My Dry Cleaner Is Texting Me Coupons

I received an offer today from the plant that does my dry cleaning, offering me a discount for dry cleaning brought in today. What a great idea!   In the past, he had always sent out text messages or email letting me know when my clothes were available to be picked up, but he had never sent out messages with weekly specials or daily offers.  I find this a great way to market a drycleaning business as I often receive offers from other businesses such as restaurants that I visit, offering specials and I must admit, I have been persuaded by these offers.  So why not the dry cleaners too? 

I am far from being a marketing expert, but when you really think about the impact of text messaging marketing, the returns from your efforts have to be one of the best  in all of marketing for dry cleaners.  In fact, text marketing is becoming more popular than email marketing for many businesses such as dry cleaners, fast oil changes and restaurants just to name a few.

First, the potential database is astounding.  Think about the number of cell phone users in the US, it is huge.  Secondly, almost every text message that is sent out gets read. In fact it has been reported that text message marketing has as much as a 98% read rate with coupon redemption rates reported to be as much as 9%.  How often do you get a text message and delete it without reading it?  Then, take into the consideration the relatively low cost of sending text messages.  You could text offers for a multitude of different scenarios.  Occasions such as a birthday offer or perhaps a discount for those days that you know will be slow or how about a special on comforters, alterations, etc.  The possibilities are endless.  

It seems that many of the Point of Sale software systems that dry cleaners use do offer an email marketing and management plan.  It would also seem that having a texting/SMS marketing plan would be a great feature, however I have not found any of the POS software that have the SMS feature. ( If your software does offer a program such as this, please contact me or feel free to leave a comment).

While doing research on the idea, I found Trumpia a company that does offer sms blast marketing, email marketing, instant message marketing and social network marketing.   Trumpia has a list of customers consisting of companies such as McDonalds, Holiday Inn, Gold's Gym, Remax and Jiffy Lube just to name a few.
SimplyCast is another company that has everything to offer including SMS marketing.

So, when you have a chance, take a look at text messaging/SMS marketing.  It may be the competitive advantage you are looking for.