April 2023 - 23

TECHNOLOGY
" People who want to get
texts from you really like
you - and tend to be some
of your best customers. "
- Bobby Lewis, vice president,
Meadows Farms
media all together - now text is the centerpiece. With
a list of over 17,200 subscribers, we have focused all our
marketing dollars on text and our own 'media' like our
e-newsletter and blog. In addition, we are re-building our
website from scratch. "
Terrell says texting is the best way for Wallace's to
communicate with people in their area right now. She
says television is too segmented and print is " really on the
decline. " Text offers convenience for both marketer and
consumer.
Focused Marketing
Sara Castillo started the text message marketing
company TapOnIt with her sister Katie Castillo-Wilson
in 2015. Castillo says her sister " was working in the
newspaper industry and was dealing with a lot of this
fragmented marketing, and she had this idea of, what if
people could sign up to receive ads, content, promotions,
information, updates - whatever it may be - via text
messages from the businesses that they like? "
The two founders raised some money locally and built
out TapOnIt, a platform for text message marketing.
They offer both short message service (SMS) - which
is a block of words like a normal text message - and
multimedia message service (MMS), which can include
photos and video.
" What separates TapOnIt's platform from other SMS
platforms is that we really do focus on MMS, " Castillo says.
" Now, you can absolutely do SMS text blasts through our
platform - if you just want to get in and type up some
words and text them out, you can do that - but what our
platform does very differently from any other platforms is
we actually can send up to nine different images in a single
MMS text message. Businesses don't have to send nine;
you can do one, you can do an animated GIF or do three
images - it's completely up to you. It costs the same
as just one MMS message, and it comes through as one
message, so everything's in one message but with several
pictures in it. "
Terrell uses TapOnIt for Wallace's text club. " TapOnIt
has a unique space in texting because they offer MMS and
not the SMS that is prevalent in the marketplace right
now. Garden center product is very visual, so being able to
text multiple images to a customer is the easiest way to
grab their attention. "
Choosing a Marketing Channel
While there are a lot of ways businesses can advertise -
TV, radio, direct mail, social media, email - for a lot of them,
it's hard to track your reach. " You're not even 100% sure if
[your message is] getting in front of people, " Castillo says.
" So when you run a television ad, you don't actually know
how many people are watching that TV.
" Direct mail is super expensive. The open rates for email
marketing, unfortunately, are continuing to decrease
every single year. Social media is great, but the organic
reach on social media is terrible; we have spent so many
years trying to build up our Facebook followers for our
businesses, but at the end of the day, we don't own
those people - it is an audience that we rent, and what
if [Mark] Zuckerberg all of a sudden decides he doesn't
want Facebook to be a thing anymore?
" Texting is literally the fastest, most efficient, most
effective and guaranteed way to make sure that your
content is getting in front of people, " she says. " Text
messages have a 99% open rate, 90% are open within
the first three minutes of being received, and so it's
guaranteed exposure. "
Connecting to Younger Gardeners
It's been estimated that upwards of 18 million people
caught the gardening bug since COVID-19, thanks to
Wallace's
includes a call
for action on
their website
to promote its
text club.
April 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of April 2023
