quote: Mike Blakesley

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Ideas or suggestions anyone?

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Yeah. Don't do it.
 

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Posted by Jim Bedford (Member # 4) on 02-01-2011, 08:34 AM:
 
You text me on the blind and I'll "come find you and murder you in your sleep."
 

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Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 02-01-2011, 09:31 AM:
 
Yeah, we are charged for every text, and don't take kindly to that kind of spam.

However, it is entirely possible you could be performing a public service:

Suicide bomber blown up prematurely by spam text

quote:

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A "BLACK Widow" suicide bomber who planned to detonate explosives in central Moscow was killed when a spam text message from her mobile-phone company set off the device early.

News of the botched New Year's Eve operation emerged yesterday as Russian security sources said they had identified the suicide bomber who killed 35 people at a Moscow airport last week.

He was a 20-year-old man from the North Caucasus, a spokesman for the national investigative committee said.

It was also revealed that the explosive belt the man was wearing had been remotely activated. Terror attacks in Russia have ramped up during recent years, with suicide bombings becoming more common.

The "Black Widow" bomber, who has not been named, had intended to detonate the explosives in a busy square on January 31.

But a spam message wishing her a happy new year caused it to go off earlier than planned, instantly killing her but not harming others, security sources said.

The woman had been at a safe house in Moscow with two other bombers when the device exploded.

Mobile phones are often used as detonators by Islamist terrorist groups in Russia.

A "handler" who watches the bomber as they move into the target area sends them a text message to detonate the explosives.

The phones, which have not been previously used, are usually kept turned off until the last minute.

The woman's handler has been named as Zeinat Suyunova, 24, whose husband is in prison for being a member of a radical Islamist terror group.

Security services believe the failed bomber may have been part of the group that targeted Moscow's Domodedovo airport last Monday.

Thirty-five people were killed and hundreds injured when explosives were detonated in the baggage hall.

Both groups of bombers may have been part of a squad that was trained at al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan.

Immediately after the airport attack, investigators blamed militant Islamist groups from the North Caucasus, which includes the republics of Chechnya and Dagestan.

For more than a decade, radical Islamic groups have been fighting for an independent "emirate" in the North Caucasus, a region that has long been plagued by poverty and high unemployment.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered Premier Vladimir Putin to put forward proposals for improved security on public transport throughout Russia.

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So, ya never know.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 02-01-2011, 11:32 AM:
 
You guys have the wrong idea. I'm talking about "opt-in" texts. I would never send unsolicited texts.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 02-01-2011, 11:32 AM:
 
I don't know the percentage breakdown between mobile phone users who have unlimited text built into their service plans and those who don't. Suffice it to say not everyone has unlimited texting.

I think it would be better to use social networking to reach people on mobile phones. Those who opt into a Facebook or Twitter page can receive SMS text message updates under the right settings. I like to use Tweetdeck on my phone for monitoring Facebook and Twitter news feeds. It's different from straight text messaging, but works better in certain ways.
 

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Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 02-01-2011, 02:54 PM:
 
Mike.... you could set up a secondary email list for text messaging, and just send the text from your computer. While I don't do it for my theatre, I do use it for my son's Cub Scout Pack and our church group.

Have your guests sign up for "text messaging" by providing their 10 digit phone number and the name of their cell carrier. Using a list like THIS you can send them texts (up to 180 characters) directly from your email client. I've used Microsoft Outlook for years to do this. I simply group the addresses together, compose a new message within the SUBJECT LINE of the email and hit send. It's free to send. If the recipient wants to opt out, they can reply back to you and you can remove them from your list.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 02-01-2011, 08:39 PM:
 
Bobby - we already use Facebook. Our email service is supposed to automatically put up a "Tweet" but I never check Twitter (and haven't really ever found anyone here who uses it) so I don't worry about that as much.

Barry - I just tried that with my own phone and it works great. Thanks, I'll see how many numbers we can line up.
 

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 02-01-2011, 10:29 PM:
 
I've sat in on a couple of seminars on marketing using the social networking tools. My takeaway was unless you can hire an obsessive compulsive anal retentive to monitor all of the tweets and text and facebooking etc, it is a waste of time. Basically, if you are not constantly churning new material, you just get overlooked.

Maybe you'll get a little boost from texting to people who explicitly request it, but it sounds like you can't expand your audience without some labor intensive insanity.

I'd like to hear how it works for anyone doing it.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 02-02-2011, 12:12 AM:
 
Martin - we put up a Facebook post once or twice a week. That's enough for a single-screener. For a multi, it might be good to do one per day. If we were in that situation I would find my smartest concession person and put them in charge of it. They are texting non-stop anyway, so why not channel it?

The idea is just to get people thinking about going to the movies.
 

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Posted by David E. Nedrow (Member # 4981) on 02-02-2011, 12:22 PM:
 
Mike,

I was also looking into this, but on a two-way basis. I wanted to be able to send SMS updates to opt-ins, and allow anyone to send a text message -- eg. "times" -- to us, that would auto-reply with our showtimes.

The SMS gateway wasn't much of a problem, price-wise, but getting a number for people to text to was outrageous.

I have seen people setup up a pseudo-SMS gateway, with a regular cell phone connected to a computer via USB. An app watches for incoming text messages on the phone, and sends out an appropriate reply. I'll probably go that route to see how it works.

The link that was posted by Barry is pretty helpful.

-David
 

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 02-02-2011, 02:42 PM:
 
Mike:
We do Facebook also. Not very active. Change it once a week when we have a new movie or when I have others booked (calendar house, so easy to promote future shows and times). Other than that, just answering questions. I'd go nuts having to constantly churn inane babble (which seems to be what FaceBook and Twitter are for). We of course have email blasts. We've been using Constant Contact for about a year. It helps if you know html/CSS so you don't have to stick with their pre-fab forms. IT has tracking abilities so you can be depressed about how few people open your email, even though they signed up for it. Likewise with FaceBook. You can have a couple of thousand "likes" but it doesn't mean they are coming to a show.
 

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Posted by Robert D Hall (Member # 5674) on 02-02-2011, 04:25 PM:
 
David you can send a text with yahoo messenger. And the recipient gets a number to text back its not a phone number but you get any text that are sent to it on your messenger. And its all free to you.
 

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Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 02-03-2011, 09:55 PM:
 
I'd love to do facebook but we would get so much negative stuff that is not grounded in reality that it would become detrimental. As part of a larger company it's also perhaps far too easy to start responding to something and then go in to confidential areas, usually I have to read everything before I post on here carefully just in case I'm too open about who my employer is and what is appropriate to reveal.

Mike the text messaging to subscribers sounds great for a place like yours. Do people have to pay to receive SMS messages in the USA?
 

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Posted by David E. Nedrow (Member # 4981) on 02-04-2011, 01:31 PM:
 

quote: Caleb

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Do people have to pay to receive SMS messages in the USA?

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quote: David E. Nedrow

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allow anyone to send a text message -- eg. "times" -- to us, that would auto-reply with our showtimes.

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