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IMPORTANCE OF PHONE NUMBER DATABASE TO SMS MARKETING

Runtown Kweku is a budding entrepreneur with very lofty dreams – he plans to own the largest maize farm in the country.

So he gives moving speeches at conferences and seminars, woos several banks, is wooed by several media companies looking for a sensational story, catches the interest of one or two investors, and even gets solidarity and goodwill messages from several bodies and NGOs looking to cement an alliance before he most definitely morphs into Africa’s next millionaire farmer at which time it may be more difficult. Last but definitely not the least, he is made an elder in his local church.

Finally, Mr. Kweku is ready to start. So he hires cutting-edge farm machinery, employs several competent locals (even gets them fancy uniforms with KWEKU FARM proudly blazoned on the back), buys many bags of maize seeds, trailer loads of fertilizers, cartons of pesticides…

…and a plot of land. One plot.

So Runtown Kweku, the media’s favorite ‘next big thing’ in Agriculture, who has big dreams of becoming a force to reckon with in Africa with respect to maize farming, plans to achieve his lofty goal with only a plot of land.

One word for Mr. Kweku.

Now, I do not know the word you just described Runtown Kweku with, but I am cocksure it wasn’t along the lines of ‘genius’ or ‘pragmatic’. However, that is exactly the same word that may be used to describe a business owner that plans to embark on SMS Marketing, having realised its inherent benefits and stellar potentials, with a ridiculously limited phone number database. Unless you are Merlin the Magician, your reach cannot be extensive.

The wideness of your reach, as an SMS Marketer, is directly proportional to the numerical strength of your phone number database, and that’s a fact. Your phone number database is your ‘Farm’. Your campaign pitch is your seed. So you create this great text message optimized to captivate any reader and entice him/her to complete a registration/transaction or follow a link, and this great pitch gets sent to be planted in only half a dozen mobile phones? And you sit back and expect a great harvest? Are you now seeing yourself in Mr. Kweku?

While half a dozen phone numbers may seem too little to be any serious marketer’s real life case, that is exactly how it looks if your phone number database is not extensive as an SMS Marketer. It goes without saying that the larger your database, the wider your reach.

I would be doing you a disservice, however, if I do not mention that this is not entirely a numbers game. It is also very important that your dataset is responsive. One of the best ways to achieve this is to grow your database via opt-in options, so no one on your list mentally flags your messages as spam.

So, despite the fact that a great marketing campaign is essential for success, your phone number database as an SMS Marketer is also an extremely important factor: the larger your phone number database, the greater your harvest.

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