Why South African Charities Should Invest in SMS Marketing
SMS Marketing helps you keep in touch with those individuals who care about the same things you care, easily.
South African charities exist aplenty, and for good reason: we’ve got a lot of people that need plenty of help both locally and in countries throughout Africa. As such good reason exists to ensure that charities cast their nets far and 
wide to ensure that they communicate their message as efficiently as possible to get in touch using a medium that’s near-ubiquitous, effective and quite simply convenient.
Why is SMS Marketing Effective?
The mobile phone is a unique device for a number of reasons, most prominently for the fact that it is more personal to the owner than any other electronic device. It can also be carried anywhere at any time. This virtually makes it a real-time marketing medium, capable of communicating information of interest to members of a target audience right then and there. Additionally, messages sent to offline handsets are delivered to said handsets as soon as the device is switched on. This makes SMS marketing an effective near-instantaneous medium of communication to which contacts can respond as soon as they receive the communication – perfect for those campaigns that have a measure of urgency associated with them.
When Contacts Respond…
So your contacts receive a message and would like to respond immediately. Traditionally they’d either need to be at an internet point to log into their bank accounts to make a donation, or even make the sometimes inconvenient journey to the bank.
SMS marketing campaigns, however, can be set up in such a way as to allow recipients to immediately donate by replying to a message or simply sending a message to a number that was promoted on any other medium…
Text Message: “XYZ Charity is collecting for Pakistan flood relief. Replying to this message will donate R5 from your available airtime. To unsubscribe…”
Other media (i.e. in-store notice): “Someone needs your help today. Donate R5 toPakistan flood relief efforts by sending an SMS to 12345. You’ll be billed R5 on your available airtime each time you send a message to the above number.”
The above is achieved using a premium rate short code, which is a short, memorable number which can be set up to charge individuals who message that number with a predetermined fee, in this case R5. Whether the charity gets the full R5 or only a part of it depends on the agreement they have with the aggregator or carrier through which the service is running. This makes SMS marketing more than just marketing; it makes it a versatile transactional medium that can make life easier for both charities and the people who wish to interact with them.
Read more about how you can reap the benefit of this short, yet effective, communications medium by going to our SMS marketing page.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.
2 Comments On This Post
This is all good and well but how much of that donation does the charity actually get and how much gets eaten up by mobile operators and their affiliates? The sad thing is that many donors don't understand the costing structures and think that the charity is getting 100% of the donation. Probably more like 20% when all is said and done
There is petition currently being hosted by SANGOnet which intends to address this.
Support the petition here – http://www.ngopulse.org/node/15864/lightbox2
Hi,
just to clarify, it all depends on an arrangement reached between the charity and the network operator. This can be as high as 100%, but predominantly depends on the country where the charity is hosted, the network operator(s) chosen and the charity itself (among other considerations).
Regards,
Leo