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Introductory Note

If you’re an active texter, chances are you’ve already used a mobile keyword. Even if you don’t text that often, you still might be familiar with keywords, even if you don’t realize it. At stadiums and arenas around the country, keywords allow fans to participate in the fun – voting on songs to play and answering trivia questions. Keywords are what you text in to the short code to make your choice. You might see a question like this on the scoreboard: How Many Innings Are In A Baseball Game? Send A Message To 313131: Text A To Vote 8 Innings, Text B To Vote 9 Innings, Or Text C To Vote 10 Innings.

Voting is but one powerful use of mobile keywords. We’ve highlighted it as an example of keywords in action because so many people will be familiar with the concept. As you’ll see in this guide, keywords power mobile coupons and contests, allow consumers to join your marketing list from their phone, and even let you send out mass text messages when on the go.

Lastly, for brevity’s sake, from here on in we are going to simply say ‘keywords.’

Keywords: The What & The How

A keyword is a unique term (letters and/or numbers) that people can use to communicate with you via a short code (which we’ll get to in a moment). A particular keyword is unique to a particular short code. In other words, you can (and often do) see the same keyword used across multiple short codes.

Keywords work when they are paired with a short code, which is a special five or six digit phone number. Mobile phone users can send a text message to a short code. Most people use the simple phrase short code, but you might see Common Short Code or CSC. These all refer to the same thing. The common means that every short code is common to all wireless carriers in a particular country. So, a short code can power a relatively inexpensive national marketing campaign.

Now, there are two types of short codes that you can choose between when launching a mobile marketing campaign – shared short codes and dedicated short codes. You read our Ez Guide To Shared & Dedicated Short Codes for a thorough discussion of the differences between the two, but for the purposes of this paper, we can contrast them succinctly. A shared short code belongs to a mobile marketing firm; 313131 in Ez Texting’s case. Ez Texting shares our short code, by allowing our clients to rent keywords on it. A dedicated short code belongs exclusively to a client. If you have a dedicated short code you can create as many and whatever keywords as you like. Renting keywords on a shared short code is inexpensive, whereas it will cost you thousands of dollars a month to operate your own dedicated short code.

A simple way to think about the relationship between keywords, dedicated short codes, and shared short codes is to compare them to domain names and subdomains. If you purchase your own domain name, you can create as many unique subdomains (subdomain.mydomain.com) as you like. Each one will take visitors to a particular page or service. You can think of a keyword as similar to a subdomain. If however, you do not have your own domain name, some website hosting companies will allow you to rent a subdomain, as long as no one else is using it (mycompany.myhost.com).

When it comes to short codes, the differences in cost are far greater. Domain names can be purchase for a few dollars a year, which is why the vast majority of companies own their own domains. As we already mentioned, dedicated short codes cost thousands of dollars per month to maintain. At Ez Texting, you can rent a keyword on our shared short code for only $25 dollars a month. Because of the great difference in price, thousands of our customers choose this option. If this sounds like the right option for your company, you can open a free trial account and quickly check to see if the keyword you want is still available.

To review, pairing a keyword to a short code allows your customers to communicate with your company. Placing your keyword in front of a message they text to our shared short code identifies them to us, so we can route the message to your Inbox. For example, if you wanted to entice customers to join your store’s monthly sale notification list, you could add a Call To Action to your signage such as: Text Jewelry to 313131 to receive monthly sale alerts before anyone else!

In the following section we’ll go over many different examples of keywords in action, showing how they can power different types of campaigns in different industries.

Uses & Examples Of Keywords

As we said, keywords are an extremely powerful tool when it comes to building a successful mobile marketing campaign. The best way to understand what keywords can do is to look at some examples. We’ve setup three keywords on 313131 that you can text into right now, to see how easy it is for your customers to work with keywords.

The following three keywords are active examples. You can text them to 313131 right now. Our text messaging system will automatically reply to you with the text shown:

EZ – This is the Ez Texting demonstration keyword. We use it to give our clients unfamiliar with keywords an idea of how they work – ‘Wasn’t that EZ? Collect #s, run contests, polls, surveys & more! Supercharge your current promotions & get your own keyword today! Reply STOP EZ to end’

2FOR1 – This is an example of the power of mobile couponing. When you encourage your customers to text in to receive a coupon, you also collect their phone number, which you can use for future marketing campaigns (with permission) – ‘Thx for joining our VIP text club! Show this to your server and get 2-4-1 appetizers all night. Reply STOP 2FOR1 to end.’

JEWELRY – This is an example of a marketing alerts campaign. Build loyalty by letting interested customers know about specials before everyone else – ‘Welcome to David's Jewels preferred customer program. We'll send you exclusive invites to trunk shows to attend before the general public! Reply STOP JEWELRY to end.’

The following examples are just that – examples – and they do not function. Instead of showing you the response text, as we have in the above examples, we’ve provided ‘Call To Action’ examples. A ‘Call To Action’ is the text you would include

• Education – Students can text UTSTUDENTS to 313131 to join the Student Association alert list
• Events – Text PARTY to 313131 for updates and VIP invites
• Emergency – Text SOS + Your Message to 313131 to alert Campus Security
• Finance – Text PRICE + Stock Symbol to 313131 to query a website for current stock price
• Media – Text Z107 + your song request to 313131 to hear your favorite song on the radio.
• Nightlife – Text RSVP + your name and # of people in your party to 313131 to reserve a table
• Non-Profit – Text GIVE + your phone number to 313131 and a representative will contact you for your donation
• Police – Text TIP + your police tip to 313131 to anonymously report a crime
• Political – Text JOIN + your ZIP code to 313131 to get on your local rep’s legislative alert list.
• Real Estate – Text JREALTY35 to 313131 for instant property information about this house
• Religious – Text PRAY + your prayer request to 313131 to send prayer requests straight to your pastor’s email address
• Retail – Text COUPON to 313131 for an instant coupon code for 20% your entire purchase
• Sports – Text YANKEES to 313131 for current team news and daily scores
• Text BBALL to 313131 for a chance to win tickets to a Big Ten game
• Technology – Text BALANCE + your account number to 313131 for your current account balance.
• Services - Text PICKUP + your location to 313131 for the nearest York Taxi diver to pick you up immediately.
• Text SPA + your name and appt time to 313131 to make an appointment.
• Restaurant - Text DEWEYS to 313131 for your free appetizer
• Lead generation - Text LASER to 313131 to have a representative contact you with more information
• Automotive - Text MAZDA + your ZIP code to 313131 to find your nearest Mazda dealer
• Automated ordering - Text ORDER + your customer ID and your order to 313131 to submit your order via SMS