NEW YORK ? The value that marketers can provide through SMS is exponential and brands need to use the tool to engage in a one-to-one dialogue with new and existing consumers, per panelists at the Mobile Shopping Fall conference.

During the ?Using SMS to Capture Info, Raise Awareness and Encourage Engagement via Two Way Communication? session, panelists discussed how they implemented SMS into their mobile marketing initiatives. The panel was moderated by Janet Jaiswal, senior director of global product marketing at Tealeaf, San Francisco.

?For us, SMS drives viewership on television and drives fan engagement during the event, as well as at home,? said Scott Richman, senior vice president and general manager of Madison Square Garden Interactive, New York.

?We?ll engage our customers with alerts and offer tons of promotions, seat upgrades and statistical updates,? he said. ?I would say that the value that we can provide through SMS is now.

?You?re actually taking the message that?s valuable to your consumer.?

SMS objectives
According to Mr. Richman, the company has strict practices when it comes to using SMS.

?We don?t want to spam the consumer with messages,? Mr. Richman said. ?It?s about growing the database and harvesting the data.

?The one thing that?s really interesting is push notification,? he said. ?Push for us is relatively new on all fronts.?

According to the executive, it is important to look at the whole marketing arsenal and see how SMS fits in.

?Let the consumer tell you how they want to receive a message,? he said.

Mobile members
According to Steve Davis, president of Rue La La, New York, mobile could not be more important to the company?s fundamental business and strategy.

?From an SMS perspective, the primary means that our consumer communicates is via SMS,? Mr. Davis said. ?The way that people want to share via our mobile site or app is via SMS ? that?s how they communicated and how they shared and invited their friends.

?We?ve integrated SMS into our sites so they consumer can get personal alerts in things they are interested in,? he said. ?This is a huge growth for us.?

The company decided that it wanted to use SMS as a sharing tool after researching and finding out that its members did not want to be mass marketed to.

?While SMS is integrated into our mobile experiences today, a couple of months ago it wasn?t,? Mr. Davis said. ?You could always share through email, Facebook and Twitter and once we looked at the research, the No. 1 way our members wanted to share was via SMS.

?We were trying out each option that we thought was relevant and we missed the most important one,? he said. ?There?s nothing that is better than research and dialogue with your members.?

It is important to get out there and test and do research, per Mr. Davis.

?Research is critical,? Mr. Davis said. ?Think through your customer messaging and touchpoints.

?Set the foundation of communicating with customers in a holistic way,? he said. 

Final Take