Leadpile's Blog» sms marketing

Social Networks Helping Students

Natasha Aronov — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:09:14 +0000

95 percent of college students between the age of 18-24 use some form of social networking. That is defiantly not a surprising statistic. What is more surprising is that the students who are involved in using social networking tools, which includes texting and instant messaging, are more apt to learn. This is because many of the students are using the different social networking tools to network with their teachers/classmates for academic help. It makes for a quick and easy way to get the answers or information that a student needs. This could help increase the performance of the students because they have all their resources right at their fingertips.
I know when I was in college a few years ago, I found texting and social networking tools such as Facebook, to be a huge help. Not only with talking to my teachers on chat, but talking to other students as well. It was a great way to get informed on a class that I may have missed, so that I did not fall behind. It was also extremely helpful for online classes because you can get into chats and discuss as a group what is going on in the class and hear different perceptions on a single topic.
Online classes and community college is also a great way to advance yourself. Everyday LeadPile matches people who are interested in advancing their degree with the right college program. By taking online classes and using some forms of social media, being involved in your studies may be much more beneficial than you may have thought.

Are We Effectively Able To Track Mobile Advertising?

Mari Holt — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:50:47 +0000

One of the newest forms of advertising is mobile adverting/SMS marketing. Being that this form of lead generation is completely different, there has to be alternative ways to measure success. After looking into this further, Gigaom.com pointed out some valid points on how mobile advertisers can effectively track stats.

Reach

How many unique customers can you reach? Reach is still the most important criterion for advertisers to judge success of a campaign. With mobile we can measure unique users much more accurately than with any other medium. Mobile offers the opportunity for the advertiser to the reach the consumer at the right time and the right place using the right medium with the right message.

Targeting

Mobile thrives on targeting. Ad networks that can provide targeting beyond country, carrier and handsets to offer more granular location, demographic and contextual options will be the ones offering more value to both advertisers and publishers.

Engagement

We don’t want to just capture the “moment of first sight” but the “duration of sight” and how the user interacts within that duration with both the individual ad and the overall campaign. In order to differentiate and be effective, mobile has to measure and report on how users are engaging with the campaign, from first impression to the last so-called “moment of sight.” It should take into account the time spent during the visit as well as the actions and reactions.

Viral

One of mobile’s key features is its ability to offer users one-click sharing. If something is “good,” it will catch on fast. One has only to target power users, who represent just 1 percent of mobile users, to reach 20-50 percent of the subscriber base. Such capability should be built into every campaign and measured accurately to determine its true effectiveness.

Transactions

Mobile enables a closed loop functionality like no other medium. Transactions are essentially a measure of the “true” ROA. We need to measure how a campaign impacts a company’s bottom line. If the campaign doesn’t move the needle over time, it didn’t really work, but we won’t know whether or not it has without measuring.

Leadpile has seen some successful publishers generating quality leads through mobile advertising, however after reviewing some of these point, maybe there are some enhancements Leadpile and other networks need to look at implementing. How big will mobile advertising get?

BIG Benefits With Working With Networks VS Direct One On One Relationships

Mari Holt — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:27:24 +0000

In the last few years many new ad networks or lead exchanges have surfaced. Many have survived and many have not. The need for networks and exchanges like Leadpile Lead Exchange came about because of the desire to connect multiple publishers with multiple advertisers to create simplicity for both parties. In addition to simplicity, is there any other reason that a publisher or advertiser should look at using a network versus one on on relationships?
1. As consumers get online more and more, publishers and advertisers need to figure out the best way to get the largest captive audience in once place. This is very difficult if you are trying to set up one on one relationships. Networks and exchanges allow this to be done without the hassle of developing one on one relationships.
2. There are cost benefits to the advertisers with working with network versus working directly with a publisher who usually has higher margins than the networks. This increase cost if passed on to the advertiser, whereas networks have higher volumes which allows there to be more of an ability to have lower margins.
3. The advertisers can capture all types of traffic sources in just a few networks versus trying to get a different publisher for each traffic source they are interested. For instance, to really diversify you want to utilize social networking, PPC and SEO, and SMS marketing.
4. Networks allow publishers an opportunity to sell their traffic/leads to various types of buyers/advertisers which allows them to diversify their ads to have everything funnel through one place, versus setting up one on one relationships with each advertiser.
5. Sophisticated networks/exchanges like Leadpile offer the technical capabilities for advertisers and publishers detailed reporting of the their campaigns. This creates simplicity for the publishers or advertiser with being able to have one place to track all their campaigns. This could be very large headache for someone to track each campaign they have one on one with.
Everyone in this industry has their own opinion on what is more effective: networks or one on relationships, however there just seems to be more benefits with working with an exchange or network versus trying to set up one on one relationships.

SMS and Lead-gen in a Lead Exchange

Eugen I. — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:57:20 +0000

The Text Messages (SMS) have been always an interesting and productive way to generate leads or more business, including Branding awareness.

We knew about it, test it with our Offers, and our Publishers are doing it as well, but we never seen such results as we are seeing in the last month. The MicroClick Ads and the Microsites are some of the favorites when it comes to our Publishers using text messaging to promote the offers.

Just to have an idea of the efficiency, please check out the following numbers:

The number of Impressions represent the number of people reaching the website from a text message. Out of everyone that have seen the site, almost 73% clicked on the form and 55% of them completed it – reached the confirmation page.

The EPM isn’t too bad either, with $1,437.57 for one thousand of impressions. The highest we’ve seen ranges between $2,500 and $3,200, but that’s more from targeted traffic, new customer base (PPC traffic).

The rule of success is to be creative and test new ways to build your customer base, offering quality and good service to consumers. Nothing is “Impossible” and things can be done in a very effective way without loosing the quality.