Entry By Jason Brick
One of the biggest challenges of a robust SMS marketing campaign is coming up with fresh, engaging content day after day, week after week. That's why so many business owners ultimately "farm out" their SMS marketing to an employee or third-party agency. But there's a trick to quality copy that most of the professionals use: recycling.
Although you should never simply reuse content -- even great content -- it's not difficult to use one successful idea to generate dozens or hundreds of other messages. One way of doing this is the SCAMPER method, a brainstorming tool popular since the late 1970s. Scamper stands for:
- Substitute
- Combine
- Adapt
- Modify
- Put to Other Purposes
- Eliminate
- Reverse/Rearrange
For each of these points, you can take your original idea and generate related -- but still unique and engaging -- text messages for your SMS campaign. Take, for example, a simple limited time happy hour two-for-one coupon that generated impressive responses.
Substitute - change out happy hour for a slow mealtime, offer 50 percent off of two meals instead of buy one, get one free.
Combine - you could combine the basic idea with an upcoming event, such as the next ball game on cable or an anniversary for your business
Adapt - keeping only the happy hour and limited time concept, you could send a broadcast announcing a couples event, contest or poll for that time period.
Modify - change the way interested subscribers can access the coupon. Where the first round required a text response, this time the discount is for those who bring in the text message and a friend who's never visited your shop.
Put to Other Purposes - if the intent of your first limited time campaign was to draw in customers, make the second all about spreading the word. Make it a contest about who can forward the message to the most friends in the hour immediately after your broadcast.
Eliminate - there's nothing wrong with simplifying an original message. From an already simple happy hour coupon, you can turn it into a two-for-one coupon redeemable any time.
Reverse/Rearrange - swap the key elements to create a coupon that offers happy hour prices any time a customer brings a second person and a copy of the broadcast.
As you can see, the steps of the SCAMPER method overlap, meaning you might come up with very similar ideas from several different elements. That's all right. If you run your best ideas through this brainstorming tactic, you'll have plenty of fodder for your SMS broadcasts even after you've eliminated the duplicate content.
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