MMS is both expensive and difficult to set up. You can have live links in SMS to images that can be viewed on the mobile web. With this simple tutorial we will show you how setup and optimise a full screen image and hide the URL bar. This gives the same full screen experience as MMS but with only the cost of an SMS. Web images are a visually impactful way to deliver sms coupons as well, either by showing them at point of purchase or you can tap them to generate an email or SMS with a code that can be used to trigger a redemption process.
The challenge is that different phones and operating systems handle images a bit differently.
What we really want is a link to a nice full screen image like the image at the top to bring the most impact to our SMS promotions.
What we need to do is create a web page to host your image, re-size it, hide the location bar and then link to it.
You will need to be able to host this small HTML file and your image on a web server somewhere.
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″>
<title>Burst SMS Coupon</title>
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=320; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;” />
html,body {margin: 0; padding: 0;}
</style>
</head>
<body “setTimeout(function() { window.scrollTo(0, 1) }, 100);”>
<table style=”display: inline-table;” border=”0″ cellpadding=”0″ cellspacing=”0″ width=”100%”>
<tr align=”middle”>
<td >
<a href=”mailto:coupon@burstsms.com?subject=MMWS1250“><img width=”320px” src=”burst50coupon.jpg“></a>
</td>
</tr>
</table> </body>
</html>
You just need to change the code where indicated in bold text. You will notice we have included a basic tap to email redemtion process here. It is optional.
For a more complex coding sample for a wider variety of devices including tablets using Media Queries see this link http://pastebin.com/1WwpwUqL
Once you have your file and the associated URL, shorten and customise it using bit.ly. This service is great and has the added bonus of providing analytics on your link.
For best results we use an image 320px in width.
To get the above SMS coupon demo on your phone SMS the word COUPON to 0459 333 444
If you have any comments, or this doesn’t work as expected, let us know and we will see if we can help with your next SMS promotion.