Did you know that 90% of text messages get read within 3 minutes of delivery? Brands using SMS successfully reach 95% of smartphone and non-smartphone users. Compare this to a typical open rate for e-mail, which can hover around 18% in the retail industry. With metrics like these, it's no wonder that more and more retailers are investigating ways to use SMS in new ways to engage customers and boost sales. In this exclusive guide from Raymark, you'll learn about benefits of mobile marketing for retailers and about solutions for how to implement SMS marketing in the best way for your business.

1. White Paper
Mobile Marketing and Retail Clienteling
How to Boost Profits with Integrated SMS and MMS

2. 01 | Mobile Marketing and Retail Clienteling
Mobile Marketing and Retail Clienteling
How to Boost Profits with Integrated SMS and MMS
SMS is becoming more and more popular in today’s
world as a preferred method of contact. It should
come as no surprise: 91% of adults keep their smart-phones
within arm’s reach (Source: Forbes.com).
This is as true in retail as it is in other industries,
where more and more consumers are making it clear
that SMS is their preferred method of communicating
with in-store associates.
This has presented a few real challenges to retailers,
however, as mobile messaging is largely an unman-aged
and unmonitored form of communication
today. While many retailers leverage SMS gateways
to send communications to customers regarding
service-related communications, these most often
are not 2-way conversations.
By using the company’s SMS shortcode, outbound
texts can be sent individually or in bulk at competitive
rates, however, such messages are largely designed
for one-way communication from the company as a
whole, and not from an individual associate.
The most significant challenge to 2-way communica-tions
via SMS is that the technology was designed as
a device-to-device level of communication. As such,
2-way messaging can easily be handled when being
sent from a specific phone number, with subsequent
replies going back to that number.
The shortcode was designed to provide messaging
from an entity such as a company, but most of these
communications are not expecting a response, or if
there is a response, are most often expecting a nu-meric
response to trigger a next action. For example,
companies are using SMS as bill payment reminders,
allowing users to respond with “1” to pay the cur-rent
month, “2” to pay a full outstanding balance, etc.
These responses then trigger a step in a pre-defined
workflow.
Correspondence from an associate, on the other
hand, should mimic the real-world communications
Copyright 2014 Raymark Xpert Business Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
3 Ways Retailers Can Use
Mobile Messaging to Build
Loyalty and Boost Sales
Offer Delivery
Send customers offers and promotions directly to
their mobile devices and allow them to redeem of-fers
without the hassle of clipping paper coupons.
Customer Service
Amaze your customers with instant updates re-garding
service issues such as repairs, alterations
and orders. An eyewear retailer might want to send
a notice about prescription expiry or a reminder
to use up annual insurance allowances. Run a
loyalty program? Remind customers that they have
rewards to use or that they are only a few points
away from a higher tier.
Associate Outreach
Grow the 1:1 relationship between associates and
customers who have opted-in to mobile messaging
by enabling them to send personal communica-tions
to customers, while managing and monitoring
those interactions from a corporate level.

3. 02 | Mobile Marketing and Retail Clienteling
between a customer and a friend. This communication should be
2-way, and the customer should be communicating directly with
an individual when they respond, not a central location or set of
pre-defined workflows. As simple as this sounds, it complicates
things quite a bit for retail technology. Shortcodes have not been
found to work effectively for this scenario, as multiple associates
may be communicating to a customer sharing a code, so replies
are nearly impossible to guarantee being re-routed to the original
sender. Instead the outbound message should be sent from a
unique mobile ID, so each communication becomes discreet and
personal.
Making it Happen
There are three approaches to accomplishing this direct associ-ate-
to-consumer texting:
• Option 1 - Leverage a device with texting capabilities and a
texting plan. This can be company provided or user’s own device
(Bring Your Own Device - BYOD).
• Option 2 - Leverage a service whereby the outbound communi-cation
is sent via text, and the response is received via e-mail.
• Option 3 - Leverage a 2-way gateway where each user has a vir-tual
mobile number, which can send and receive text messages
as two-way communications.
User’s Own Device and Plan
The primary advantage to this approach is that the user, in this
case an associate using their own device, can use the clienteling
interface for outbound communications, or their own texting ca-pabilities,
and this communication can be captured and recorded
in the clienteling solution. In terms of user experience, this is the
closest to how the associate is accustomed to using their own
device. The primary disadvantage of this approach is that SMS
and MMS are only supported on devices with associated phone
plans, so clienteling users on PCs or tablets would not have tex-ting
capabilities.
SMS to E-Mail
In option 2, the communication method is broken into two differ-ent
forms: one for the outbound, and the other for the inbound.
This is not overly problematic, as the store associate would then
rely exclusively on sending outbound SMS through the customer
profile, and would therefore have no other means to texting, and
no other texting interface to be concerned with. Responses sent
by consumers via SMS would appear as items in the e-mail inbox,
from which the customer profile can be launched and the user
could send a response via text.
Virtual Mobile Number
Option 3 entails the setup of a virtual mobile number for each
associate, and the solution would handle this virtual number by
linking it to the associate, regardless of the device the associate
was using. In other words, the associate would have access to
texting capabilities on a PC, a tablet or a phone (much like option
2), and would have access to an SMS/MMS inbox, where they
could communicate in an entirely controlled and managed envi-ronment.
One disadvantage of this option is the added manage-ment
time needed for the virtual phone numbers.
Copyright 2014 Raymark Xpert Business Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

4. 03 | Mobile Marketing and Retail Clienteling
Copyright 2014 Raymark Xpert Business Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
1
HIGH
VIEW RATE
Brands using SMS successfully
reach 95% of smartphone
and non-smartphone users.
Compare this to a typical
open rate for e-mail, which
can hover around 18% in the
retail industry.
(Source: GoMoNews.com)
2
REAL-TIME
COMMUNICATIONS
90% of text messages get
read within 3 minutes of
delivery.
(Source: ImpigeMobileStrategy.com,
2011)
3
HIGH CONVERSION
RATE
Mobile coupons receive 10x
higher redemption rates than
print coupons.
(Source: GoMobileBook.com)
4
HAPPY CUSTOMERS
42% of consumers prefer SMS
deals versus bar-code scans
or push message coupons.
(Source: Mobile Marketer, 2013)
Benefits of
Using SMS
and MMS
for Retail
Marketing
and
Customer
Engagement

5. 04 | Mobile Marketing and Retail Clienteling
Award-winning Mosaic Clienteling puts customer-centric retailing at your fingertips. Mosaic
Clienteling is an in-store, associate-facing relationship selling system for retailers. It is designed
to provide knowledge of the enterprise across channels to associates on the store floor: at the
point of decision.
Copyright 2014 Raymark Xpert Business Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
About Raymark Mosaic Clienteling
Rapid ROI
Achieve rapid ROI with proven techniques that will bring about
increases in traffic, conversion, average transaction value
and even gross margin within timeframes as short as a few
months.
Build Loyalty
Mosaic Clienteling is a proven solution that empowers retailers to
build customer loyalty with omni-channel clienteling functionality
for one-to-one relationship selling.
Hardware Independence
As new devices, form factors and operating systems become
available, the application’s HTML5 technology will enable it to run
on various device types, including tablets, handhelds and PCs.
Extendable Functionality
Mosaic Store Platform is extendable, enabling retailers to enhance
or add onto the existing features and functionality.
Faster Training and Deployment
Increase training and deployment speed by configuring the
application’s layouts, labels and look so that it becomes a custom
tool, without the added expense of custom development.
Sell More and Boost Margins
Improve stock movement and achieve higher margins with
intelligent cross-selling and up-selling and customer-centric
features including wishlists, outreach tasks and more.
Key Features
• Virtual closet and transaction history
• Promotions and loyalty
• Notes and preferences
• Contact page and client permissions
• Tasks and communications (SMS, call, letter, e-mail, etc.)
• Wish lists
• Surveys and preferences
• Relationships
• Events (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.)
• Statistics
• Communication templates

6. Raymark
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Montréal, Québec
Canada H4P 1A5
T: 1-800-346-7296
F: 1-514-737-0014
E: info@raymark.com
W: www.raymark.com
For 25 years, Raymark has been empowering retail with leading-edge
enterprise software solutions that help the world’s most prestigious
international retailers optimize stock turns, build customer loyalty, and
increase sales. Raymark develops and markets the ultimate suite of flex-ible
and interconnected applications deployed in a centralized environ-ment
and offers professional turnkey solutions including implementa-tion,
training and customer support. www.raymark.com