As a leading mobile marketing solutions provider, we offer clients flexible ways of engaging with their customers. One of the ways we do this is by offering a fast path to doing so via the use of a shared short code – a shorthand of sorts for 
letting on-the-go consumers quickly participate in a text dialogue without entering a full length phone number.
Some clients prefer to have a dedicated code potentially reflecting their name or a brand attribute when translated from numbers to a word, but obtaining one requires additional time be built into a mobile program. Power users of these codes have embedded mobile into the very foundation of their brands.
We recently came across a simple and effective example of how one of our clients uses a short code to engage their target customers and learn more about them. The Lake Forest Graduate School of Management is a Chicago area MBA program designed for working and/or experienced professionals. They use text message marketing as a call to action in their recruitment efforts, as seen in this photograph of signage located in a commuter elevated train station waiting area. Some of the lessons to be learned by this program include:
- Targeting: Mobile is a key ingredient in this program but it is not the focal point; rather, the emphasis is on communicating with a target audience by reaching them most effectively. In this case, locatoins where busy commuters congregate is a great spot to promote an education program intended to help elevate careers.
- Multi-Channel: Signs like this are not high tech but the call to action is, and everyone with a mobile phone is a potential responder. Texting MBA to this shortcode begins a Mobile Dialogue designed to inform and persuade; responders are greeted with a brief message requesting an email address for learning more about their program. A mobile device is not often the right medium for reviewing information and this approach recognizes that. Those opting in again receive a real time email response with more information, including pointers to areas of the school’s website with even greater details.
- Knowledge: Mobile is the perfect medium for reaching the type of customer the school seeks given its emphasis on busy professionals who are always near a potential call to action (billboard, signs on objects like buses or commuter stations, taxi cabs and others). Mobile also provides the means by which the school can learn more about its target customer to sharpen its recruiting efforts. Data captured during the course of Mobile Dialogues combined with information about which mediums drive the most qualified interest informs the creation of more relevant messages and a higher return on marketing investments.
