Friday 26 February 2010

David Lloyd - SMS Marketing

In a previous Blog I mentioned about the letter I'd received from David Lloyd trying to get me back as a member of one of their gyms.

Since that letter I've also had a number of text messages from them, my 'favourite' of which is reproduced below as sent by them, (I've commented out the phone number) :

TREAT YOURSELF THIS PAYDAY WITH A MEMBERSHIP AT DAVID LLOYD! 1ST 20 RECIEVE A SPORTS BAG AND NO JOINING FEE. CALL 01582XXXXX T&Cs Apply. /2 REMOVE RPLY STOP

There are a number of issues I have with the message:

Capital letters - It feels like someone's shouting at me and also means the message looks like Spam.

If I was the kind of person who lived from payday to payday I wouldn't be considering forking out £60-£70 a month on gym membership.  I'd also consider it a pretty big financial commitment rather than a treat.

I stopped being a member over 3 years ago, it feels strange for them to start using SMS regularly out of the blue.  (I also had one text from them last October which did manage to user both upper and lower case and had a better promotion). 

In the last 3 weeks I've had 3 texts from them.  I know I could reply to stop them but I quite enjoy being outraged at wasted marketing like this.  Why don't they offer me a free day/week pass to see what I'm missing or offer me 3 months for the price of 2, anything must be more effective than a free sports bag.

Of course the main thing in any campaign is how effective it is, if David Lloyd have tried different message tone/content and a Cash4Gold style approach works best then fair play to them.  I'd be amazed though that it's the best way to get people coming back.

Dan Barnett


Director of Analytics

blog@analysismarketing.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/danjbarnett

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