team to help you set up your account!

However, for the start-ups interested in free marketing, this could be your email account, Facebook account, or Google account. 

For example, you can use your email account to set up your business account, and you can use your Facebook account to set up your personal account. Your account needs to be set up so that you can easily send and receive messages. 

If you have a large number of contacts, then it will be hard to send and receive messages quickly and efficiently. You’ll then need to decide how often you want to send messages and what time of the day suits you best to send and receive messages.

What is the Best Time to Send SMS Marketing Messages?

To create the best bulk SMS messages, you need to choose the right time to send them. You’ll want to send bulk SMS messages several times, but when you’re first starting, it’s better to choose a random time and see what happens. What time of the day suits you best to send and receive bulk SMS messages? You can try sending it at different times of the day to see what works best for you.

Summing up

SMS marketing is a quick and easy way to drive people towards your business. Sending bulk SMS messages is the key to success when it comes to marketing with SMS, as it allows you to reach a large number of people at once. That is why knowing how to send bulk sms for marketing is crucial.

However, as with any form of marketing, you need to ensure that the messages are distributed correctly and that your audience is getting them. SMS bulk marketing tools help you reach out to a large number of people at once without having to reply to each one of them individually. Although bulk SMS messaging has its downfalls, such as the inability to send individual messages, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.

What’s the exciting news? Forever 21 is back in Canada and Raange is thrilled to be powering their expansion!

Forever 21 Canada is hitting the ground running and growing their footprint in Canada quickly, with 3 stores open so far, in the metro Vancouver and Windsor areas. 

What is Raange doing for Forever 21?

With Raange SMS, Forever 21 will be able to drive more traffic to stores and online, increase repeat purchases and build up an owned audience that will love them for it, all from one easy-to-use platform.

A big part of a successful SMS program is creating a massive marketing list of opt-in contacts. Forever 21, with the help of their account team at Raange, launched mobile activations at each storefront to build store-specific contact lists using text-in keywords and branded Interactive Signs.

These mobile activations allow Forever 21 to convert their brick and mortar traffic into a highly responsive list of customers that know and love their brand!

Raange also has a suite of digital integrations and features that will help Forever 21 turn their website and social traffic into new marketing contacts.

With Raange SMS, Forever 21 will be able to stay connected with each customer post purchase and send personalized messages to customers from their local Forever21 location. Generating more traffic to their e-commerce store and more foot traffic to brick and mortar stores. 

“We’re obviously very excited to add an international brand like Forever 21 to our list of customers,” said Eric Nykamp, CEO at Raange. “They have a big vision for the Canadian market. I’m honoured that Raange was selected as a strategic growth partner and we are looking forward to helping them build connections with their customers in Canada.”

More About Raange

Raange is Canada’s Most Affordable SMS Marketing Platform. We help businesses connect with more customers, fast and within budget. No long-term contracts. No prepaid credits. CAD Pricing Available.

Using cutting edge mobile tech, we help our clients stay connected and build FOREVER relationships with their customers!

Previous Posts You Might Like:

• 3 Creative Ways To Capture First-Party Data
• What’s the Difference Between First, Second and Third-Party Data
• The Secret to Growing Subscriber Lists with Interactive Signage

As the scale of vaccine manufacturing and distribution has increased globally, the strictest of lockdowns have been lifted and life is slowly returning to a closer shade of normal.

What can retailers expect during The Great ReOpening?

Interestingly, we at Raange saw a glimpse into the future in our brick and mortar customer data. 

Recent Raange data shows that as restrictions began to lift across Canada, consumers went back to physical store. 

When we segmented our data for Brick and Mortar Retail – Fashion and Accessories, we found that our customers’ in-store registrations were up an astonishing 4700% YoY in June as compared to the same period in 2020. 

Even with rapid changes in today’s retail environment, the physical channel is still an important part of the customer journey. 

Another significant development during the pandemic is how consumers have been switching brands at an unprecedented level. A recent Mckinsey report, found that 75 percent of consumers tried a new shopping behaviour – new brand, different retailer, etc. – since COVID-19 started. These changes in consumer behaviour benefit larger, more established brands.

This means that the retail environment is going to become even more competitive and brick and mortar retailers are going to have to work even harder to build loyalty to drive repeat purchases. 

What is The Great Opportunity and what can retailers do?

The good news is, The Great ReOpening creates a huge opportunity for retailers. The increase in traffic that we’re projecting for the summer gives brick and mortar retailers a generational opportunity to build loyalty by growing and scaling their customer database like never before.

The days of using your stores as a simple sales channel are gone. As Doug Stephens The Retail Prophet has pointed out on countless occasions, the retail store should not be measured simply by sales, but should be looked at through the lens of media.

And one of the best ways to start measuring your store as media, is to implement # of opt-in contacts collected – as you collect email addresses on your website – as a new KPI for stores.

Opt-in contacts unlock the key to building loyalty, growing your audience and increasing repeat purchases. 

This kind of fly-wheel effect is key to the success of your business in 2021 and beyond.

And puts the customer relationship back into the hands of the retailer and not a third-party advertising platform.

It’s crucial for brick and mortar retailers to take advantage of The Great ReOpening and The Great Opportunity to bridge the gap between physical and digital.

If you want to get more granular and learn specific strategies on how to increase your opt-in contacts in 2021, check out our FREE, onDemand webinar here .

Or book a call with our sales team to dive a bit deeper into how you can connect your in store shoppers to your digital strategy.

Today we’re going to discuss the 4 mobile marketing trends to keep an eye on in 2021 to help you and your brand prepare for future success.

We can tell you that before we knew the precarious nature of what lay ahead of 2019, the projections for 2020 were for steady growth in mobile and social commerce and the related tech that supports them. 

2020 and the onslaught of a mysterious virus, has taught us so much about coping and resilience as a planet, as societies, as brands, and as marketers.

It has also taught us that projecting trends into the future can be subject to these variables in some very interesting ways.

These trends are going to shape our future much faster than previously anticipated and will take over the world at a rate unheard of before 2020.  

Brands that adapt quickly and get on the bandwagon with at least one of these trends, will survive and those that don’t will experience their demise by antiquity in what will seem like overnight. 

Online shopping was always on an upward growth trend, but with so many shoppers choosing to shop from their homes now because it’s easy plus there’s a nasty virus out there, it’s not just about convenience anymore.  It’s about safety too. 

So, what’s 2021 going to look like?

TREND #1: Mobile Commerce Grows Exponentially

As consumers are doing more and more with their mobile phones, the mobile commerce growth trend will continue, even when this pandemic is over. 

Consumers are getting very comfortable with shopping from their devices and along with that, receiving incentives in exchange for detailed information about themselves to make their shopping experience even more personalized.

Within 2020, consumers were getting increasingly more comfortable shopping from their devices. 

Moreover, they started becoming well accustomed to receiving incentives in exchange for detailed information about themselves to make their shopping experience even more personalized.

This higher level of comfort in mobile shopping behavior is beginning to close the divide between consumer and brand and it is predicted that mobile devices will make up almost 73% of total e-commerce sales globally by the end of 2021.

This means that 2021 is the year that mobile really takes over B2B, B2C and DTC.  We can’t stress enough how important it is that you make sure that your sites are mobile-friendly.  The customer is expecting it and about 30% of consumers won’t complete a purchase if they run into issues with a brand’s mobile site.

You can test your mobile site manually by checking if it’s easy to navigate.

How easy is it to view your products on your mobile? 

Can you zoom in on these products?  

You can also use tools to help you assess your site’s mobile friendliness, like the Google Mobile Friendly Test.

Just enter the URL in the tool and it will show you if your store is responsive and will also indicate if there are any loading issues on your website.

The future of selling online, means embracing mobile. Do it now, or regret it in 2022.

TREND#2: Brick and Mortar Stores are Turning into Data Acquisition Channels

This is really the case of brick and mortar stores, real people and tech working symbiotically to create valuable touch-points that collect customer data.

Let’s not forget that there is no better place to have your customer’s full attention than in-store. 

Here, you have every advantage and can provide a more instinctual experience. There is the physical experience; the touch-and-feel, and there is the emotional experience. You can interact with them face-to-face. 

There is definitely something to be said for ‘offline’ shopping in a store.  When you combine offline shopping with technology, something wonderful can happen.

When someone walks into a store, or even just passes by a store, the right signage that is bolstered with text-in or QR code technology and the right incentive, can set the wheels in motion for that person to give personal information on their smartphone in exchange for a great incentive. 

We, at Raange, have been doing this for our clients for years. We combine interactive signage with text-in technology to increase our clients’ customer databases. 

The results we see are turning stores into true contact acquisition channels by adding more than 5000 contacts in a single day.

It wasn’t too long ago that people were more apprehensive to divulge personal information to brands.  These days, with increased customer confidence in data security and with brands’ awareness and respect of data privacy, brands are adopting mechanisms to keep customer data secure.  

New Adlucent research found that consumers prefer a personalized advertising experience and that 71% of respondents prefer ads tailored to interests and shopping habits.

What’s more, 44% of respondents were willing to give up information including name, address or email address in order to get more personalized advertising.

2020 has certainly proven that customers are more willing to share who they are and with the right acquisition tools at a brand’s disposal, brands can give a truly personalized customer experience and make it much easier for customers to shop and repeat shop.

TREND# 3: The Rise of Social Commerce

 Let’s face it.  You need 2 things to run a business successfully: 

– A product that people want or need

– A simple and streamlined buying journey that occurs as the customer is still actively engaged.

The more steps on the buying journey, the more screens to go through, the more re-directs to other platforms, the more likely that the customer won’t complete that purchase.

Social commerce streamlines the buying process and allows businesses to sell directly on social media networks.  Ads can be seamlessly integrated into consumers’ social feeds to get their attention right away.

It is an 89.4 billion dollar market that is estimated to grow to 604.5 billion in the next 7 years.

With 1.47 billion daily active users on Facebook , 60% of Instagram users saying they find new products on Instagram and 30% of online shoppers saying that they would likely make a purchase from a social media network, marketers are seeing social commerce as a fantastic way to allow a customer to ‘buy-in-the moment’, fast and easy.

TREND#4: Mobile Wallet Poised To Become a Typical Way to Pay  

Digital payments have progressed immensely over the past few years.  Consumers are becoming more and more tech savvy, so opportunities to engage with them in new, different ways are growing too. 

When you think about it, within the 7.7. billion people that exist in our world, there are 3.2 billion smartphone users in 2020.  

That means there is the potential to have 41.5 % of everyone on planet earth as a market for something that potentially facilitates life for every smartphone user.

You are carrying around your phone anyway.  Why not lighten the load, remove the need for an actual wallet and pay digitally with a mobile wallet? 

The effect that Covid-19 has had on the consumer is that they want to limit touching anything at the cash. This effect is also responsible for this accelerated shift in payment preferences. 

Even before the pandemic, many countries started steering away from using cash and encouraging credit and debit card usage.  Some stores there, don’t even accept cash anymore. 

Many tourism sites recommend that you only exchange a small portion of your currency into cash while relying mostly on a widely accepted credit card.

In case you don’t already know, mobile wallets store your credit and debit card information on your mobile device.  They can also be used to hold digital coupons that you can redeem in store.

You pay or redeem a coupon by either holding your phone near a specific payment terminal or by using the wallet app for in-app or web purchases.

Mobile Marketing Trends Conclusion

 So, let’s recap:  To stay ahead and ensure future growth for your business,

1.     It’s a good idea to take a look at how mobile commerce is growing exponentially and to make sure you’re mobile optimized and using more mobile in your marketing efforts. 

2.     If you have brick and mortar stores, consider how you can turn these into data acquisition channels to build and maintain your customer base.  

3.     Use social media to sell products directly to your customers and reduce the steps it takes to complete a purchase 

4.     Consider Mobile Wallet as an alternate payment method and for placing coupons that can be used in your store.

Are you looking for help or some ideas for your mobile marketing strategy in 2021???

Book a call with one of our talented team members. We’re here to help you.

Customer data is the lifeblood of any successful marketing campaign and a key driver in business decisions and overall growth. 

Bad data can hurt the bottom line of a company, skew your campaign results or force you to waste resources on correcting errors – deleting bad contacts manually!

At Raange we hate Dirty Data! 

What is Dirty Data? 

Dirty Data is defined as inaccurate, incomplete or inconsistent data, especially in your marketing lists and CRM database. 

The following are 5 dirty data stats that will force marketers to double-check their subscriber acquisition strategies: 

1. 60% of consumers admitted to intentionally providing some sort of incorrect information when submitting their personal details online.
2. On average, marketing lists are decaying between 22 to 30 percent every year. 
3. Gartner estimates that poor data quality costs organizations $15 million annually.
4. Employees can waste up to 50% of their time dealing with mundane data quality issues.
5. Marketers waste 21% of their marketing budgets because of bad data

What is something you can do to stop bad customer data?

The first step to stopping bad customer data from hurting your results is to make sure you aren’t collecting dirty data as part of your subscriber acquisition strategy. 

Any good subscriber acquisition strategy for marketers starts with acquiring REAL data from your customers from the start. 

Questions to ask to get you started 

If the above stats have you worried but you don’t know where to start. Try finding answers to the following questions:

• Are we validating or verifying the data we collect from customers?
• How much time is my team spending correcting bad data in our database?
• What is our current source(s) of bad customer data?
  • Are you collecting bad data from in-store customer acquisition programs?
• How many emails or mobile numbers are bouncing back?
• If my contact data was more accurate, what would my KPI’s look like?

In Conclusion

Bad data can be the bane of any marketer’s existence. Your job now is to find the holes in your current data acquisition strategy and figure out new ways to fix them.

But start from the very beginning and identify what the entry points are for your customer contact information: forms on websites, in store giveaways, etc.

The friend of bad data is poor policy: collecting unvalidated or unverified data, manual processes that are just prone to human error like having a sales associate type an email address into your system and using 2nd or 3rd party data.

That’s why at Raange we preach the power of First Party Data.

Are you looking for a proven subscriber acquisition strategy that will convert the traffic you already have into REAL digital subscribers?

It’s important to ensure that you are keeping your marketing platforms filled with GOOD DATA.

We’re here to help you with that.

First-party data is undoubtedly among the most valuable assets for a brand’s marketing efforts. However, just like any high-quality information, this type of data is fairly complicated to acquire. Furthermore, it’s safe to argue that poor data quality doesn’t just cause campaigns to be inefficient, it often leads to bad business decisions, poor sales forecasts, and unsatisfactory customer experience. 

In this article, we’ll look into various ways brands can creatively capture first-party consumer data and ensure its quality while they’re at it.

Why is this issue so pressing?

Some recently published studies report on how widespread the phenomenon of inaccurate first-party data appears to be in the current business environment.

A study conducted by Experian, states that a whopping 91% of companies suffer from data-related issues, such as outdated, incomplete, and inaccurate information provided by their customers.

Furthermore, another report presented by Veeva indicates that 66% of respondents consider that a complete and real-time view of the customer is a top priority for their customer reference data. Additionally, the same study suggests that companies lose about 12% of their revenue to inaccurate customer information.

How can brands collect accurate data?

When it comes to collecting first-party data efficiently, brands have lots of ground for experiments. First off, they can use their main websites to obtain information from their customers, along with using social media for collecting information from their audience. 

A great percentage of internet users can be considered digitally-savvy, meaning that we need to inquire for their information in a more interactive manner. Simply asking for their data is no longer a viable strategy, it’s essential to entertain and engage. 

Creative approaches to data collection

Social media is a great place to obtain accurate information. For example, Instagram stories a highly efficient medium for incorporating links to forms in exchange for certain value to the customer — anything from unlocking special content and participating in giveaways to coupons for products and services.

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A post shared by Raange (@raange)

Another option is to gather user-generated content via social media platforms by hosting contests that require photo submissions, polls, and flock-to-unlock mechanisms that have proven to increase audience engagement considerably. 

SMS Tactics to capture first-party data

SMS short codes are another increasingly popular way of collecting highly-accurate customer data. Essential information like email addresses, postal codes, sex, age, and others can be obtained via SMS short codes. 

There have been reports that by just sending out three messages via SMS can increase conversions threefold. 

Now that you have a better idea as to how it works, what are some ways that brands are using SMS to build their email lists?

1) Radio and Podcasts:

Radio promotions and podcasts especially are really popular forms of advertising as you have the listener’s attention. Normally, brands simply use a 10s spot to promote a product and then provide a confusing coupon code that can only be redeemed at an equally confusing web url. Instead, brands are cleaning up their voice ads to include promotions like “text ‘JOIN’ to ‘55055’ to get 5% off your next purchase.”

2) Brick and Mortar (In Store):

Instead of asking people for their email addresses at the cash, brands are asking customers to subscribe to eNewsletters or activate a promotion by texting and registering to receive marketing promotions. As you can see in the image above, in-store Interactive Signage is the best way to display these promotions. Plus these promotions can be placed anywhere in the store.

3) Direct to Consumer Flyers:

When you receive a flyer in the mail not many people like to pull out their phone, open a browser and start typing in a confusing 30 character URL to get a promotion. It’s a lot easier to have people text-in a keyword to short code to get started.

The takeaway 

Despite being the most efficient type of customer information, first-party data is still prone to being inaccurate. 

Businesses now need to ask for their customers’ information by using more interactive mediums. This is why brands need to look into more creative approaches to motivating their audience to share their data and user-generated content, like using social media and SMS. 

And we’re here to help you with that.

If there’s one thing that we’ve learned after the passing of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), along with its European counterpart — the GDPR, is that the way we’ll be able to access and use data in the future will change considerably. Marketers will become more reliant on access to first-party data.

Retail Insight published a study recently, which found that nearly 93% of businesses were “not yet completely GDPR compliant” leading up to implementation and that pretty much nobody was ready for this radical shift in data usage.

While many marketers at the time could treat the GDPR as a European issue only, the CCPA has made it clear that we’re moving into a more privacy-centric data policy worldwide. The quicker businesses adapt to a first-party data world, the better they’ll integrate into the reformed business ecosystem. 

Turning to a first-party data strategy comes with a broad set of benefits that range from building trust with your customers to owning the customer relationship.

In this blog, we’re going to look into the reasons why you should consider investing your business’s time, effort, and money into harnessing the benefits of first-party data. 

Customer Consent

Permission-based relationships between brands and customers. Real relationships cannot exist without permission or consent. 

Focusing on collecting first-party data means you’re abiding by privacy laws and capturing important customer consent to receive marketing messages from your company. There needs to be interest or any communication you attempt, will be ignored. 

Building Trust

You’re probably aware of the fact that we’re in the midst of a customer trust crisis. Businesses have been exploiting this facet of human psychology for way too long, which has resulted in the peoples’ distrust in marketers and corporations. 

A very recent example of a privacy breach that’s been covered by the Wall Street Journal is Facebook collecting highly sensitive and rather intimate data from a whole range of health apps pretty much seconds after the user started using it. This is exactly the type of approach we should be trying to walk away from.

Openly disclosing what data you’re collecting from your clientele and what you’re going to do with it is a sure way to address the awkward silence between businesses and the consumers that are worried about their privacy. 

CCPA, the GDPR, Google’s announcement that they’ll no longer allow cross-site cookies, and many other events are all part of a massive change in regards to the consumers’ privacy, and we should all embark on this “train,” in an attempt to restore the customers’ trust.   

Marketing Independence 

By changing the way you collect and use your consumer data, you’ll be able to create a self-sufficient marketing environment. You won’t have to depend on purchasing imprecise customer data from third or second parties. 

Furthermore, cookies aren’t exactly the most viable solution. At the beginning of 2018, it was estimated that around 66% of mobile devices don’t accept cookies. Respectively, it’s safe to say that you’re missing on a considerable amount of potential customers. 

Ownership

Properly collecting, and owning your data comes with a range of benefits, compared to simply purchasing access to second or third-party data.

Being the owner of your customer data allows you to easily track unsampled site performance over time, which is a pretty costly service. Furthermore, imagine owning a couple of years’ worth of customer data, which comprises financial information, customer behavior data, and other essential data that you can apply in the future, without having to purchase less accurate information from other parties.

Conclusion

The digital ecosystem is going through a host of critical changes that are designed to ensure greater consumer privacy and a more meaningful business to customer interaction. While companies may have to deal with a bump or two while trying to adapt to these reforms, doing so will most certainly benefit them in the long run. 

And we’re here to help you with that.