For a marketing campaign to be successful, it’s crucial to be able to target customers with the right message at the right time. An essential part of effective multi-channel marketing is SMS. In the modern world, people are always on the move and on their mobile devices. If you’d like to improve your use of SMS marketing, here are some ways you can do it.
Contents
To Support Your Social, Email, and Paid Campaigns in Real Time
On average, a person will check their phone every 12 minutes. Add that up over the course of a day and that’s almost 80 times. No wonder SMS marketing is one of the most direct and immediate channels, if you want to get ahead with your customers. The open rate is an amazing 98% and compared with other channels, it has a 5x click rate.
An SMS campaign will do very well on its own, but it can also be used to enhance and support other marketing channels. An increasing number of consumers now expect to receive offers and communications via text messaging.
To Recover Lost Sales
If you’re not using text message marketing, you’re missing out on a fantastic opportunity to connect with your customers, especially when it comes to cart abandonment. An abandoned cart and checkout strategy is fundamental to solving the issue.
One route to take is to text a message to customers who have abandoned their order and make agents available to answer questions and drive a conversion. Hopefully, the end result is for the customer to reinstate their purchase.
To Better Understand Your Customers
An SMS message is a very personal form of communication. There’s also an added bonus in that the customer can text right back. Back and forth conversations via SMS can be used to learn about your customers and their purchasing behaviour.
Tracking SMS conversations allows you to pinpoint commonly asked questions and concerns. Both of which could be preventing the customer from making a purchase.
To Increase Engagement
SMS messaging is not considered as invasive as you might think. It’s a very effective way of directly building 1:1 relationships and building your customers’ trust. You can use SMS messages to do a variety of things. For example:
- Letting them know of your latest offers
- Reminding them you have a sale coming up
- Sending quick notifications
Most customers appreciate SMS messages because it makes them feel special. When they reach back to you and receive a response from a real human it increases the effectiveness of this marketing strategy even further. Almost all text messages received by people are read which means it’s highly likely your customers are going to read those that you send.
The Benefits of Using SMS in Your Marketing Campaigns
Your audience is interested and engaged: Customers have to give their permission if you want to send them lots of texts which means it’s almost guaranteed your SMS will be read within a few minutes.
Higher open and click-through rates: Research has shown that texting is one of the most frequently used apps on smartphones. A text almost never gets ignored. The average click-through rate is also high.
Customers can save and reference texts: It’s important that any coupons or special offers are instantly available and for the customer to be able to keep them close and handy. Text messages are saved on a customers phone so they’re able to have them with them all the time.
Customizable and highly targeted: SMS campaigns can be made highly personal. It’s not all about sending out as many generic messages as possible.
Text Marketing Campaigns Can be Automated: If you’re running several marketing channels at the same time it’s easy to get bogged down. It’s possible to automate many of the channels including SMS texts.
Text message marketing has become an increasingly important channel for the forward thinking business owner. It can be used in a variety of ways, all of which engage with customers throughout the purchasing funnel.