The SMS message was sent on April 29. Bestbet Jacksonville worked with Mobile Ad Group on this initiative.

“Our challenge was to quickly acquire additional players for a high-stakes poker tournament that had a short entrance window,” said Dan Kossoff, director of marketing at Bestbet Poker, Simulcast & Gaming, Jacksonville, FL.

“The text we sent had an immediate and convincing impact on the target group and helped us produce a successful event,” he said.

Call-to-action
Bestbet Jacksonville used SMS to encourage last-minute sign-ups for a $500 buy-in poker tournament.

The SMS message was sent to the company’s list of approximately 500 opted-in consumers on the day of the event.

The copy for the text read, “$50,000 guaranteed prize pool, $560 buy-in. Seats avail until 2:30 pm TODAY at BestBet Jacksonville. You have until 2:30 to register.” The SMS message also included a phone number that consumers could call for more information.

The text message was sent out approximately two hours before the event. According to the company, the SMS message garnered 25 additional sign-ups for the event within one hour.

With the $500 buy-in amount, the campaign shows how consumers are not only responsive to SMS but are also willing to take a direct action because of a text message that they receive.

Drive on mobile
The Bestbet Jacksonville example shows how SMS marketing can be effective for pushing out time-sensitive messages.

The example also points to how context and timing play a big role in how consumers respond to a message.

Since the SMS message was pushed to users right before the event began and was tied to a direct action, consumers had an incentive to visit the casino and sign-up for the event.

Additionally, Bestbet Jacksonville was able to turn around a specific ROI for the campaign by knowing how many consumers came into the casino as a result of receiving the text message.

Consumers constantly have their mobile devices on hand and given the wide reach of SMS to all handsets, the channel can still be effective for brands and marketers looking to target groups of users.

“We knew that many players wait until the last minute to enter, but since we had so much play during prior events we felt that an extra push would be needed,” Mr. Kossoff said.

“Within 15 minutes we discovered that players were signing-up well before they usually did – a quick survey verified that many players were indeed responding to the text,” he said.

“The tournament was successful, the players were happy and we were relieved.”

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York