First Webs Demos; A resource for WSIFIRSTWEBS.COM; Rockford, IL

Using Voloper eMarketer (VeM) Lesson 08

Topics in This Lesson . . .

More on SMS Messaging
More on the use of VCard
More on Exporting User Detail

More on SMS Messaging

While SMS messaging may not yet have hit the church and religious communities, it is a viable service for businesses and organizations who have products and services, and need to communicate information. Our objective is to define it, and provide resources for you to explore it's value in your organization.

SMS means Short Message Service.

Short message service (SMS) is a service available on most digital mobile phones that permits the sending of short messages (also known as text messages, messages, or more colloquially SMSes, texts or even texts) between mobile phones, other handheld devices and even land-line telephones.

Short message services are developing very rapidly throughout the world. By mid-2004 texts were being sent at a rate of 500 billion messages per annum. At an average cost of USD0.10 per message, this generates revenues in excess of 50 billion for mobile telephone operators and represents close to 100 text messages for every person in the world. Growth has been rapid; in 2001, 250 billion SMS messages were sent, in 2000 just 17 billion. SMS is particularly popular in Europe, Asia (excluding Japan and Korea) and Australia. Popularity has grown to a sufficient extent that the term texting (used as a verb meaning the act of cell phone users sending SMS text messages back and forth) has entered the common lexicon. In China, SMS is very popular, and has brought service providers large profit (18 billion SMS were sent in 2001 [1]).

SMS messages are particularly popular amongst young urbanites. In many markets, the service is comparatively cheap. For example, in Australia a message typically costs between AUD 0.20 and AUD 0.25 to send, compared to a voice call, which costs anywhere between AUD 0.40 and AUD 2.00 per minute.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_message_service

Google SMS (Short Message Service) enables you to send queries as text messages over your mobile phone or device and easily get precise answers to your questions. No links. No web pages. Just text — and the information you're looking for:

With the VeM, SMS service is optional extended feature. You may:

Enable the SMS system by contacting your IC. Once SMS is enabled through Voloper, you will be able to send text messages to a cell phone number via email. The cell phone owner must have checked the SMS option on the eMarketer form and must have a valid cell phone. The SMS Campaign option must be selected from the Create Campaign or Add Campaign menus.
Register with the SMS exchange directly. With a valid account from SMS Exchange, contact your IC to switch your SMS service from Voloper. SMS communications by way of wireless communication providers is a person-to-person mode only.
Additional charges apply to SMS. Contact your IC for details.

More on Exporting User Detail

In the last section of Lesson 03, we covered the EXPORT USER DETAIL FUNCTION. In this section we are going to look at how the VeM exports the data to a csv file, and then how it would look to you in an Excel spreadsheet. This could be important to you if you want to update your database records without resending everything to your recipients. For a minor charge, you could EXPORT USER DETAIL, modify the data, and then re-import the data to Voloper using the modified spreadsheet. The exporting is free and you can do that. The importing of the new data requires a minor charge.

In the example below, we will be exporting all the fields of User Detail from the database. Do you remember what our form looked like to the User. If not, here it is again. Click on the image to enlarge.

To see what this looks like in an exported csv file, we have a put together a series of screen captures that simulate a long Excel spreadsheet. We have limited the records to 12 rows. There are 7 screen captures. You will see that the enlarged views show a "C" or a "P"in the title blocks. This corresponds to a Category or a Product. Also note that if the "C" or "P" applies to the subscriber, the field has a "1"recorded in it.


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Congratulations on finishing this lesson. I encourage you to complete the Lesson Feedback form before moving on.

Respectfully,
Vernon Wanner
Internet Consultant