SMS Marketing – Instant business idea for students

Text messages are still hot. Unlimited text messaging plans are more common than ever before and the cost of sending messages has gone down. I use tatango.com to manage a list of students that want to hear about happenings on campus. The challenge here is to get students to give up their cell-phone numbers. What works really well is to add wherever you can that they can unsubscribe anytime by replying with STOP. The absolutely amazing benefit of text message marketing is that you get a timely delivery of your message into someone’s pocket. The opening rate is basically 100% and the conversion rate isn’t bad either.

I run three lists

• Happenings on campus
• Food
• Clubs/Bars

What I do for the Food and Club/Bars lists is I go out to these businesses and ask for exclusive discounts for the list. What businesses often do is offer limited time deals with huge discounts. (i.e. Come by in the next 2 hours and get 70% of the price of a hookah). Works like a charm. What web-based businesses can do is offer limited time discounts to their website or store by sending out a custom coupon code, which makes measuring results even easier. Other list-building promotions I run are “hunts” on Sunday nights. I hide a prize (i.e. $50 gift cards) somewhere on campus and text out a hint about its location. People go nuts.

Eventually you can sell access to your lists to businesses. “Want to reach 300 students instantly with your discount code? $ please” You can do the same with campus clubs “Want me to remind people of your event? $ please” You provide a great service and people are willing to pay for it. All you need is maybe $200 to get things rolling.
Let me know if you try this, I’m curious to hear how it works out at other schools.

If you want to advertise on my list get in touch bjoernweidlich at gmail.com

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