What is the most important part of SMS marketing; a well written text perhaps, or a well pitched and well timed offer? We think these factors are very important, but the most significant role is played by the client database.
The database of customers’ contacts is used in any business, both for sending important notifications (information about orders, financial transactions, etc.), and for marketing. The database is an important resource for the company. However, this resource must be well managed as databases have a habit of rapidly becoming outdated, and, once out of date, of incurring losses instead of revenues.
Very often databases have technical problems. We are talking about technical failures. But they can be solved by restoring data from a backup.
On the other hand, there is a problem that can wipe out all the effort made to create an effective SMS campaign. This is the permanent loss of data relevance. It is important to remember that the database begins to lose relevance at the time of its creation.
In the age of affordable mobile communication and intense competition between operators, numbers quickly become out of date; people change them and an operator assigns them to new owners. Often people lose phones and cannot restore their numbers. Some use several SIM cards at once, changing them as needed. Some move to another city or country, and some simply give the wrong number.
A few mistakes in the database are not so critical, but over time, they can really snowball, and as a result, communication and marketing activities lose their effectiveness. Also, it can lead to costs that you did not expect.
What expenses are we talking about? The most common situation is messaging to inactive numbers. If the database is small (a couple of tens of thousands of numbers), the losses might be insignificant. However, medium sized and large businesses can lose significant amounts of money from month to month. Extra costs also arise when calls and text messages are incorrectly routed; this often happens when the subscriber changes an operator, while keeping their old number.
It is not easy to maintain the relevance of the database, especially to track whether a specific person uses a specific number, or if it has been transferred to a new owner.
You must find your own way of updating the database. There are a lot of techniques and there is no one size fits all solution. You can find advice suitable to your situation on our website or by contacting the Intis Telecom team.
