It is no secret that the ROI on SMS marketing campaigns can be huge. Many of today’s major marketers use text messaging to collect leads from their audiences deliver coupons that drive sales, and engage their prospects to become customers.

In this guide we will outline step by step the way to “rock it” on your first SMS contest. Soon you will be able to build a mobile list faster than a speeding freight train. First let’s outline the steps and then do a deeper dive into each, one by one.

First you need to choose a platform capable of running an SMS contest. In all honestly there are plenty of them out there. But needless to say, when it comes to SMS platforms, we are a bit biased here at Call Loop and recommend using ours.

Regardless of whom you choose, the service should be affordable, intuitive, and feature packed. It should be simple to set up your campaign with little technical know-how and be easy to measure your results. To see how easy setting up an SMS contest is within Call Loop, just go here. Now, enough about us.

Text to win SMS contests are a fun and entertaining way to engage prospects. They work well for a variety of situations, especially for generating leads using free giveaways, like a product, vacation trip, or event tickets. Often people cannot pass up an opportunity to win something, especially if you make it easy for them to enter using text to win.

To begin planning your SMS contest, it’s best for you to create a set of predetermined goals. Setting goals gives you a way to determine whether your campaign is successful once it’s over. Often businesses running a SMS contest set no objectives and then watch as it fails. Then they say “that doesn’t work.” This is because they had no way to measure its success.

Regardless of your goal, keep in mind that building your SMS marketing list is important for staying connected to your prospects. With an open rate as high as 98%, it’s the best channel for getting your message out to a large group of people quickly.

Will the contest be text to join or webform? Well, it depends. If you are promoting your contest online, then a webform probably makes the most sense. If you are promoting your contest where you are in front of a crowd or engaging mobile foot traffic like at a trade show, then text to join may be your best option. Or it may be both. Just remember that you want to use the easiest method given the channels you are using.

It’s no mistake that most contest promotion ads are eye-catching. If you are planning to promote your contest on social media posts, then you need awesome images. Using an awesome-looking prize image means that more people will want to share it. If it sucks, then it’s not going to prompt shares, tweets, and likes. So be sure to use graphics that grab the attention of your target audience and make them say, “I want to win that.” Don’t ignore this. It’s too simple to not do it.

Picking random winners is super simple. You can just use a free tool like Miniwebtool. With it, you can copy and paste a list of names exported from your group of subscribers and generate random winners. It’s not the only method out there, but whatever you use, be sure to state what method you are using to pick the winners in your official rules.

Now that winners have been chosen, it’s best that you notify the winners in a timely manner after the campaign ends. You also want to be sure that you use the notification method stated in your official rules. In our experience, following up with both a text message and an email is optimal. If you still don’t get a response, then you can call and leave a message.

While a phone call to notify the winners may be more personal, it’s not recommended. People tend to screen their phone calls, and calls are not as trackable. Texts and emails can be easily tracked if ever a dispute should arise. You can also notify the winner using ringless voicemail to deliver your message without actually calling.

I hope this special report gave you a full understanding on how to create, run, and successfully manage your SMS contest. Now it’s up to you to get started by following the steps outlined in this report to start seeing the results you want.

To get your free Call Loop account to setup your SMS contest, just click the link below and we’ll give you 25 free messages and a demo keyword to give us a try.