Posts Tagged "data collection"

Do you have an existing database of customers that you would like to start marketing to via the mobile channel? If so, TextMe makes it incredibly easy to utilize the information that you have already collected to start interacting with these customers via the mobile channel immediately.

Please note that the Mobile Marketing Association requires you to first obtain your customer’s permission before marketing them via SMS. There are several ways this can be accomplished. Please contact us for more information.

To get started, you first need to tell TextMe about the data you wish to store about your customers. You can check out this blog post to see how this can be accomplished.

Once your user data has been defined, you can start uploading your existing customer data into TextMe. There are two ways to do this.

The first is by selecting the Upload Contacts option under the Contacts tab. Upload contacts will upload your customer data into TextMe without associating your customers with any subscription list. Hence, it can be done without first obtaining permission from your customers to contact them via SMS.

After uploading your data file, which can be a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, an Open Office spreadsheet, or a comma separated values (CSV) file, you will be brought to a screen where you can map the data in your data file to the attributes that you have defined in TextMe. If there is a column in the data file containing data you do not wish to upload, simply click the Ignore this column check box for that attribute.

After verifying the data mapping, TextMe will begin processing your data file in the background. An email will be sent to you when the upload is complete.

The second way to upload existing customer data into TextMe is by selecting an existing subscription campaign, clicking Subscribers, and choosing Upload Subscribers from the list of options. Upload subscribers will upload your customer data into TextMe as well as add them to the list of subscribers for this particular subscription campaign. If you have not already obtained their permission, TextMe will send an opt-in message to your customers asking if they would like to opt-in to your subscription list. If you have already obtained their permission, let us know, and we can help you get setup without sending the opt-in message.

The best part about uploading subscribers with the information that you have already collected about them is that you can immediately start segmenting your customers into groups and targeting groups of subscribers with custom messages.

We hope you find this capability useful. As always, let us know what else we can do to help!

We’ve recently added the ability to specify a list of valid values for a given user data attribute.  This allows TextMe to not only validate that the data collected from your customer is valid for the given attribute type, but also to validate that the data collected matches one of the valid values that you have specified.

Let’s walk through an example to see how this works.  First, we’ll create a new user attribute called “Team”.  We want this attribute to contain the name of our customer’s favorite local sports team.

Click on the attribute’s name, Team, to be brought to the details screen for that attribute.

Since there are limited valid values for this attribute, we can use the valid values feature to prevent our customers from entering the name of a rival team across the state line.  Simply add a valid value for each of the valid options.

With the valid values in place, TextMe is configured to only recognize these values as valid values.  All others will be considered invalid, and if your customer tries to send something else, they will be told that their response was invalid and asked to try again.  Each valid value can also have an alias.  This is optional, but can make collecting multiple choice data much easier over SMS.  With an alias in place, your customers can either text the value (i.e. “Bulls”) or the alias (i.e. “a”).  If the alias is sent, TextMe will recognize it, and store the corresponding value (“Bulls”) in the database.  With aliases in place, your customers can make their choice by texting a single character.

We also made a few other changes to support the valid values feature.  First, when editing the details for a contact under the Contacts tab, you will see a “?” next to your attributes that have valid values associated with them.  Clicking that “?” will show you the value values for that attribute, so you don’t need to remember all of the possible options yourself.

Also, when building your campaign and specifying the data collection questions, you will see a new Insert valid value options link for user attributes that have valid values associated with them.  Clicking this link will insert the list of valid values directly into your message.

We’re always trying to make TextMe more powerful, and easier to use.  Please don’t hesitate to contact us about anything we can do to help.

The Sweepstakes campaign is the latest campaign type to benefit from our push to enhance TextMe’s data collection capabilities.  You are now able to collect data from your sweepstakes participants after they have entered your campaign via a SMS message.

The data collection flow is initiated after your customer’s first interaction with your campaign.  This would be after the entry message is sent for random at end and manual sweepstakes campaigns, or after the winning or losing message is sent for all other sweepstakes campaigns.

The data collection setup process is identical to the Survey and Subscription campaigns data collection setup process.  Please see these posts for more information.

In addition to collecting data via SMS, the Sweepstakes campaign continues to support collecting data through alternative means of entry web forms.  All data collected via SMS or the web can be obtained by exporting the sweepstakes entries via the Export entries feature.

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 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.