Shoppers: Receive TXT/SMS Notification?

Please vote whether you'd appreciate receiving the following type of delivery notification on your mobile/cellular phone after ordering online and prior to taking delivery.

A text message (opt-in) that says something along the lines of:

I'd also be interested to hear whether you have previous experience with companies doing this for you.

 

maplin do a related text service - where if a products out of stock, they text you when its back in

 

That's a nice idea. People hate not-knowing so I guess sending a text for bad-ish news is still good.

For despatch/stock issues I think it's great but not sure about offers. At least not until we get a WAP site up (if ever).

 

id get pissed off if you spammed me offers.

But order status would be good

 

If have noticed that people are not that eager to fill in their mobile number. How will you notify those people? Send a email notification? Or do you always send a email notifiction for the product they bought as for tracking.

What if they dont want to fill in their mobile number they may leave cause they had to fill in their number without buying something .No buy = No money. Or will you add it as a extra feature?

Your idea about special offers, coupons, (some afilliate coupons maybe? )etc sounds really good. It will be a easy way to get your visitors back to the website and people will get the feeling you care about them. Unless they dont fill in there mobile number.

 

My experience so far, I never give my mobile unless I have to. These lists always get sold on, even if you dont sell yours. One day you might sell the company or change your policies. Even if you never do, other companies do so often that many may be sceptical.

I use to recieve text messages when I was abroad from all kinds of junk and it would cost ME to find out that I had won the chance to win a share of $1,000,000.

It will probably work, but might work better with special offers rather than product notification.

 

Loads of people already fill out their mobile. More and more they don't even fill out a landline number. So in that regard, the potential is there.

It would be opt-in, a tick-box next to the mobile phone entry field saying * Receive Despatch Notification or something to that effect.

Because we use next day courier service a lot we get quite a few people surprised and hence not in on the day of delivery. Re-delivery the 3d time is at a fee so it could help them be there when it comes in first time round.

Offers could then later be assessed IMO.

 

I think it is a good idea as a value added extra to your current service - we already have many clients that do something like this with slight variations.

The feedback that we have seen is that mobile phone owners appreciate receiving short and informative messages from the organisations they are familar with, but in any case, make sure to allow an opt-out for customers that want to.

One other thing... for your message to be effective, you'll have to trim it down.

 

For me it would be a real benefit, the number of times I "work at home" when I'm expecting a delivery. I'll be "working at home" tomorrow and Monday waiting for a PC from Dell, if I could get a SMS on the day it would certainly help me (though I would need to find another excuse not to be in the office browsing ).

 

Opt-out will be easy in their account or even by replying to the text message itself.

E-mail notification is an option as well but not many punters seem to 'live' on their e-mail as we do.

Yeah the message quoted above was made up in seconds. Looks to be over 160 characters even so yeah, it's defo not the right one. Something along those lines though.

Will also make sure they won't receive it during sleepy times.

Could also survey those who've received it to poll the results.

 

To receive responses you would have to set the originator of your messages to the receiving number. However, you would be better off setting it to represent your company's name as this would help your branding and let your recipients recognise that your messages are not spam.

Make sure that your messages are not routed through an offshore operator. We used to supply "Economy" class messages, but the negative implications (which included delayed delivery) had drastic effects.

A very good idea! You could run a test period and then ask your customers what they thought of it.

 

Thanks for the ideas.

You seem like you know what you're talking about fambi. Did you do an Intro thread?