Business growth and sustainability are a big deal. It can be tough, but to help ease your way through, you need some solutions to help, and one of them is SMS Marketing.
What's in this guide?
What is SMS Marketing?
We can define SMS marketing as sending text messages to a list of subscribers who have registered their phone numbers and given their permission to receive SMS(Short Message Service) with commercial or transactional information.
Also called SMS campaigns, it is used for promotional or transactional objectives. Promotional messages are used to motivate the customer to buy: they can notify him about the availability of some products, about falling prices, etc.
On the other hand, transactional messages often notify customers about changes in order status: Received, Paid, Completed. These two types of messages make up SMS marketing.
Long forgotten by marketers, SMS marketing is making a strong comeback in the mobile marketing strategies of many companies around the world. Top Brands like Dominos, IKEA, Facebook, Tommy Hilfiger, Delta Airlines, Starbucks, etc make use of text messages to communicate with their customers.
So, if you’re a business owner or a Marketing Strategist, then you should pay attention to this old but yet-to-be-fully exploited marketing technique.
In this article, you’ll find a detailed explanation of the advantages of SMS campaigns for your business.
Also Read: How to become a Data Scientist
How exactly can SMS Marketing help your business?
Here are ways that SMS marketing an help your business:
1. High open rates
SMS marketing has the highest open rate among other marketing techniques. It has an above 90% open rate on average, within five seconds of receiving it.
That’s impressive compared to emails, which have a 20% open rate and take an average of 48 hours to open. Plus, it’s even easy for emails to get lost in a spam folder.
And in contrast with flyers, customers are more likely to throw away flyers they receive at malls or restaurants.
But with the rise in popularity of smartphones, texting is hardly going to be ignored. So choose SMS campaigns every time if you want your message to be seen by the highest percentage of your target audience.
2. Cost – Benefit (profitability)
Another key benefit of using a short messaging service is that it is inexpensive. It has a low cost to adopt and run, allowing you to quickly launch and run a campaign even on a tight budget.
Whereas when it comes to other forms of marketing like Facebook banner ads or outdoor advertising like newspaper ads and TV commercials, not every business can afford it.
Not all digital channels are the same. Especially when it comes to price. Take display ads, for example. Many times, you have to pay for each person who even sees your ad. Yes, even if they don’t click on it.
Email marketing is a bit more affordable. However, most pricing models make you pay more if you have a large contact list, even if you don’t email them all. Sometimes you also have to pay more for customer support.
But, businesses of all sizes can benefit from SMS. Most SMS platforms offer plans that come with unlimited contacts, unlimited SMS reception, and free and unlimited technical support and attention.
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3. Speed and flexibility
It only takes seconds for text messages to be delivered. It is said that it takes the average person 90 minutes to reply to an email. Whereas, in the case of a text message, 90 seconds is the average response time.
So, it is a great medium if you want to communicate something urgent. You can use it to drive traffic to your store on a clearance day before new merchandise.
Also, it allows you to send a batch of messages to a specific group or send thousands of SMS to an entire list. Plus, a great SMS marketing service will make it easy for you to customize your text message to your business needs.
People on average have their phones within an arm’s length at all times(most people, on average, check their cell phones once every 12 minutes). So, texting is the closest and fastest way you can get to your target audience virtually.
4. Reach a wide demographic
You can segment and personalize the sending of SMS according to purchasing behaviors, geographical location, consumption habits, preferences, age ranges, gender, and more that will depend in part on your contact database.
If you try to achieve the same personalization through other forms of marketing, it will cost you a fortune. However, in SMS campaigns, it can be done at no additional cost.
5. Boost Branding
SMS Marketing will allow your company to achieve brand presence. By sending text messages periodically, the recipient recognizes and associates a certain company with certain information.
For example, A private Hospital that sends text messages with useful health content to its customers will make them recognize the brand as a positive one and further strengthen their trust in the Hospital.
It is a well-known fact that it is easier to resell to existing customers than it is to gain a new customer. That’s why you can use mass text messaging services to target your current customers.
Also Read: 8 Benefits of web analytics for your online business
6. High conversions
There is a lot of research pointing to high conversion rates associated with SMS marketing.
SMS is characterized by being concise and with highly detailed content, that allows the sender to go to the point with the objective of the communication and what is wanted to say, this helps a lot to not digress in the content to be disclosed.
SMS marketing campaigns perform better than email marketing campaigns in terms of conversion. It is said that SMS conversion rates are 250% higher than email conversion rates.
7. Personalization
Text marketing makes it easy to personalize your messages. Despite being sent out in bulk, they have a more intimate and personal feel.
You can take advantage of your database; when sending SMS, you can use custom fields that automatically insert personalized information in messages with a single click.
As a result, you can classify all your contacts or audience with specific additional information such as dates, custom order numbers, names, and amounts, …
In addition, you can personalize the sender name by including your brand name instead of the standard number. Thanks to the personalization of SMS, you will considerably increase your reading rate.
8. Easy Adoption
While SMS marketing will continue to change and evolve (for the better!), one thing will never change. Text messages have been and will always be native to mobile phones. No downloads, no learning curves, no barriers to access.
Regardless of your audience, customers, and contacts, text messaging provides a convenient way to reach them.
Final Thoughts
Regardless of your budget and goals, SMS is a smart and easy addition to any marketer, business, or enterprise’s toolkit. From high ROI to versatile use cases, you can make it work for you and your business.
