When it comes to marketing events, text marketing - or SMS marketing, as it’s often known - is just about as controversial as it gets. Some people have used it and absolutely love the high engagement rate and ROI SMS marketing campaigns provide, others don’t want anything to do with it and positively cringe at the idea of marketing their event over so personal a channel.

Well, over the next hour and a half we are going to be going deep into the technology, the arguments and the facts around SMS marketing with my two expert guests, Gerry Perez of RunGP and Endurance Marketing Founder Beth Salinger. We’re going to be looking at how SMS marketing campaigns work, the pros and cons of using SMS over, or alongside, other marketing channels like email and social media, and how SMS can be used to reactivate customer databases like your unproductive mailing list.

In this episode:

• SMS marketing as another tool in your marketing stack
• SMS marketing's spectacular open rates and how to compare them to email open rates
• Examples of SMS campaigns: when to send them, how often, and what to include in them
• Getting the most out of your SMS campaigns with limited-time offers 
• Responding to customer replies, following up and nurturing people through conversations
• SMS marketing conversion rates and how to interpret them
• Integrating your SMS marketing with your registration platform, Zapier for better attribution, ROI-tracking
• Reactivating customer databases through SMS
• SMS copy best practices: identifying yourself as the sender, using clear calls-to-action, using emojis, personalizing your messages
• Funnelling cold leads from Facebook ads into SMS nurturing campaigns
• Building up your SMS marketing list: subscribing website visitors, obtaining user consent, drawing users from social media, using incentives, using QR codes
• The cost of running SMS campaigns

Many thanks to our podcast sponsors, RunSignup and Racecheck, for supporting our efforts to provide great, free content to the race director community:

RunSignup are the leading all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events. More than 26,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. Find out more at https://runsignup.com/.

Racecheck can help you collect and showcase your participant reviews on your race website, helping you more easily convert website visitors into paying participants, with the help of their Racecheck Review Box. Download yours for free today at https://organisers.racecheck.com/.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about marketing or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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