SMS marketing, or Message Marketing, has emerged as one of the most powerful e-commerce marketing tools for all brands. Gone are the days when SMS was just a means to send order tracking and transactional details, today the SMS marketing tool in a marketer’s toolbox is the simplest means of engaging with the customers.
The aim of harnessing the benefits of the simple SMS service is that it can turn your customers into fans and even promoters of your business. SMSs have a open rates of as high as 98% and clickthrough rates of 19% which is high for any message marketing tool. Other notable statistics that work in favor of SMS marketing campaigns are that it has an opt in rate of 96%, whereas email marketing as an opt-in rate of just 5%.
The success of any SMS marketing tool depends on how well you optimize it and the attention to finer details such as length of the messages, call to action, opt-in, and opt-out strategies and how well your marketing team understands the campaign insights and data.
Benefits of SMS marketing
Message marketing is a great way to reach a vast group of customers, and here are some reasons why you should work on optimizing the SMS marketing campaign:
- Better conversion rate (as high as 29%).
- Enhanced engagement (89% of people read text messages within 30 minutes of receiving them).
- Improved customer service as customers can be reached even where there is no internet service.
- Better brand awareness with holiday sales, flash sales, product launches, etc.
- Improved ROI with increased sales.
10 tips to get the full impact out of SMS marketing service
Here are some tips to help you get the right message out through SMS marketing tools:
Have a segmented and targeted subscriber list
The first step to any good marketing campaign is to know your customer better. This helps in optimizing the message marketing campaign is to create a well segmented and clean SMS subscriber list. A targeted list of subscribers who genuinely want to receive your message will help get you a higher engagement rate and reduced spam complaints.
Another advantage is that with a segmented audience, you can use SMS marketing tools to send highly personalized messages that will catch and hold the attention of the customer. There are many ways to use these elementary SMS marketing strategies, such as targeting repeat customers with upselling and cross selling and luring in new customers with enticing offers and promotions to expand your customer base. Other importing segmentations that you can consider are the current location, loyalty, intent, time zone, intent, etc.
Tip: Avoid the temptation of buying and SMS target lists from third party sellers. Such lists often trigger spam detection and reduce the effectiveness of the SMS marketing campaign.
Use keywords for opt-in and opt-out
The main goals of running a messaging marketing campaign are to increase your subscriber list in an organic way. The easy way to do it is to use keywords placed in the SMS in a catchy way. The most common keywords to use are “Join,” “Subscribe,” “Buy Now” etc. All the customer has to do is to click on the button, and things are done.
Using keyword SMS marketing, ensures that the customers understand what you are asking. This way, they don’t see your marketing campaign as intrusive. Don’t forget to run the A/B testing to see how the keywords will perform before launching the campaign in full. Another judicious use of keywords it to ensure that the customer understands the opt-out options too. This will help build their trust in your brand.
Tip: Keep the text short, succinct, and simple to remember. The keywords should be clearly defined.
Discounts, promotions, and sense of urgency
The biggest standout feature of SMS marketing is that it 1-1 with the customer and reaches many customers at the same time. Using an SMS marketing tool to reach your customers with exclusive deals and discounts. Exclusivity creates a sense of FOMO, or urgency, and people feel the need to take advantage. Time sensitive, limited time deals lead to immediate engagements and faster conversions.
Tip: Offers and discounts lead to more engagement, and customer feels special.
Personalize with automation
Automation has come as a boon for SMS marketing tools. It has made it easier to plan and execute SMS marketing campaigns with a high degree of personalization. Automation can segment your audience and identify the ‘need of the hour’ and send personalized messages addressing subscribers by name and tailor offers based on preferences, choices, and interactions. This way your message will resonate more with the recipient, and increasing the chances of conversions.
Tip: Use links in automated SMSs to encourage customers to engage with abandoned cart.
Clickable links and Call to Action
A link in your SMS to the customer is ask good as the CTA button on a landing page. It is a call to action to encourage the customer to visit the website, landing page, social media pages, or product launch landing page to drive in more sales and boost your sales revenue. It can also be about redeeming a coupon or visiting a store.
Tip: Make sure you have a compelling CTA within the character limit.
Make sure you include reminders and confirmations
Customers like to be kept engaged. Keeping the customers in loop with reminders, confirmations, appointments, and order details will help them feel valued. More than 60% of the customers have confirmed that they would rather get an update by text rather than emails or calls. Automated SMS marketing tools are a simple way to set up this type of transactional messages such as order updates, shipping details, booking confirmations, etc.
Track and Analyse performance
Every SMS marketing campaign is a gold mine of data that can greatly boost your business. Use the SMS marketing tools to monitor key metrics like open rates, conversions, click-through rates, etc. Use the message service to ask the customers for feedback, or give back a rating, or take some surveys as a part of your campaign. Plus, you can get a lots of data from the clickable links too. This will help you tweak your products and modify your marketing campaigns based on audience engagement, and campaign statistics data.
Tip: Use the data integration to identify segmentation opportunities and add the extra push to your marketing efforts.
Integrate SMS with other Channels such as MMS
SMSs become more attractive and attention grabbing if they see images or videos along with the messages. Integrate SMS with MMS and use the popular GIFs and images. Also using MMS increases the character count from 160 to 1000. Also, while you are at it, use multi-channel marketing such as email, social media, and push notifications for a cohesive marketing effort.
Tip: Add links to your YouTube videos, or landing pages to boost more customer engagement.
Timing will make the difference
SMS marketing is a type of personal marketing and even more than emails and social media ads. Therefore, your SMSs should reach the people at the time when they can read them. Sending late night messages or during the busy working hours is not going to earn your business any brownie points and even lead to more unsubscribe clicks.
Tip: Use A/B testing and segmentation strategies to reach the customers in their time zone in the perfect send time.
Keep it short and sweet
If you want the customers to click on the links, then keep the SMS short and within the character limit.
Tips: Read and refine the messages till you feel that the message is clear and easy to understand.
Optimizing your SMS marketing campaign performance will help you get more royal customers and even earn a good word of mouth. Focus on listening to your customers and data analysis to make SMS marketing more aligned with customer needs.
Read Also: 10 Reasons to Invest in Automation in the Future of Work
Written by – Ritika Khanna
Ritika Khanna is a senior product solution expert at EnRcloud and a part of the marketing consultancy and growth team. Helping brands to address their Engagement and Retention problem statement using New Age and AI Powered Marketing Automation Platforms. Apart from this, I am adaptive to any work environment and also a good team player.
