| Mobile vs Email Marketing Best Practices - Cut from the same fabric? |
 I was assembling a list of SMS mobile marketing best practices for our upcoming white paper, and the similarities to email marketing best practices were striking. So today I thought I'd share my top five list of similarities with you:
You must obtain subscriber numbers through an opt-in procedure. If you send messages to subscribers who have not opted in to your campaign, your messages will be considered SPAM, which is against MMA guidelines. The same rule applies to email. Buying and renting lists, while they are readily available, are not practices that we advise. Just as SMS considers unsolicited TXTs spam, unsolicited emails sent to a rented/bought list can cause just as much damage to your reputation (and your ESPs). 2. Do not reuse opt-in lists from your previous email marketing campaigns. Subscribers must opt in to new campaigns each time. However, you may send an SMS blast to those lists asking if subscribers would like to opt in to the new campaign. This one may not be as well known or thought about, but when a user opts into email they are opting into a specific set of messages. If they said they want to receive your e-newsletters, you're not going to send them promotional coupons or business requests unless it was clearly specified at the point of opt in. You can send a one-time message to them asking them to opt in to your other messages, but that's it. It needs to stop at that one message. 3. Provide instructions for opting out in the first message. The core rule for email marketing! You must always provide a way to stop the messages that are being sent. Amazing how this carries through to other media. 4. If your Web site promotes your mobile marketing campaign, add a page that explains how to participate, how to opt out, and how to text. Use screenshots to make each step clear. Definitely one of my favorite email marketing best practices. The better you set the expectations of your readers, the better response you can expect to see. If they know what they're signing up for (give them a preview) and how often they are going to receive it (by you telling them on the opt-in form), the happier they'll be and will actually anticipate the emails arrival! 5. Test your mobile marketing campaign with a mobile device before the start date. Make sure that all components of the campaign - Web sites, databases, binary content - function properly. Again, another tried and true email marketing best practice! Test, test, test! There should be no excuses for not testing your messages before they go live. There are plenty of tools out there that allow you to gauge email deliverability, see inbox renderings and test your content against spam filters. There's no excuse for a bad deployment! We shouldn't be surprised at the similarities between the two sets of best practices. When you think about it, it makes sense that something as personal as a cell phone would be regulated as much as, if not more than, email. But don't let that scare you away from SMS messaging. SMS is an up and coming medium with over 500 million users and growing in the US alone. Much like email, the key is to find a vendor that is educated in best practices and knows the way to ensure your messages make it through. For more mobile marketing how-to information read: ### Related Resources:
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