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SMS Marketing Strategy – Explaining Everything You Need to Know
SMS Marketing Strategy is the practice of sending marketing messages by text message. It’s a form of opt-in marketing that requires contacts to subscribe. This differentiates it from social marketing, where the marketer posts public content that people can choose to like or follow.
Common types of SMS marketing examples include:
- personalized promotions
- offers or discounts
- remarketing
- surveys
Consumers are becoming more and more comfortable interacting with businesses on their mobile devices. In many cases, they expect to be able to reach businesses by messaging or text.
So, it’s no surprise that even back in January 2020, before COVID-19 upended how businesses interact with customers, more than half of U.S. retailers planned to increase their digital marketing investment in messaging and SMS.
SMS Marketing is the Practice of Sending Marketing Messages by Text Message.
SMS Marketing and customer service.
Juniper Research found that global mobile business messaging increased by 10% in 2020, reaching 2.7 trillion messages. SMS accounted for 98% of that messaging traffic, and the retail sector accounted for 408 billion of those messages.
Juniper Found that Retailers Primarily Used Messaging for:
- order confirmations
- dispatch notifications
- tracking information
- delivery updates
All of these functions fall under the giant umbrella of SMS customer service. And Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of customer service organizations will be using SMS and messaging rather than native apps.
Customers perceive these service SMS messages to be the most valuable ones sent by businesses. Appointment reminders, delivery updates, and booking confirmations rank above product or service discounts in perceived value.
SMS Marketing Best Practices
Don’t send without an explicit opt-in You probably already collect phone numbers from your customers. However, that does not mean you should start mass texting them. Much like email marketing, SMS text marketing requires an explicit opt-in. You can ask customers to opt into text messages on your website or other online channels. But, before you start sending, you should get a text confirmation that they want to subscribe.
One way to do this is to send one SMS (and one only) thanking them for subscribing and asking them to confirm they’re opt-in with a simple Yes or No. If they don’t respond, don’t text them again. And if they text No, don’t text them again either.
Here’s another way to collect opt-ins through your website. Knex offers a 10% off coupon for subscribing to text messaging. Clicking the link in the offer automatically opens the messaging app on the user’s phone with a boilerplate message to subscribe.
Tactics That Will Ignite Your SMS Marketing Success
If you want to become a master at something, it takes a lot of time and works to learn the trade tricks. The same is true for SMS Marketing campaigns.
If you’re trying to promote your product to the world and grow your business, you have no choice but to market to audiences on mobile devices. Of course, this is where your customers are, as mobile usage surpasses “fixed Internet access” worldwide. Whether it’s mobile banner ads, ads that appear in video games, or QR codes, there is no shortage of methods for getting the word out to mobile consumers.
Short Message Service (SMS) marketing is another one of these methods. It’s a low-cost, high-return marketing system that uses text messaging to convey content or offer it to customers. There are many reasons to try it out, from its relatively low starting cost to the vast majority of texts that are opened and read to some extent. In addition, it creates an effective platform for communicating with mobile customers when used successfully. Below are some of the most effective SMS tactics that can help boost response rates.
Offer incentives.
Tempt your customers by offering coupons or deals through texts for those who subscribe to your SMS business. This makes customers feel like they are a part of a secret club or community.
The Rules and Best Practices for SMS Marketing?
Make sure your contacts have opted into SMS
Text messaging is a very effective and direct line of communication with the customer. But there are many rules that you should consider when planning your SMS marketing strategy. The first and most important is receiving permission from your contacts to send them SMS messages.
SMS has an extremely high open rate, but it won’t help you if you send messages to people who don’t want them. Not to mention opt-in is required in most countries. So be mindful of the timing of your messages.
Unlike email, which is only checked a few times daily (at most), people open text messages almost immediately. This is great for urgent messages, but you don’t want to abuse this power by disturbing contacts at odd hours in the day.
Would you want to run out and use a coupon that just woke you up at 2 AM on a Wednesday? Didn’t think so. Some countries even have laws about when you can send marketing text messages
Include your company’s name in your messages.
When sending bulk SMS messages, most providers send them through a short code, which means your contacts won’t know it is coming from you. That is why you have to let your contacts know who is sending the message in the first place. For example, you don’t want to send a promotional coupon to customers and not have them know where to go.
Use SMS to complement the rest of your digital marketing strategy
The beauty of digital marketing is that there are so many channels that you can use to interact with your customers. These channels tie together to create a marketing communication system that enables businesses to build relationships with customers and leads on a grand scale.
SMS and email marketing are two very complementary channels. You can create campaigns through both media, using email for including more detailed information and SMS to communicate more time-sensitive or urgent information.
Conclusion
Customers respond more to materials addressed directly to them, so insert your subscribers’ names when you can. You can also target your customer with more relevant texts based on their preferences.
Like any marketing method to your customers, the more time you spend honing your skills, the more interaction you will illicit from your community. If you can beef up your response rates, SMS will help you learn more about where your company stands right now. Your analytics should help you with goal setting, understanding your business as it stands, and figuring out where you want it to be.
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