People have been using SMS marketing techniques for their business for years. But in recent years, SMS technology has changed a lot. Such changes help consumers to prefer their brand. Combined with advances in marketing software, it is not surprising that with various channels such as SMS, omnivorous campaigns have become a gold standard in e-commerce marketing.
The value of SMS marketing lies in its form and proximity to consumers. Not only are mobile phones always at arm's length, but text messages are also short and easy to use. This includes the fact that the target audience of the e-commerce business is mostly digital natives - grown up with Jenny Ard and millennial mobile phones. This makes SMS the perfect complement to email, a long-established medium for digital marketing. This article will give you the ultimate guide to SMS marketing.
Ultimate Guide to SMS Marketing in 202
- What is SMS marketing?
- Why choose SMS marketing?
- How your business can use SMS marketing?
- How to build your database?
- How to Structure your SMS message?
- When to send your SMS?
- How to Automate your SMS marketing?
- How to measure the success of your campaign?
What is SMS marketing?
On the other hand, transactional messages are those messages in SMS marketing that are many-to-one. SMS marketing proves to be very useful when you want to communicate time-sensitive updates, alerts, and offers to all those people who are receiving these messages through your business. SMS marketing is one of the most legal processes of marketing that is regulated under the law of the US. If you have a small business and you want so many customers to approach you, then SMS marketing is the best option for this purpose, you will approach your customers through SMS marketing. If they find it useful, they will reach back to you for further dealing.
Most of the people these days are attached to their phones. This is the reason that why SMS marketing is a very effective process to approach the customers. You can use SMS marketing to promote your business only when you are doing it correctly. It is very interesting to know that the SMS marketing process works through text messages which are sent from shortcodes and not from a full telephone number. The shortcodes can be associated with multiple or a single sender. SMS marketing shortcodes consist of 5-6 digits.
The most important thing in SMS marketing is that you should always include the name of your company while sending text messages for marketing purposes. It is because so many countries do not allow altering of sender’s information. SMS marketing works for different purposes but if you have a short-term eCommerce or retail business, then SMS marketing can be the best option for you. Those organizations having 100+ employees, use SMS marketing to grow the business of the organization. SMS marketing can be helpful in creating a large communication network across various campaigns.
Why choose SMS marketing?
SMS marketing is one of the most effective and useful processes of marketing to grow your business. It is effective due to so many reasons. A few of the reasons are describes as under :
- SMS marketing is such a great process for emerging markets. People mostly don’t reach out to new and small businesses due to so many reasons. One of those reasons is a lack of awareness. SMS marketing gives you awareness about emerging businesses and markets. You do have to approach each and every customer by meeting them physically. Rather you can achieve it by a simple SMS marketing process with very low efforts. Emerging businesses can take a lot of help through SMS marketing by spreading awareness among people through their effective SMS.
- One of the biggest advantages of SMS marketing is the ubiquity of smartphones. As 91% of people have smartphones wherever they go. People spend most of their time with smartphones while texting and calling with their friends, families, and loved ones. SMS marketing proves to be very effective because people give attention to SMS when they receive it through any organization. It becomes easier to approach the customers through SMS marketing.
- SMS marketing is very effective to choose because if you want to inform other people instantly, then SMS marketing is the best option. It terminates the email marketing loop as email consists of long paragraphs. On the other hand, SMS marketing works through short message services. It is easier to use SMS marketing.
- SMS marketing has a higher engagement rate. It has an engagement rate of 90% of SMS messages that are read within 3 minutes of receiving. You are consistently reaching out to your customers and having contact with them. Due to their higher engagement rate, it becomes easier to manage, track and update your business alerts.
- SMS marketing is a very simple process to reach your customers within a very short period of time. You can easily target a large number of customers through this simple trick of SMS marketing. All you need to do is to write the SMS about the services that you are intending to provide in a much better way. If you are doing this simple process in the correct format, you can easily achieve success in your business targets.
How your business can use SMS marketing?
SMS marketing is a process that is widely used by businesses due to its larger benefits. Actually, SMS marketing is the easiest way for the purpose of business communication. There was a time when SMS was only used for personal purposes but now SMS is used for promoting businesses. Your business can easily use SMS marketing in so many ways.
Any business can use SMS marketing for growing its progress by sending out an irresistible offer for its customers. For example, there are so many businesses that send their customers an offer of 70% off on their first order. When they send SMS related to 70% off on their best products, it becomes difficult for the customers to resist them. In this way, they reach out to their customers and get a positive response from them. Any business can increase its sales by sending such offers to its subscribers. You should keep in mind that you only have to send promotional messages to your subscribers.
SMS marketing helps businesses in the promotion of their new products. Businesses can use the simple strategy of SMS marketing to spread awareness among people about their new products. Even if there are no new products but you are offering new services through your business, you can also use SMS marketing to make people aware of your new services.
Your business can also use SMS marketing to get feedback from your customers. If you sell any product to your customers and now you want to know if they had a good or bad experience through your product, you can achieve it through SMS marketing. You can ask targeted questions from your customers to give you proper feedback related to your products.
You can also use SMS marketing to give reminders about your business events. If you want to remind your customers about any promotional event of your business, you can achieve it through SMS marketing. You can even send them reminders about those promotional events that will take place on social media platforms. Most people are living a busy life these days, therefore, SMS marketing can be a much better and effective way to make those people more interested in your business.
How to build your database?
Businesses across the globe are utilizing the power of text SMS marketing to get customer engagement, increase sales and generate leads. They are also using SMS marketing to build the brand loyalty of their business. The reason for using SMS marketing is pretty simple: Smartphones have become an important part of our everyday lives. It has been observed that people check their mobile after every 12 minutes on average. Basically, there are so many ways to built a database in SMS marketing to reach out to your customers.
Ask your customer about the contact details at the point of sale. Doing so will help you in collecting the contacts of your customer’s contact details. If you will promote any business-related activity in the future, you will easily reach out to those customers. There are so many businesses that ask their customers to enter their email addresses, mobile numbers with their names at the point of sale. This process helps them in making a database for their business. This is one of the easiest processes to create a database but this process also has so many advantages. Most of the customers don’t want to share their personal info at the point of sale. Another disadvantage is that so many customers are not cooperative. They feel like they are being irritated for no reason.
Another way of creating a database for SMS marketing purposes is to engage with your customers by using text messages. One of the biggest advantages of text messaging is that it consists of freedom and versatility. You can increase the engagement with your customers in so many ways. You can use coupons for this purpose. This is one of the most useful tricks to keep your customers engaged. Another way of engaging your customers is to invite them for opinion polls about your business services and products.
Your business website can also be very helpful in building a database of your customers. You can reach out to your current and potential customers through the help of a website. There may be so many customers that will not purchase from your website but if you create an option “click to join”, it will automatically create a database of your customers. It works in a way that it will request the customer to enter its email address, names, and numbers on the website.
How to Structure your SMS message?
SMS Marketing can be helpful only when the SMS is written in a perfect way. If you are not able to deliver the message in a correct way, it will not give you any benefit in return. Therefore, it is necessary to structure your message in the correct format. In order to structure your SMS for Marketing purposes, you should keep few things in mind.
First of all, you have to write a strong headline in your SMS to grab the attention of the readers. If you are successfully capable of grabbing the attention of your customers, it will increase the engagement rate of customers in your business.
The second most important thing is that you should keep the content in your SMS to be simple. Having simple content will attract more customers because there will be no complications in reading your SMS for marketing purposes. There will be more clarity and understanding of the message that you want to be delivered to your customers. Having a better understanding of SMS will promote your business products and services more effectively.
You should include a call to action in your SMS. This will result in a response back from the customers. Having an option of call to action in your SMS will also increase the engagement rate of customers in your business. When you will ask about something from your customers, they will automatically respond back to you.
When to send your SMS?
It is very surprising to know that SMS marketing can generate fantastic results for various businesses. SMS marketing can increase the progress and growth of a business but it depends upon so many factors. A correct format is what can result in a better response from customers. If customers can respond better, then it can also increase the growth and productivity of the businesses. Although the format factor can play an important role to achieve better SMS marketing among customers still there is something else that should be kept in mind. It is the timing of sending SMS Marketing messages that also matters the most.
If you send the SMS Marketing messages at the right time, it can result in better perform otherwise it may not give good progress in return. Since the business sector is highly competitive in terms of both discounting techniques and substitute products, sending out various campaigns at peak times is actually very crucial for success. According to research performed by experts, it has been concluded that the optimal time for sending SMS Marketing messages is between 3 pm to 7 pm on Sundays or 10 am to 1 pm on Saturdays. This is due to the fact that the customers are more relaxed during the weekend. Most of the customers are on leave during weekends.
Therefore, they may spend more time using their mobile phones. During this time if they will get any SMS Marketing Messages, it will grab their attention. Moreover, it has been observed that customers usually spend their money at the end of the week as compared to during the weekdays. Therefore, if they will get any good offer from any Business or Organization through SMS Marketing messages, there are 90% chances that they take action and buy the products. Therefore, sending SMS Marketing messages during weekends is more effective and productive as compared to the weekdays. Sending SMS Marketing messages during weekends can also increase the sale of businesses.
How to Automate your SMS marketing?
Automating SMS Marketing can also lead to a higher progress rate for businesses. Automating your SMS Marketing messages can save a lot of time. Automation of SMS actually refers to pre-scheduling the sending time and date of the messages. You can save your time by automating your messages for SMS Marketing purposes. Once the automation is done, the SMS marketing messages will be sent automatically to the targeted customers.
Therefore performing automation, you have to pre-define your schedule of SMS. Automation has a larger scope in marketing. There are so many large businesses that prefer to automate messages for SMS marketing purposes in order to save their time. Automation of SMS Marketing messages also works when any specific criteria are triggered. These specific criteria are set y the companies or organizations for their businesses.
For example, if a person places an order at any business website, then he may get an SMS regarding the confirmation of his order. This occurs because such messages are automated. The process of SMS automation is very simple. You only need to write the text that you want to send to targeted customers. After that, you will select a list of customers that will be your target of SMS Marketing. The last step is selecting the final date of the SMS marketing message.
This date will be the future date on which your SMS will be sent automatically. Sending automated SMS Marketing messages will not only save your time but will also simplify the workflow of your business. You can also grow your business by opt-in SMS Marketing. You can use shortcodes to run opt-in campaigns through SMS marketing. You can use automated SMS marketing to launch competition events regarding your business.
You can also use it to offer vouchers and to invite your customers to brand loyalty. On the other hand, if you are a busy person and get business messages at random timing of the day, you can create an automated reply to those customers so that you can easily manage your business messages through SMS marketing even when you are not around to respond quickly on time.
How to measure the success of your campaign?
You can measure the success of your campaign in SMS marketing by so many factors. Few of those factors are described here. First of all, the most important factor that can tell you about the success and effectiveness of your campaign, is the click-through rate. It is actually the rate of clicking on the link that you sent to your customers through SMS marketing messages. If your click-through rater is high, it means that your campaign is being successfully effective.
The second most important factor is the delivery rate. It is actually the rate that corresponds to the delivery of total SMS marketing messages that reach the inbox of customers. Having a higher delivery rate means your campaign has a higher success rate. Another factor that can play an important role in measuring the success of your SMS marketing campaign, is the reply late. It is about how many customers are replying to your messages when they get SMS marketing messages about your business. Having a good reply late also leads to the effectiveness and success of your campaign.
There is a factor known as conversion rate that plays an important part in the success of your campaign. It means that how many customers took action when the message of SMS marketing delivers to them. The conversion rate depends upon the click-through rate. When any person clicks on the link that you provided on the SMS marketing messages, there are 90% chances that they get action through the link. It will increase your conversion rate of the business. Another factor to measure the success of your campaign in SMS Marketing is the List growth rate.
List growth rate refers to the number of subscribers that you will grow with the passage of time. If your list growth rate is higher, it means that your SMS marketing campaign is successfully implemented. You can also measure the success of your campaign by acquisition cost. It actually refers to the amount of money that you will spend to win the right customer for your brand or business. If you are successful in winning the right customer, it will increase the effectiveness of your SMS marketing campaign.
Higher acquisition costs refer to so many different things. You have to target the right customers otherwise you will have to face expensive costs to win more and more customers for your business. You must have to segment the list for this purpose. If you are not able to do this, you may be targeting the wrong customers. This will not give any productivity to your business. It will also increase the acquisition costs in your business.
Having a normal acquisition cost will increase the success of your business. You should know the acquisition cost of your business so that you can measure the effectiveness and success of your business through SMS marketing messages. Campaign ROI is also helpful in measuring the success of your campaign. It is actually the overall return that you will get after the investment from your campaign in SMS marketing messages.
Final Thoughts
In today's world of SMS marketing, SMS marketing is the best way to promote a business or product. I hope that these Ultimate Guides that I have described in this article have proved to be better for you. If this article of mine benefits you, you will definitely share it with your friends on social media.
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