The benefits of SMS marketing

With the number of communication and social channels growing all the time, it’s getting harder to reach customers. SMS marketing is the best way to get in touch with them directly. With a 98% open rate, SMS is great for brands and marketers, and customers love how easy it is to use.

This article highlights the tried and tested ways to get the most out of customer engagement via SMS marketing.

SMS marketing?

SMS marketing is when a business sends out promotional text messages (SMS) to tell people about its services and products or share alerts and other time-sensitive information. Mass texting is another name for this type of digital marketing strategy. SMS marketing is a lot more effective than email marketing, but it works the same way.

How does the software for SMS marketing work?

SMS marketing software lets you send texts to a lot of people at once.  After you have acquired a database of numbers, contacts, and clients, who have all opted-in, you send a text with a message, link, instruction or shortcode which links them to something specific online.  You are now engaged with your contacts.

What can you do with SMS marketing?

SMS marketing has become an important element of any digital marketing program, and businesses can use it to attain a number of marketing goals. With SMS marketing, you can:

• Increase sales by informing customers about deals, discounts, and limited-time offers.
• Secure Channel Communication: Send a shortcode or validation access code that opens a secure line of communication.
• Build relationships by letting customers respond back and forth with you.
• Conduct surveys and ask questionnaires.
• Engage your audience by sending important news and new content quickly through mass texting.
• Hold SMS text-to-win contests or text-to-vote polls to get people excited.
• Collect leads by letting possible customers sign up for text messages or send in one-time
  questions.
• Use SMS to follow up with leads and send them the occasional text message to keep them interested.

Now that you know a few of the things a company can accomplish through SMS marketing let’s talk about why it’s a good idea.

Businesses that use mass text messaging are getting a lot out of it, from happier customers to higher conversion rates. Most text messages (about 98%) are read. And 90% of them are read in less than three minutes.

With digital marketing platforms such as social media, you could have the best marketing message board in the world, but algorithms only display your content to a small portion of your followers, and with email, you can spend a lot of effort on layout and copy that ends up in the spam folder or is just ignored. Because of this, texts are the best way to market something.  Texts are simple to send and almost always get read by the people you want to reach. 63% of business owners and marketers now plan to increase their text marketing spend over the next year.

How can SMS marketing help different types of businesses?

SMS marketing is a great way to reach a large number of people at the same time.
SMS marketing can be used to take reservations, send coupons, tell customers about weekly specials, and generate leads. Retailers wanting to increase sales use texts to keep customers informed of current offers, customer loyalty benefits and special discounts, all sent by SMS.

SMS marketing is used by gyms, hair salons, barbershops, garages and even fast food restaurants to keep them informed. Hotels and the travel industry use SMS to keep travellers up-to-date, informed, and in touch with their travel plans and documentation.
These are just some of the places where text messaging is used.

Here are some of the industries that use SMS marketing to their advantage.

Energy/utilities, Consumer Finance, Business Process Outsourcing, Third Sector/Charities, Retail, Banking and Finance, Automotive, Beauty and Hair, Call Centres, Competitions and Polls, e-commerce, Education, Emergency Services, Local Government, Healthcare, Human Resources,
Information Technology, Insurance, Manufacturing, Marketing, Real Estate, Restaurants and Bars, Sports and Fitness, Telecommunications and Logistics, Hotels and Accommodation, Social Housing, Car Dealerships, Cinema, Debt Collection, Event Management, Florists, Dentists, Hardware Monitoring, Travel Agencies, Property Management…..The list could go on…

How to tell how well SMS marketing works.

A common mistake is to think that SMS marketing can’t be tracked. In reality, you can easily tell if it generates a Return On Investment (ROI), just like with email.

Here are some common benchmarks for SMS marketing.

Rate of click-throughs (CTR).

Text messages are opened 98% of the time, and the average click-through rate (CTR) for links is 36%, while less than 3% of marketing emails are acknowledged.

Conversion rate.

This is the number of people who did something after clicking your link, like buying something. Once a text has been opened, 45% of users engage with the information they receive. Much higher than other forms of marketing communication.
How come it’s so high? We receive SMS via our mobile devices. Most of the time, we always have them with us and fully charged. The convenience of mobiles means we spend, on average, about three hours a day on our phones, which makes it less likely that SMS messaging will be missed..

Get your money back (ROI).

ROI shows whether or not SMS is making you money. Just look at the purchases made or changed because of SMS, subtract the cost of sending the messages, and divide the result by the total amount spent on SMS marketing.

SMS Marketing Best Practices: Do’s and Dont’s.

Text marketing is simple, especially if you know how to avoid common mistakes.

Here’s what you need to know for sure:

Even though you have a list of phone numbers, that doesn’t mean you can start texting them. Ensure you have consent. You must follow the rules set by the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) if you use SMS marketing. That means getting permission before sending even one message out the door.

Do make sure it is relevant.

Ensure the information, offer, and content is relevant to the person you are sending it to. The key here is to ensure the text they receive has a perceived value to them.

Don’t send too often.

Make good use of your texts. Recipients just ignore or start to filter their texts if they become too frequent, non-relevant or too repetitive. On the other hand, most brands probably only need to send one focused hi quality text per week.

Don’t be annoying.

Before sending a text, think about whether or not it sounds like a real person is on the other end. Customers are far more likely to respond or click on your message if it sounds genuine and written by a person.

However, if your text says something such as “Do you want cheap life insurance? Click HERE “, then customers are most likely to stop receiving your emails.

Marketing campaigns that use SMS.

If you use the tips above, you’ll be able to quickly build your list. The million-dollar question is now: what should you send? Here are the ideas we like best.

Using SMS to help customers.

SMS marketing can also be used for everyday customer service tasks. Build one-on-one relationships with customers and solve problems quickly and well by:

• Setting up and taking care of appointments to cut down on no-shows.
• Letting them know about possible problems with their order, such as a delivery delay.
• Answering their most important questions about your products or services.
• Texting also frees up your team’s time because they can talk to more than one person at once, which they can’t do when they make a call. After switching to SMS for customer service tasks, organisations can automate payment collection faster and close more deals.

In summary – SMS marketing.

SMS marketing is now used by a huge number of businesses. We’ve already seen that the list of industries and businesses is both long and wide. People are aware of the benefits, and it’s easy to use, but Even though SMS is very popular, it is still one of the least used ways to market. This has a lot of good things for businesses that are willing to try it. There’s no better time than now to get started.

Get started and discuss the benefits of SMS communication with Saascoms.