Fanminder Blog

Not only is Belinda Wasser, owner of Blueberry Babies, an online baby gifts retailer, seeing exceptional sales results from Fanminder, she’s also a role model for using text message marketing in interesting ways to engage her customers. You could hear more from us, but so much better to hear it directly from Belinda:

“I started using FanMinder in May for my online store BlueberryBabies.com.  I’ve been in business for 9 years and have primarily used email to reach my customers.  I had just started using social networking to promote my store.  When I heard about FanMinder I signed up immediately and started telling my friends about it.  Here are two examples of how FanMinder has increased my sales so far:

1. On my daughter Emily’s 9th birthday, I texted my fan base with a message that the first person who texted me the year Emily was born would win a $50 gift certificate.  I added her birth year to the About Us page on my site, clicked send and immediately people started texting me.  It was the 5th or 6th person who figured it out and she was thrilled when she won.  On a  Sunday in June, typically very slow, my sales were 4 times what I would normally expect.
2. About 2 weeks before Father’s Day I promoted a personalized Dad/Grandpa shirt. The shirt had been listed on my site for quite a while but I had never sold one.  I had a contest giving  the 5th person to text a free personalized dad shirt.  With that text I sold 8 or 9 shirts that morning -  in a category (Dad’s) that not only do I not promote, but has never done well on the site.  The shirts are $35 each, so an inexpensive price was not the driver.

I’ve been able to grow my list by adding an invitation to my Facebook page, the bottom of my weekly newsletters and on my website.  I’ve offered inventory that I wasn’t able to sell as the incentive to joining and my fans have loved it.  I am certain that this will be a very big part of my marketing program for many, many years.”

Thank you Belinda! We appreciate the time you took to write down how you use Fanminder.

(Dear Reader – Below references using Fanminder to send daily tournament alerts for the last two weeks of the softball season)

Paul,

I just wanted to recap the final feedback I received from folks in response to the “how’d you like it?” query I sent out.

For 10U (girls’ softball, age 10):

• 7 text responses from 28 fans
• 6 enthusiastic “loved this!” responses, 7th was “11” which I guess means “I loved it” too
• One additional request — to be able to broadcast game scores in addition to the game schedule (I guess they’re hoping we’re mlb.com).  To do this would require much more sophistication in messaging, or the link to the mobile device URL that you’re planning.

For 12U:

• 3 responses from 13 fans
• 3 enthusiastic “loved this!” responses
• There was one email reply which also very much enjoyed the service.

I think for those folks that subscribed, they loved it.  I didn’t query the rest of the families who did not use it to see why they didn’t, but we still have to send out our season-end parent survey.

Thanks again for everything, Paul!

Best regards,
Craig

Social networking is a key ingredient of Psycho Donuts’ success, and we have specifically tested the results of immediate text offers across every social networking platform.  In virtually every test case, Fanminder produced the most effective results by far.

The program is painless to set up.  We offer customers a free donut to sign up; a few months later, we have hundreds of mobile fans who await our text messages – often reacting to offers in minutes.

Unlike traditional social networking platforms, Fanminder specifically targets your best message at your premier customers. Want the ability to instantly reach your most passionate customers, and bring them back almost immediately?  Fanminder is not only a new form of social networking for small business, it holds the promise for truly transforming the manner in which retail businesses approach loyalty programs in the immediate future.  If you’re not implementing Fanminder today, your competition probably is.

A pizza parlor is using Fanminder text message marketing to offer coupons that “help increase the profit of the store.” The owner is sold on how much text message marketing makes, not costs.

We own a mom and pop video store and have been working with Fanminder for just over a month.  When we first signed up I had no idea what the heck I was doing.  The staff at Fanminder was so helpful that after one training session I was dialed in and now sending text message offers to my customers.

One of my campaigns involved our annual Academy Awards contest.  Every year we create Oscar ballots and have our customers pick the winners.  We give out 1st, 2nd, 3rd place prizes and always give the person who comes in last a movie that we deem incredibly bad.

On Monday the week of Oscar we sent out a text message that offered our customers 30% rewards credits on all purchases the day they turned in their Oscar ballot. We also used Constant Contact and sent out a beautiful full color email with the same offer.

We tracked the responses and here are the results:

• 605 emails sent – 3 customers responded and took advantage of the offer. According to Constant Contact 325 opened the email.
• 174 text messages sent – 32 customers responded and redeemed the offer.

One hour before the contest ended on Oscar Sunday we sent out 142 text messages to the people that did not redeem the offer, giving them a final chance to be part of the contest. (9) more people walked in our store with the coupon.

We have owned video stores since 1981 and have to say that Text Message Marketing is the most successful advertising vehicle we have ever used. Thanks to Fanminder and the staff for providing the most valuable marketing product on the planet!

Curt W., Owner