Bust Out Of the lnbox with Twilio SMS

Everyone knows that omi-channel marketing is the foundation of modern digital marketing. Your customers are consuming information across multiple devices and numerous platforms. As part of your strategy, chances are you’re sending SMS messages to your customers. If not, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity. According to Pew Research Center, 81% of Americans text regularly. 180 billion texts are sent every month in the US alone. Don’t think it’s just teenagers sending all these messages back-and-forth. Adults aged 35 – 44 send and receive on average 52 texts a day. Those aged 45 – 54 are texting 33 times a day. For many of us, texting and reading emails are the primary things we use our phones for. It’s probably time to consider both of these functions when planning our marketing efforts.

Fortunately, in 2007 a company called Twilio was founded with the goal of providing high volume SMS messaging through tremendously flexible API integrations. If you use Uber or OpenTable, What’s App or Facebook, you’ve probably experienced Twilio without realizing it. Twilio provides the technology backbone for these companies, and thousands of others, to be able to feed our addiction to text messages.

At Relationship One, we want to provide Oracle Eloqua and Oracle Responsys with the most flexibility in delivering a true omni-channel approach. So, we decided to build a connector to allow the power of the Oracle Marketing Cloud to pair up with the power of the industry leader in SMS messaging.

We recently released connectors between Oracle Eloqua and Twilio (We will be rolling out the Oracle Responsys to Twilio connector in the immediate future). These connectors make it simple to add SMS messaging as a component to any campaign you’re running.

Using SMS messages in your campaigns is a great way to provide:

• Order confirmations
• Shipping information
• Billing reminders
• Customer Service
• Much more!

Use Case #1

One of our clients is a nation-wide privately run charter school. As you can imagine, teens and their busy parents, are not always great at checking and reading emails. But, they always look at their text messages. Our client wanted to beef up their email campaigns by adding in SMS messaging to be able to reach current students, prospective students, alumni, and family members with the medium they prefer to use.

Here’s an example of how they might go about it:

1. Plan an open house for the upcoming school year. Promote the event through traditional means.
2. Once the open house attendees are brought into Oracle Eloqua, send them an email two days later asking prospective students to fill out a short survey on what they thought of the event and to gauge interest registering for classes.
3. Send to a wait step – hold for two days
4. Check to see who filled out the form and who did not. To those who did fill out the form, send them a text message saying, “Thanks so much for attending our open house. We want to send you a free t-shirt. Text us back with the size you want: XL, L, M, or S”
5. To those who did not fill out the survey form, send a text message that says, “Thanks for checking out our open house. Would you do us a favor and help us make sure you found it useful. Fill out this 3 minute survey and we’ll send you a free t-shirt when you do.”

By combining traditional events, emails and SMS messaging, they get higher participation in their post-event follow-up.

Use Case #2

Another client is a legacy brand work boot and footwear manufacturer. Having the proper work boots tremendously important. They need footwear that’s both comfortable to stand in all day long, and provides protection from sharp/heavy things being dropped on their feet. Many of their core customers spend their days on the job site. There is little time for these folks to comb through emails, unless they check their email on break or after they get home.

Here’s how this client could use SMS messaging to compliment their marketing efforts:

1. Customer purchases a new pair of boots. Capture email address and phone number at POS.
2. Customer data goes into Oracle Eloqua or Oracle Reponsys.
3. One week after purchase, send and email and SMS message to the customer offering them a discount code for 15% off boot wax or waterproofing spay to protect the leather and make the boots last longer.
4. Send to a wait step – wait 6 months
5. Send an email saying “We hope you’ve ben enjoying your new boots. We know you work hard everyday and lots can happen on the job site. If your laces are starting to get a little worn out, now is a great time to replace them. Here is a coupon you can use for buy one pair, get a second pair for 50% off.”
6. Send to a wait step – wait 3 days
7. Send an SMS message that says, “If the laces in your boots are wearing out, make sure you take advantage of our BOGO offer on new laces. Click here for more info.”
8. Send to a wait step – Wait 6 months.
9. Send an email saying, “It’s been a year since you bought your boots. It’s time to get another pair. Come into our retail store to pick up your next pair.”

Those are just two examples of how you could enhance your digital marketing efforts by incorporating SMS messaging into what you’re already doing. The sky is the limit for what you could do.

Check out all the functionality of our Twilio connector here. In under an hour you could be enhancing your existing campaigns with SMS messaging.

G2G, happy texting!

Co-authored with Mike Bernard