These days many businesses and marketers are using SMS marketing.
SMS Marketing: Benefits and Tips to Increase Your Sales
If you learn the basics of SMS marketing and the benefits you can improve your marketing strategies and increase sales.
1. What is SMS marketing? – Explanation
Short message service (SMS) marketing is a popular type of marketing where businesses send promotions to customers through text messages.
SMS marketing is also called text message marketing or text marketing.
SMS marketing is similar to email marketing. You can build an SMS subscriber list, send promotional messages to subscribers, and analyze SMS campaigns.
With SMS marketing, you can reach and influence your target audience pretty fast.
Stats show that 54% of customers say that they are interested in receiving text messages from businesses.
But only 11% of businesses are doing SMS marketing today.
That’s a customer communication gap that marketers and businesses can fix in 2022.
2. Types of SMS marketing – 2 Categories
There are transactional messages that help customers get info about an existing purchase and promotional messages that support an upcoming purchase.
Transactional SMS: Brands are using transactional SMS to deliver customer service. With transactional SMS, you send short messages to customers, usually about their orders. This includes messages about:
Receipts or invoices
Loyalty program points
Shipping and tracking information
Promotional SMS: The point is to build brand or product awareness that triggers a purchase.
With promotional SMS marketing, you can promote:
Product launches
Events
Discounts and coupons
valuable content, like tips and how-to guides
3. The Benefits of SMS Marketing
When you market yourself on Facebook, Instagram, or other social media platforms you don’t have control over your customer data.
SMS marketing is an owned channel where you have control over your messaging, information, and customer data.
SMS is fast. 60% of shoppers read SMS messages within five minutes. SMS marketing gives you an immediate connection with shoppers.
SMS has the best open rates. Only 20% of people who receive your emails will read them. Stats show that 98% of people read their text messages.
SMS gets more responses. Consumers reply to 45% of SMS marketing messages. Since SMS marketing is more conversational and casual, people tend to interact with it more than other channels.
4. SMS Marketing – Best Practices
Here are the SMS marketing best practices you need to know.
- Know the rules
SMS marketers should know about CAN-SPAM and TCPA to comply with U.S. federal regulations. This means:
Setting up confirmed opt-in
Following the FCC’s rules if you’re running a contest
Allowing people to unsubscribe by responding with “STOP”
Using a compliant SMS marketing platform will help you by taking care of some of the rules (like automatic unsubscribe and automatic opt-in confirmation messages.
- Send a welcome text
In SMS marketing it’s important to welcome new subscribers with a short text message that makes it clear what to expect. This sets expectations and reduces complaints.
The best practice is to use the welcome message to let the subscriber know what type of content they’ll receive, how frequently, and that they can unsubscribe at any time.
- Timing and Metrics
Send one message a week to start and see how your audience responds. Watch the metrics like unsubscribes and link clicks and other engagement signals to test your optimal messaging frequency.
It’s also important to watch when you’re texting customers.
You can send a text message at a certain time of day, either based on your time zone or your recipients’ time zone.
Drip campaigns, or automated SMS message sequences, can be set to send within certain hours of the day and days of the week.
Don’t message your subscribers in the middle of the night!
- Provide Value
Don’t send SMS messages just for the sake of it: Share something valuable with your subscribers.
This is the key to keeping people on your list for the long term. Instead of sending overly promotional or spammy messaging, entice subscribers with:
Exclusive, SMS-only deals
Surprise coupons
Links to how-to videos
Influencer collaborations
Last Tip
SMS marketing is much easier if you use a trusted platform. Influencers, marketers, and brands automate their SMS marketing to build relationships and increase sales.
SMS marketing it’s more effective than other marketing strategies, but you need to know how to use it successfully.
Pro Tip
How To Improve Your Social Media Marketing and SEO