SMS marketing for your business allows you to directly communicate news, promos, sales, and all other kinds of relevant updates to consumers. There is no need to download apps or have an internet connection to receive messages on their phones from you.
Consumers often get a stream of online alerts on their social media from brands they follow. These disruptions prompt them to disable notifications, so delivering your message straight into their mobile devices instead allows you to bypass marketing noise from socials, email marketing, and other digital campaigns.
Many modern-day marketing professionals underestimate the value of SMS marketing, which is unfortunate. Unlike rolling out mobile ads or email campaigns, text messaging allows companies to reach their customers personally without investing in hardware, media buys, and other resources.
In 2023, forecasts suggest that there will be 3.5 trillion SMS business messages sent, a huge increase from 2.5 trillion in 2019. This upward trend is a sign that SMS can outperform other marketing channels.
How to Maximize SMS Marketing
Are you excited to learn how to incorporate text message marketing into your growth strategy? Here’s how you can maximize SMS Marketing for your business.
Ensure legitimate engagement with opt-ins
The average person will check their phone up to 160 times per day. Over 98% of texts are opened, while only 20% of emails are read. The average clickthrough rate for pay-per-click (PPC) ads is only at 2%.
These figures reflect how SMS marketing makes it easier for brand messages to be seen by more users. But it does have a catch; since it is illegal and unethical for brands to send unsolicited texts, you must have a written opt-in from consumers to subscribe or unsubscribe to your messaging service.
The Federal Communications Commission and Telephone Consumer Protection Act provide strict guidelines and tips about SMS marketing for businesses. Use text messaging if your target audience is familiar with your brand. Most importantly, they must have willingly supplied you with their phone numbers; otherwise, you risk losing credibility, and they may flag your messages as spam.
This may be counterintuitive, but offering an accessible unsubscribe option makes consumers more willing to subscribe to your SMS campaigns from the get-go.
Treat it as a part of your overall marketing campaign
Companies should evaluate how SMS marketing will fit into their overall marketing campaign before diving into implementation. It is not a one-size-fits-all tactic and won’t apply to every marketing scenario.
Aside from using SMS marketing to grow your contact database with links for signing up on your website, you can use it to send updates on delivery status, a secondary message following specific app or program downloads, digital receipts, or exclusive deals.
It is also important to remember that SMS marketing will work only if your audience prefers this form of communication. Do a thorough evaluation of your business model to ensure that SMS marketing will complement your other mobile marketing channels. This way, every marketing dollar spent is counted, and ROI is guaranteed.
Keep it short and simple
Only 160 characters are allowed in SMS messaging. Structure your message and use simple, direct language with a killer call-to-action so you can deliver all vital information succinctly and grab attention quickly. Most importantly, make sure that your marketing text message adds value to their consumer experience.
For example, if you plan to send them a message about SMS coupons, start with a brief, exciting greeting, give details on your promotion, and let them know how to grab the deal. Perhaps add a link to your company website if appropriate to leverage interactive content and drive traffic. Avoid unnecessary details and get straight to the point.
Customizing your messages based on the links they’ve clicked, previous purchases, or preferences they’ve shared will add a personalized touch that can keep them engaged.
Get the timing right
Scheduling is crucial, so send those text messages when consumers are most engaged. Don’t make them feel like they are being bombarded at inappropriate hours so that your messages don’t seem intrusive.
Typical business hours are great for sending SMS marketing messages, preferably at noon. Most people are on lunch breaks and bound to look at their phones around this time. However, running a couple of tests within the appropriate hours will also help determine which time slots yield the best results.
Track your SMS campaigns
SMS marketing service providers will allow you to track things like the number of messages received by your target consumers, who click your links, response rates, and many more. Use this valuable data to gain insight into your campaign’s effectiveness, which will allow you to improve strategies in the future.
Make SMS Marketing Work for You
SMS marketing is a fast and easy way to build brand awareness and reach consumers directly. The key to making it work for your business lies in your ability to use it in appropriate marketing scenarios and making sure that whatever you send to your audience adds value to their experience with your brand.
Summary:
Bulk SMS marketing is not yet outdated. It remains one of the top ways for companies to build brand awareness, as it enables them to gain direct access to consumers without having to go online. This tactic allows you to send information like updates, news, promotions, discounts, transaction updates, and other relevant alerts and notifications in real-time.
Even when consumers are not connected to the internet, brands can still communicate with their target audience through SMS. This makes texting a very cost-efficient and effective tool for businesses. Unlike online digital marketing tactics like pay-per-click ads or email marketing, there is no need to shell out extra resources on labor, hardware, or other media spends with SMS marketing.
There are many ways to use text messaging to generate sales and drive business growth. You can use it to leverage interactive content on your website, encourage more engagement through various text offers like text coupons, and much more. Communicating these messages in a personalized manner also helps cultivate meaningful connections with consumers.
Easy as it may sound, SMS marketing isn’t as simple as firing up a few characters in a message to send in bulk to a massive list of contacts. Like any other marketing campaign, proper planning is essential to ensure that this tactic is executed well.
There are guidelines to be followed and some level of creativity needed to make this work. Find out how you can maximize SMS marketing for your business, and see how it can boost your ROI quickly.
