Strike While the Iron is Hot: Turn Website Visitors into Customers using Online Text Messaging

Text messaging portal LookNoThumbs.com is helping small business website owners to connect instantly with site visitors and transition casual site visits into sales opportunities.

Here’s a typical scenario from a day in the life of a website; perhaps a site not unlike yours.

You drive visitors to your site by publishing your URL at every opportunity and using every means at the disposal of your marketing budget: stationery, signage, press, broadcast media, online advertising, blogging, and word-of-mouth. As visitors click around your site evaluating you and your business, the tyre-kickers lose interest and leave. Others are interested enough to complete your inquiry form, which at some point delivers contact information to you for later collection. Unfortunately, within minutes after completing the form, most visitors will have forgotten who you are and why they were interested. They’ll have moved on - possibly even to a competitor’s website, and you’ve lost your best chance to win a customer whose interest is still fresh.

Here’s the same scenario with integrated site alerts from online texting portal LookNoThumbs.com.

Your visitors arrive at your site as before. Tyre-kickers leave, as they always do. But now when a visitor completes your inquiry form, their experience with your business is only beginning. Within seconds of them submitting the form, you get a text message on your mobile phone containing the contact details they left – usually while the visitor is still looking at your site. You now have your optimal chance of winning that customer: you have their number right on your phone, and you know they’re on your site. Go ahead - PRESS YOUR GREEN BUTTON NOW!

Make no mistake, LookNoThumbs’ website alerts are the online equivalent of your door chime ringing to alert sales staff when a customer enters your shop.

Site integration with LookNoThumbs.com is a simple process. First, you need a LookNoThumbs.com account, which is free and quick to set up at http://www.LookNoThumbs.com. Don’t buy any texts until you’re ready – your free trial will let you try this out just fine. Next, display a special link prominently on your site. The exact link is in the FAQ accessible from your LookNoThumbs.com online texting account. When your visitor clicks the link, a popup form opens, and when they submit the form, you get your text message. It couldn’t be easier, and it’s free to try.

LookNoThumbs.com has brought customer text messaging within the reach of any business. Where LookNoThumbs stands apart is in its simplicity. Site integration is just one example that delivers high value to your business with no fuss and minimal cost. In fact there are no costs other than any text messages you receive after your free trial, and you buy those in small blocks only when you need them.

Remember, in business it’s always best to strike while the iron is hot. Don’t impress your customers with a great website, then lose them to a competitor over something as trivial as not knowing they were ever there.

Tags: alerts, customer service, Online Text Messaging, Online Texting, small business, SMS, SMS alerts, text messaging, text portal, Texting, Website Owner

Corporate Travel Agents Inform Clients with Online Texting

Online texting is an efficient and easy way for corporate travel businesses to improve customer service, attract new and impress old customers. LookNoThumbs.com offers an online texting service that corporate travel agents are using to keep in touch with clients and increase customer satisfaction.

Here is a typical scenario, of great customer service using of online texting:

(1) The client’s flight home is cancelled and he calls in to inform his travel service agent seeking advice on what to do next.

(2) The service agent discovers that there are no more flights out that night and also that the best hotels in the area are booked for a major medical conference in the town. She informs the client that she will need to hunt for accommodation and will confirm new the client’s new travel details with an SMS text message.

(3) Realising that she might need to go for a budget hotel for this client, she goes ahead and immediately rebooks the flight out in the morning and, 10 minutes later, a room in the nearest hotel.

(4) The hotel has no internet connection for guests which would make it awkward or impossible for the client to pick up emails. However, the LookNoThumbs.com service allows the client to receive confirmation information by SMS directly to his mobile phone.

(5) She calls the client and explains the new travel arrangements and while on the phone, sends the travel details using the online texting service from LookNoThumbs.com. The client, although disappointed by the earlier cancellation, is delighted that the travel agent has promptly confirmed new travel and accomodation arrangements via an SMS online text message.

Business benefits of LookNoThumbs.com online texting for corporate travel agents:

- Customers will appreciate easy access to travel details on their mobile phones.

- Clients will have the mobile phone with him at every airport / hotel / car rental check-in desk.

- Information can be sent while client is in the air and picked up immediately on landing.

- “Reminders” can be scheduled to send to clients. For example, “Please send me your dates for Geneva by Friday at 1pm to avoid the higher fares”.

- Client does not need to complete the free sign up to use the service, all that is needed is a mobile phone.

- Customer service is improved by including another client communication channel.

- The agent need not know whether client’s mobile phone supports email.

- The agent can copy and paste exact itineraries and codes from booking confirmations, eliminating errors.

- The agent can optionally keep email copies of messages sent for record-keeping and billing purposes.

- The agent can notify client teams of changes all at once using group messaging.

- The agent need not be tied to the office to keep up with developments; client replies can go the agent’s mobile phone.

- Agents can provide customer service announcements for clients already travelling using group texts, for instance to alert clients to airport closures, industrial action, expected delays, extra security measures and other travel related events.

It is clear that online texting with LookNoThumbs.com delivers real business benefit to the corporate travel business. If you are a travel agent, why not join up, the benefits of online texting await you!

Tags: Benefits, Corporate, free, messages, messaging, mobiles, Online Texting, owner, SMS, text, Travel

Online Texting Anti-spoofing Measures, and about time!

Bulk text messaging (SMS) supplier Clickatell is now preventing online texting customers from setting the Sender ID header on each outbound SMS message.

It’s a subtle change that many won’t care about or perhaps even notice. But serious online texting services like www.looknothumbs.com welcome this as an important and necessary step towards privacy, security and trust in text messaging; and one that delivers a clean blow on the chin to SMS spammers and would-be fraudsters who threaten this market.

Here’s why.

If you’ve ever opened an email and discovered it’s not what it appeared to be, you may know that you can’t always trust the From: header in email. That’s because any program that creates email messages can insert any value into that header. This is an artefact of SMTP - a protocol developed in a more innocent age but still used today to deliver most Internet email.

Text messaging doesn’t use SMTP, but the principle is the same. The sending software constructs the text message, including a Sender ID header, which is treated as the sender’s mobile number or a text identifier. This is useful because if the Sender ID matches an address book entry in the receiving phone, you might see “From: Bob Smith” rather than “From: 07123456789”.

Note: SMS spamming and spoofing have not been a huge problem in the USA. That’s partly because of limitations with U.S. network operators, and partly because SMS spamming is prosecuted as a felony in the U.S. with serious consequences for convicted offenders. However, spoofing in particular is a problem in other regions, including Europe, where bona fide applications depend on the Sender ID header as an enabler for replies.

So what’s new?

Well last month, Clickatell told customers it was dropping support for ad-hoc setting of the Sender ID header. Sender IDs now have to be pre-registered or pass stringent, auditable, security checks by Clickatell or its security-conscious customers like www.looknothumbs.com.

Why is this a good thing?

This measure eliminates spoofing because sending programs can no longer impersonate Sender IDs undetected. It also discourages spam because the message originator is easily traceable and appropriate action can be taken.

But perhaps most importantly, it discourages bad citizenship in electronic messaging culture. SMS is a cherished child of the mobile industry. It’s beloved by its users and suppliers alike for its convenience, and its seemingly limitless capacity for valuable applications. Nobody wants text messaging to suffer the fate of email, riddled with unwanted content and virtually unusable for many.

With this new measure in place, suppliers are taking the short-term risk of reduced traffic, but the pay-off will be high-quality content and long-term trust in the medium, which will fuel continued growth in this sector.

At online texting site www.looknothumbs.com, all hats are off to Clickatell for taking this initiative.

Tags: anti-spam, business, clickatell, free, messaging, Mobile, Online Texting, texts

Online Texting v SPAM

The words online texting and SPAM really should not be spoken in the same sentence. However, while stumbling I found this article relating to SMS messaging being received when it is unwanted. It points the finger at Verizon and informs the reader how to opt out of receiving spammy SMS messaging.

At LookNoThumbs.com, a new online texting service, there is a policy where any of its users who are found to be SPAMMING will be removed from the service - immediately.

At this cool web-site, you can use online texting services functions to protect your privacy but still get those updates that are important or valuable to you. Their “Alerts and Subscriptions” service is where the sender creates an Alert with informative and useful messages and users then Subscribe anonymously to the Alert to receive the latest update when it becomes available from the sender. If the recipient gets tired of the updates it is a simple case of unsubscribing from that Alert. No questions asked.

For example, let’s say your favourite store has an alert published in LookNoThumbs.com. As a regular there you don’t want to miss their annual pre-Christmas sale. So you subscribe to their “Pre-Christmas Sale Alert” and when they send it out you immediately receive the text message informing you of the date and time of the sale. You are then first in line to snap up that last minute bargain - along with the other subscribers!

Online texting, and SMS messaging in general, is booming and many important, and fun, uses have been developed for this technology. Maybe the big communications corporates are selling out their users already but LookNoThumbs.com is providing an alternative, allowing privacy to be retained without losing out on new updates. Let’s keep the SPAMMERS out of online texting and SMS messaging alogether.

Tags: Alert, Christmas, Greetings, messaging, mobiles, Online Texting, SMS, Subscription

The Online Texting Business that wants to Be Nice.

Life isn’t fair sometimes, that’s for sure. But have you noticed how many businesses rely on policies that are heavily stacked in favour their own agenda rather than what the customer wants? Online texting service www.looknothumbs.com is taking a fresh approach.

Here are just a few examples of unfair policies that we’ve come to accept.

1. When you buy goods or services in advance, such as a gift voucher or prepaid text messages for your mobile phone, you’ve paid good money for them. The business has had the advantage of your money often long before actually delivering the goods or services. So why do so many businesses think it’s OK for these vouchers to expire after a month, 3 months or even a year if they’re not used? (check the small print!) As long as the business is still active, shouldn’t they either honour your purchase or at least refund the purchase price if they want to expire it?
2. If you buy something for your own use, then decide you can’t use it all yourself, what’s the harm in passing it on to someone else who can use it? And why should you even have to consult the issuer on this matter? Sure, there may be good reasons for some things not to be transferable, but prepaid gift vouchers for goods and services, and prepaid text messages simply should not be in that category.
3. Why is it acceptable for mobile suppliers to come up with and impose extra fees (roaming charges) on each other’s customers when they’re travelling  ? I haven’t agreed to this, or rather if I have, they buried it in so much small print that I missed it. The fact remains that I’m using the same device for the same purpose, so why the extra fees at all just because I’m away from home, and why so high?
4. Why do so many service companies require you to commit to 12 or 18 months to ensure a “special” price for their services? Could it be to ensure that you can’t vote with your feet and easily switch suppliers if they provide anything other than top quality service? That’s a sure sign of a business unsure of its own ability to deliver. Look very hard for alternatives to any business like this, because they’re too focussed on attracting new customers at any cost, and not interested enough in retaining YOU.

Online texting service www.LookNoThumbs.com aims to offer a breath of fresh air in a market where service plans and pricing are typically hidden in a smog of confusing conditions and short-lived special offers. They provide an easily understood and fairly priced service with no long-term commitment, designed to attract and delight both business and personal customers.

• Their online store offers pre-paid text messages at just one flat rate.
• Your prepaid texts don’t expire as long as your account is active.
• Your texts are yours to use or give away to other LookNoThumbs users (great for teams and families).
• Unclaimed vouchers are returned to the sender after a certain period (and an email reminder)
• You will never pay extra fees to use LookNoThumbs from overseas; send your prepaid texts from any computer, anywhere in the world.

Businesses should be winning customer loyalty by backing their offerings with consistently good customer service, not by convincing them to accept unfair terms they’ll later regret. Time will tell, but let’s all hope LookNoThumbs.com’s radical approach to the online texting business inspires imitators elsewhere.