Posts by John Wood

In the previous two posts, I showed how you can collect data about your customers after sending a broadcast message to a subscription list, and how you can use that data to create segmented filter groups of customers based on criteria that you define.  Now, I’ll show how you can easily target specific groups of subscribers with a custom message.

We begin by heading over to the subscription list we’d like to send a message to, and clicking the Broadcast Message option in the sidenav.  This will bring us to the Create A New Message screen.  On this screen you will see the same filter configuration options that exist under the Contacts tab (described in more detail here).  Using these filter options, we can create a series of filters that will restrict which of our subscribers will receive the message.  In the screen shot below, we will be restricting our message to subscribers who have a zip code of 60803, 60606, or 60477, and whose first name is not “John”.  Providing a name in the “Save this group of filters for future use under the following name” will save this group of filters for future use.

In addition to being able specify filters on the fly, you can also select an existing filter group to filter on.  In the screen below, we can see that we will only be sending the broadcast message to members of the “Chicago Males” filter group, which we created in the previous blog post.

After clicking Send Now or Schedule, you’ll be brought to a message review screen, which will list the filters that will be applied when sending the message to your subscribers.

After clicking Submit, your message will be queued up for delivery to only the subscribers that match your filter criteria.

We still have a lot of plans with regards to how you collect data from your customers, and how you can use that data to drive a more successful marketing campaign.  Stay tuned!

In marketing, it’s good to know as much as you can about your customers.  But, it’s even better when you can act on that data.

TextMe now supports the ability to create segmented “filter groups” of customers based on information that you have collected about them.  Currently, TextMe only supports the ability to send targeted broadcast messages to subscription list subscribers within a certain filter group (more on this in the next blog post), but we have big plans for letting you manage and collect statistics on these filter groups in the near future.

Creating Filter Groups

To create a new filter group, click on the Contacts tab.  From there, you can use the new “Filter” section to create a series of filters to narrow down your contact list.

You can filter on any of the data attributes that exist in the User Data tab under Contacts.  You can also filter on a few system attributes, including opt-in date (the date/time that a customer opted into any of your subscription lists), source campaign (one or more of your campaigns that a customer has participated in), and keyword (the actual keyword a customer used to participate in one of your campaigns).

When your filters are setup the way you like them, click Apply to filter your contacts, and only show the contacts that match all of your filters.  In the screen shot below, we only see my customers who are Male and live in Chicago.

If you’re happy with the results, and confident that you’ve setup the filters properly, you can give the filter group a name in the box that says “Save this group of filters for future use under the following name“.  Clicking Apply with this field populated will save the group of filters into a filter group that can be used at a later point in time.

Managing Filter Groups

Managing filter groups is simple and straightforward.  Under the Contacts tab, there is a new sidenav option called Manage Filter Groups.  Clicking this option will bring you to a list of your existing filter groups.  In the screen shot below, you can see the “Chicago Males” filter group that was created in the steps above.  From this page you can see the number of contacts in each group.  By clicking on the links, you can edit, delete, or show the details for any of your filter groups.

Clicking on the name of the filter group will bring up the details for that filter group.  The details page lists the filters that make up the group, along with the list of contacts that are a part of that group.

Editing a filter group is easy as well.  Clicking the edit link from the filter group list page, or the Edit button from the filter groups details page will bring you to a screen where you can give your filter group a name, a description, as well as add or remove the filters that make up the filter group.  After saving the changes,  you’ll be brought back to the details page for the group, where you’ll be able to immediately see the result of your changes.

In the next post, I’ll describe how you can use filter groups to segment your customers, and send custom subscription broadcast messages to specific filter groups.

Have you ever wanted to know something about the people who are subscribed to your subscription list?  Well, now you can simply ask them!

Building upon the data collection functionality recently added to the Survey campaign, you can now collect data from customers after a subscription list broadcast.  Setting up your broadcast message to collect data is easy, and works exactly the same as the Multi-question survey.

First, in the Create A New Message screen, give your message a description, and provide a message asking for a particular piece of data in the message box.

Next, check the “This message requests data from the participant” check box to reveal the fields to specify which data attribute to collect, and the response messages to send to the user.

Also, just like in the Multi-question survey, you can chain a series of questions together to collect even more data from your subscribers.  Just check the “This message requests data from the participant” check box after the response message from the previous question to reveal a new area to specify the next data attribute to collect.

After clicking Send Now or Schedule, you’ll be brought to the message review page, where you’ll be able to see a summary of the messages you will be sending, and the data you will be collecting.

In the next post, I’ll describe how TextMe allows you to create segmented groups of customers, allowing to target specific demographics directly.

We’ve recently updated TextMe to allow our customers to manually select or deselect winners for a sweepstakes campaign.  This was an often requested feature, and comes in handy in a few different scenarios.

Select alternate winners

The first scenario is the ability to select an alternate sweepstakes winner, in the case that the original sweepstakes winner is determined to be ineligible.  At the end of your sweepstakes campaign, you are presented with a list of winners.

You will now see an “X” next to each of the sweepstakes winners.  Clicking this “X” will remove them from the list of winners.  TextMe will keep track of previous winners in a new “Previous winners” section on the campaign details page.

To select a new winner, choose “Manually select winners” from the list of actions on the side.

Simply enter the number of new winners you would like to select, provide an optional message to send to the new winners, and click Submit.  The new winners will be randomly selected from the list of participants who are not previous winners, and will be displayed on the campaign details page.

New “Manual” sweepstakes type

The second scenario is the ability to select random winners throughout the course of the campaign.  To satisfy this scenario, we’ve introduced a new “manual” sweepstakes type.

With this new campaign type, no winners are automatically selected when the campaign is in progress, or when it ends.  Instead, the user can manually select winners from the pool of participants, using the process described above, when the campaign is in progress or after it has ended.  This gives you a ton a flexibility, letting you pick the number of winners you want, when you want.

Questions, comments, suggestions?  Please, let us know what you think!

We have recently made some major enhancements to our existing survey campaign to take advantage of the data collection capabilities described in the previous two blog posts.  Previously, the survey campaign was only capable of collecting a single piece of information, and there was no validation performed on the data submitted by the customer.

The newly-enhanced survey campaign addresses these shortcomings, and provides you with additional capabilities to manage the data that is collected.  Let’s quickly walk through the creation of a survey campaign to see how easy it is to setup.

The first step in creating a survey campaign is to select the start and end dates and times for your campaign.

Next, you simply need to provide a description for your campaign, and the keyword that you would like to use (what your participants will text to initiate the survey).

The third step is where the magic happens.  In the initial message to your participants, you ask them for the first piece of information.  Below the message box, you will see a check box with the description “This message requests data from the participant”, which is checked by default.  In the section below that check box, you specify the data attribute that you are collecting from the initial message, the message to send the participant if they reply with data that is invalid for the specified data attribute, and the message to send to the participant when they send a valid response.  The valid response message could be another question.  If it is, simply check the box below the message to expand another area asking you for the data attribute, invalid data response, and valid data response (which could be yet another question) to handle the reply from that message.  You can configure the survey to ask as many questions as you wish.  There is no limit.

Finally, review the details of your survey campaign, and click “Activate Campaign” to finish.

After creating your survey, you will be brought to the campaign details page.  The survey campaign details page has been enhanced to provide a simple rundown of the questions you are asking your survey participants, and the data the respective questions are collecting.

After your survey starts, and your customers begin participating, you will begin to see up-to-the-minute stats on the participation.  These stats include the number of participants who initiated the survey, the number of participants who completed the survey, and the number of participants who have answered each of the questions.

In addition to the completion statistics, you are also able to see a complete timeline of participants interacting with your survey, which can be exported as a comma separated value (CSV) file.

Also new is the ability to export all of the data you have collected via the survey.  On the side navigation menu, you will see a new option to export the survey data.  Clicking this will bring you to a form asking you for your name and email address.  Filling out the form and clicking “Submit” starts a process on our server that will export all of your survey data.  When the export is complete, you will receive an email containing a link you can use to download a CSV file containing all of the data collected from your survey participants.  You can then import that CSV file into your favorite spreadsheet program for some good, old-fashioned number crunching.

The survey campaign was the first to get these capabilities, but it is not the last.  We are hard at work integrating data collection into our other campaigns as well.  We are also working on exciting ways for you to analyze and act on the data you have collected from your participants.  Stay tuned for more details!

In the previous post, I showed how you can manage your contacts via the Contact List.  The Contact List makes it easy to display and update information for a contact who has participated in one or more of your mobile marketing campaigns.  While a customer’s name, mailing address, email address, gender, and home phone can be very valuable to have, it is extremely likely that you will need to collect information that is more specific to your business.  We understand this need, which is why we have added the capability to define custom attributes to meet the specific needs of your business.

The User Data tab, available under the Contacts tab, lists the data attributes that you can collect from your contacts.  Out of the box, TextMe users are able to collect common data attributes such as name, address, and home phone.  These attributes are listed in the Default Attributes section of the User Data page.

But, the real power of this feature is the ability for you to define your own set of attributes, and doing so couldn’t be easier.  Clicking the “Add data attribute” button will reveal a small form asking you for information about the data you would like to collect.  Simply provide a name, description, and data type for your attribute, and click Save.  Your attribute is now ready to be used!

If we navigate back to the page where we can edit the details for a contact, we will see that we can now specify a customer number of each of our contacts.

After entering a customer number and clicking “Update”, we will now see the customer number listed in the details for that contact.

The data type of your attribute has an important role.  It is responsible for validating data submitted for that attribute.  For example, numeric attributes will only accept numbers, zip code attributes will only accept data that looks like a valid zip code, state attributes will only accept valid state names or abbreviations, etc.  If you attempt to enter invalid data for a given attribute, you will receive an error.  This data validation is also performed on data submitted via a SMS message (again, more on this in future blog posts).

There is no limit to the number of user data attributes you can define.  And, the following data types are supported: Text, Numeric, Date, Time, Date and Time, Currency, Email Address, Phone Number, Zip Code, Gender, Boolean (true/false, yes/no), and State.

Using the User Data tab, you can lay the foundation to start collecting data that matters to you and your business.  In the next post, we’ll see how we can collect data via SMS messages using the new, Multi-question Survey campaign.

Mobile marketing is special.  It provides the rare capability of putting you in direct contact with your target audience.

We’ve been very busy the past several weeks adding new features to TextMe to help you collect and manage data about your customers.  The first of these new features I’d like to introduce is the Contact List.

The Contact List, accessible under the all new Contacts tab, provides you with the list of everyone who has participated in any of your mobile marketing campaigns.  In addition to simply listing your contacts by their mobile number, you can also search for a contact by whole or partial mobile number.

Clicking on the mobile number will bring you to a screen where you can see all sorts of interesting data about that contact.  This information includes data you have collected about the contact via web forms or SMS (more on this in future blog posts), messages the contact has sent in the past 48 hours, subscription lists the contact is subscribed to, and campaigns the contact has participated in.  This information can be extremely valuable in determining which contacts are your most loyal, and which contacts you should be trying to engage more.

From this screen (and also from the Contact List screen), you can edit the contact’s data by clicking the Edit button by the contact details or Edit Attributes item in the side navigation bar.  Changes will be saved to the database for use at a later time.

This is just the beginning.  In future blog posts, I will discuss how to collect data from your contacts, what types of data you can collect, and what you can do with this data.

Our latest addition to TextMe, the Campaign History Report, provides you with an overview of all campaigns that have ever been created for your account.  This one stop shop lists the total and unique messages for each campaign for the time period you specified, as well as for the life of that campaign.  In addition to the totals, the report also breaks down how many messages were received via SMS, and how many messages were received via the web (through a web voting widget, or an alternate means of entry sweepstakes form).

Using the controls at the top of the page, you can narrow down the campaigns you would like to see by specifying a start and end date, the type of campaign, the keyword (or partial keyword) of the campaign, and the status of the campaign (active, future, past, or deleted).  Once you’ve entered your criteria, you can either click “Display Report” to see the results in a nicely formatted table, or click “Export Report”, which will prompt you to save a comma separated value (CSV) file containing the results that you can then open in your spreadsheet application of choice.

The report table offers a few features of its own.  First, all of the columns are sortable in ascending or descending order.  Simply click the header of the column you would like to sort.  Clicking the keyword will bring you straight to the details page of that particular campaign.  Also, if you hover the mouse over the keyword, you will see the full description of the campaign.

Enjoy!

Documentation on our existing API functionality is now available at http://www.textme.net/features/campaign_api.  In the coming months, we will be working to enhance our API to support additional methods and campaign types.  If you have a need for a specific API, please let us know, and we’ll make sure to bump that method to the top of the list.

Lets face it, some of us love numbers.  Pretty charts and interactive graphs are nice, but sometimes you just need the data.  When working on the new subscription list charts, we took it upon ourselves to make all of the data that back those charts available in a new subscription list details report.  The new report, available in the “Subscriptions” tab in the “Stats” section of TextMe, works much like the new charts.  You select the time frame you are interested in, and the subscription list you would like to see the data for.  Then, you could either click “Display Report” to see the data right there in your web browser, or “Export Report” to be sent a CSV (comma separated value) file containing all of the data, which you can then open in your spreadsheet application of choice.

The report lays out the data in an easy to read table.  In addition, you have the ability to sort any of the columns in ascending or descending order.  Simply click the header of the column you’d like to sort, and watch the magic happen.  Enjoy!