Changes to Facebook Fan Pages Breathes New Life Into Email & SMS Marketing

If you are the CEO or owner of a business, or are in charge of your company’s marketing efforts, you are probably already aware of Facebook’s recent algorithm changes and how they are dramatically affecting the reach of your Facebook page. It used to be that you could market your products or service on Facebook virtually for FREE and reach a HUGE audience without paying anything. You simply needed to post content that people would react to and engage with. However, Facebook has throttled down reach SO much that it has become almost impossible to reach the same numbers of people with your Facebook page, especially if you are refusing to pay Facebook for sponsored posts and advertising. It does not matter if you are still creating original and engaging content; yes, it does help a little and you will notice your reach go up a little bit, but there is no way you are going to reach the same numbers of people you did before Facebook’s algorithm change on April 14th. So how do you combat this dramatic change in your company’s brand exposure? You would be surprised where we found our answer.

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Facebook Fan Page Reach Drops to below 3% on Average

First, let’s take a look at the numbers. Due to Facebook’s recent changes to reach, you now reach about 1-3% of your total audience with any given post. That means that if you have a page of 200 thousand Likes, you are reaching a little over a thousand of those people with any given post. That is PUTRID compared to what you used to be able to reach.

In fact, we actually did a data analysis regarding this using our sister companies’ Facebook pages which have a cumulative total of 1.4 MILLION fans. Historically we used to be able to post something on any one of those sites and we would reach a vast majority of our fans, or even more through sharing! However more recently, after finding out the total number of people we reached per post, we then divided that number by the total number of people who saw ANY post we posted during that particular time period. The resulting number is the AVERAGE PERCENTAGE of the people who saw the post who also LIKED the page. We ran this test in the month following Facebook’s change on April 14th and the results have been staggering. Of the five pages we ran this study on, NOT ONE post on any page even hit 3% of our audience! To be specific, the average percentage of the people who LIKED our pages who actually SAW our posts on each page read like this: 2.9%, 1.3%, 1.3%, 2.3%, and 0.069% respectively!!! That is an average reach per post of 1.574%.  No, we are NOT kidding. Also, keep in mind that we changed NOTHING as far as what we posted, when we posted, and how we posted.

Along with this startling information, any post you put on Facebook will die within 2-3 days, or even sooner! So not only are your Facebook posts reaching far fewer people, but they are also being erased from the socialsphere much quicker than ever before. So how do you reach these people when you don’t have the gigantic Facebook megaphone you used to have?

So where do you turn? Many marketing directors and agencies have begun to fall back to Email and SMS Marketing.

Email Marketing Advantages over Facebook

Email marketing has a relatively strong reach, or open rate in email speak, when relating it back to the reach you are currently getting on Facebook. Email open rates are generally 15% of your database, which means that about 15% of the emails that you send to your email database will actually be opened by the receiver. Knowing that you are barely reaching even 2% of your audience on Facebook, email marketing has experienced a rebirth due to its reliability and efficiency relative to the results you will get on Facebook.

It is also important to note that email open rates also experience a diminishing return. This means that with each email blast you send out to your entire database, your open rates will gradually diminish. This is due to people either unsubscribing from your database, trashing your email, or your emails are being sent to people’s spam folders. So you will either have to switch methods again to make up for this loss, or find a way to consistently grow your email database while you are employing email marketing as the driving force behind your marketing campaign. Regardless of how you look at it, it would be extremely difficult for any marketing campaign to survive on Facebook and email alone, so where do you turn next?

SMS Marketing Advantages over Facebook

SMS absolutely CRUSHES Facebook when it comes to effectiveness and efficiency. Think about it; SMS has a 99% open rate and a 97% open rate within 3 minutes! This means that almost literally EVERY message you send yo your SMS database WILL be seen by your subscribers. They HAVE to! Have you ever been able to delete a text message without looking at it? Exactly, you can’t. Additionally, SMS messages NEVER die until they are deleted by the receiver. That means that ANY message you send to your subscribers WILL be read. They HAVE to be read to even be deleted!

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So STOP banging your head against the brick wall Facebook has built when it comes to exposure. You WILL NOT get the same reach you did before, Facebook has made it a point to make that absolutely impossible to attain. Switch your marketing efforts to SMS and send messages that you KNOW people will see! To put it simply; SMS will ALWAYS reach 99% of your audience, NO MATTER WHAT! Can you possibly think of a better medium to market to your audience through?

We couldn’t either.

Bulk SMS Text Messaging; Send SMS Anywhere in the World

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Bulk SMS messaging is a way to send high volumes of text messages to potential customers, suppliers, employees, and partners that allows you to connect and interact with them. Oftentimes companies will use bulk SMS messaging for entertainment, enterprise, and mobile marketing purposes. More specifically, you can send alerts, reminders, notifications, or announce competitions where the receiver could win a prize or trip. This is a service currently offered by SMS company AnchorMobile and you can use this SMS gateway provider service virtually anywhere in the world.

To use this service, you first need the software. There are several software packages available for bulk SMS broadcasting and these packages allow the user to add as many phone numbers as the user would like. The user can manage these phone numbers in several different ways; whatever best suits the user’s wants and needs. Most SMS software applications allow you to upload lists of phone numbers using a TXT or CSV file. If your system is more refined, it will automatically remove any duplicate numbers and will validate all numbers to ensure they are indeed real cell phone numbers before sending the mass text messages like ours does. To take it a step further, you can also schedule your text messages to be sent at specific times throughout the day, or space your messages out across several days, weeks, or even months. Again, remember that these messages can be sent nationally as well as internationally using AnchorMobile’s mobile marketing platform.

There are several ways to help your mass SMS text messaging campaign benefit your company or business. To be more specific about what was mentioned before, you can use it for alerts to inform people about important events or situations, you can use it for reminders to remind people about appointments, events, and payments, and you can use it to promote competitions and actively invite people to participate in your competition using two-way messaging or SMS advertising You can use two-way messaging and short codes to ensure a direct line of communication with your customers. Notifications can also be sent to inform customers, suppliers, and partners about relevant information, developments, or changes to plans or your organization. Other ways to use SMS is through personalized priority messaging, which is basically a way to make sure you are sending the right information, to the right person, at the right time. Reservations and bookings can also be made through SMS messaging to make, confirm, or change them.

With AnchorMobile’s ability to send bulk SMS message almost literally anywhere in the world, the possibilities are endless. Bulk SMS text messaging is an easy way to reach anyone you need to in real time. Not only is bulk messaging a great way to reach customers and increase revenue flow into your business, but it can also be used internally to streamline communication within your company and speed up the communication process so you can focus on the bottom line.

To learn more about acquiring an SMS Short Code or Long Code to originate the bulk SMS and pricing per nation, contact an AnchorMobile consultant today.