RISMEDIA, February 5, 2011—Most of us have some brand of smartphone, whether it’s an Android, iPhone, BlackBerry or another brand. These phones can be powerful marketing tools if you maximize your utilization of their features. One feature we want to highlight this month is the ability to create groups with your contacts. When you create groups from your contacts, you can make your communications really count and deploy them quickly.
Creating groups is typically intuitive on these phones, but if you need help, refer to the instructions for your phone or even Google your question and you can usually find others who have created simple instructions for this procedure for your brand of phone. If you have a teen at home, they’ll surely know!
One example of how to employ groups might be with prospective clients who are looking for similar properties. Perhaps you have investors you can group and then send mass e-mails or texts to when there’s news on potential properties, bank financing, special deals from sellers or other valuable information. You are limited here only by your marketing imagination when it comes to the groups to create and the messages to send to improve your bottom line.
Texting occasionally to the groups you set up can be very effective when you have short updates or promotions for them. Texts are still less frequent than e-mails on our smartphones, and, at this point, they are given higher priority by most viewers. Besides, you’ll show your technical innovation when sending texts and keep those younger clients in touch more.
Other simple texts or e-mails from your smartphone could be just to invite clients to join your Facebook page or blog. Connecting in as many ways as possible with your clients, prospects and friends can only make them more likely to engage with you and send referrals.
You can even create groups of family members or office colleagues to make communicating your daily schedule more efficient. This can help when you have to tell a group you will be late, need to reschedule or can’t make it. Even creating an emergency contact group could be a great idea if you work alone a lot. You never know when you might need help and who would be the closest to you at the time.
Use groups to help you market yourself more efficiently and consistently, and to stay in touch daily. Think of some groups as transient, such as prospects, referrals and so forth. You may want to download a tool like Bump as an application so when you get contacts from others you can just place them in your phone immediately and into the right group. Using groups can make your business and personal life just a little bit easier.
Chris Kaucnik is marketing director for Home Warranty of America, Inc.
For more information, visit www.hwahomewarranty.com.
