If you are constantly looking for new ways to market your company, you might have heard about SMS marketing. However, odds are that you still don’t know very much about it. While it’s still a relatively new concept, it has improved by leaps and bounds over recent years to become one of the most effective marketing tools out there. Sound intriguing? Well, it is! So here’s everything you need to know about SMS marketing and how it can work for your company:
What Is SMS Marketing?
The overall concept behind SMS marketing is pretty simple – contacting customers or potential customers with content related to your company via SMS text. In our digital world where print marketing is becoming less and less relevant, SMS marketing is a way to adapt to our changing world and reach your customers in the best way possible – through their phones! After all, our phones are always attached to our hips and we are constantly looking at them. text message marketing is a way to take advantage of this shift in our society.
How Does SMS Marketing Work?
SMS marketing works by contacting your customers via text with promotional material that is relevant to your company. Once a customer elects to opt-in to texts from your company, you are able to contact them directly about a variety of different things. Since people read texts more often than anything else on their mobile phones, it’s more likely that the person will immediately read the message that was sent to them. From the first message, they can either reply and receive automated responses and prompts or click on a link that was included in the message. The specifics behind what an SMS marketing campaign will look like are based on the function of the campaign and what you are trying to accomplish by utilizing it.
What Are the Different Functions of SMS Marketing?
There are many different functions of SMS marketing that you might want to use depending on your industry, company setup, and overall marketing goals. Not every single use of SMS marketing will work for every single company – nor does it need to! You just need to figure out what your priorities are when it comes to mobile marketing based on areas that you might be struggling with inside your sales department. and come up with a marketing strategy From there, you can then determine which types of SMS marketing will be best for your business and get to texting!
There are two main types of SMS marketing:
- Campaigns: Campaigns are the mass text messages that are used to communicate general information to a large number of customers. Campaigns are used to inform and promote things like sales, coupons, special offers, or events that you want everyone to know about.
- Transactional: Transactional messages, on the other hand, are sent to specific people based on a specific action that was done. For example, you could be sent a text message confirming a recent online order. Or you could be sent an SMS message informing you when that order ships along with a link to the tracking information. In any case, text messaging provides the customer with more personalized and direct contact than campaign texts do.
From there, there are several different things that you can do with SMS marketing. Here are some of the most useful and common functions that we see:
- Promotions, coupons, and announcements: SMS marketing is a great way to get the word out about various promotions, coupons, and general announcements. If you have a big sale going on, make sure that your best customers know about it by sending them a quick text. Increase brand loyalty by sending your customers special birthday coupons. Or inform your customers about new products, services, events, and locations based on general interests, past purchases, geographical location, etc.
- Abandoned cart follow-ups: Text marketing for abandoned carts is a great way to reach out to customers who may have put something in their carts but for whatever reason, didn’t complete the purchase. If you are in the e-commerce world, you know how often this happens and how frustrating it can be. And even though it might seem like a lot of work to individually reach out to every single customer that doesn’t complete a purchase – it doesn’t have to be! In fact, there are abandoned cart SMS marketing services out there, like Cart Text, that will literally do it for you with live representatives. All you have to do is install the Cart Text app to your Shopify account and they will be able to track and contact everyone that abandons their cart and then reach out about what happened to offer promotions like free shipping, a small discount, or even answer questions or concerns about the product in order to push them to complete the purchase.
- Information about orders: SMS marketing messages are also a great way to keep your customers updated about orders that they’ve placed. If they have chosen to opt-in to SMS marketing, then you can text their cell phone with an order confirmation after they have placed an order. You can also text them with an alert when their order ships and include pertinent information like the estimated delivery day, the carrier, and the tracking information so that they can remain up-to-date about their order and know when to expect it.
- Follow-up surveys: If you are looking for a way to get feedback from your customers, turn to SMS marketing! After a customer interacts with your business, you can send them a text message to their mobile device afterward to ask them about their experience. You can either have them complete the survey directly through text by having them respond with “yes” and “no” or numbers based on different questions, or you can send them a link to complete a survey online. All of this information can then be used to make beneficial changes to your business.
What Are the Benefits of SMS Marketing?
We have kind of touched on some of the benefits of SMS marketing already, but it’s still definitely worthwhile to go through a more detailed and comprehensive list of benefits so that you can get the big picture as it relates to SMS marketing. So here are some of the advantages of using SMS marketing in your business:
- SMS marketing has high engagement rates and open rates when compared to email marketing because people are constantly texting and it’s a quicker, shorter, and easier way to make contact
- SMS marketing offers customizable and interactive content to make it more likely that your customers will engage with your campaign
- SMS marketing can help you increase your brand awareness, foot traffic, customer base, customer loyalty, and sales – all at the same time!
- SMS marketing allows you to keep your customers in the loop with customized offers and promotions based on their favorite items, location, etc.
- SMS marketing makes it easy for people to forward on promotions and offers to their friends and family
- SMS marketing is easily trackable through a variety of different tools so that you can see which texts are effective and which aren’t – and make the necessary improvements from there
How Can You Use SMS Marketing Effectively?
All that being said, SMS marketing may sound quite simple. Send a text, reach a customer! However, it’s a little bit more nuanced than that and still requires a bit of finesse and research to get it right. The good news is that there are things you can do to make sure that you are using SMS marketing as effectively as possible, here are some tips:
- Make sure that your customers know who is texting them by always including your company name
- Make sure that your customers have opted into receiving texts from your company with their phone number
- Personalize the messages with names and other details
- Send out your messages at the right time of day and keep time zones in mind
- Don’t send out too many messages and risk turning off customers
- Don’t send out super long messages that people won’t want to read – make them as short as possible with strong calls to action
- Make sure that you only send out information that will be valuable to your customers
- Utilize technology and tools to help make your SMS marketing effective by working with experts, like Cart Text, who can help you get the most bang for your buck
- Finally, always make sure that you give your customers the option to opt-out of your SMS marketing campaigns if they want to
Now that you know about SMS marketing, it’s time to get out there and start texting! And even if you don’t know everything there is to know, you still have the possibility to consult with experts to make the process easier and effective. SMS marketing is a great way for companies to consistently engage with customers while increasing brand awareness, brand loyalty, and overall sales in the process. The results really do speak for themselves, however, you still need to make sure to follow best practices in order to keep your customers on board. With the right advice and content, you will be able to create top-notch SMS marketing campaigns in no time.
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