Reaching the youth market with text to vote

Text to vote is proving to be a popular mobile campaign choice for marketers across a wide range of industries. Everyone from beer brewer Guinness to fast food chain Taco Bell is using text to vote to engage customers. We posted earlier this month about the growing trend to connect with the youth market via text, now we look into the impact text to vote is having on this demographic.

Aimed at the youth market 21-35, popular brewer Guinness recently ran a text message marketing promotion called the ‘Great Guinness Pint Contest’ where they encouraged customers at participating bars to rate their pint of Guinness via text to vote for a chance to win a prize. The campaign received over 8500 entries via text in only three hours. The popular campaign encouraged entrants to join the Guinness mobile club and impressively received less than 2 percent opt out after the first SMS blast.

Another recent text to poll campaign targeting the youth market was Taco Bell and Pizza Hut who put the vote out to students at Western Kentucky University to decide which restaurant chain would be built near their campus. Students were encouraged to text the keyword WKU4PH for Pizza Hut or WKU4TB for Taco Bell to a short code to place their vote.

Always present in the mobile arena is Starbucks, who recently used the MTV Movie Awards as the perfect arena to reach out to the youth market with text voting. Starbucks promoted its new Frappuccino drink by encouraging viewers to text the keyword VOTE to an SMS short code. Aimed at the youth market, the promotion with the MTV Movie Awards, and voting announcement by popular rapper T.I. was the perfect fit.

Many youth oriented marketers are successfully using text to vote to connect with the younger demographic. Text to vote is a great campaign option because it encourages interactivity and consumer participation, while building a valuable database for future marketing at the same time.

By: InvolveMobile