How To Conduct SMS Marketing Effectively

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SMS marketing is another great means to reach out to your prospective customers and keep them updated about your products and services. In simple terms, it’s using mobile phone text messages to market to and communicate with your consumers.

When compared to the traditional marketing methods, SMS marketing is inexpensive since it doesn’t involve printing or mailing; it only uses the power of your cell phone. However, you’ll have to maintain good relationships with your customers to ensure that they keep coming back to your business.

Like ringless voicemail, it’s easy to get started with SMS marketing campaigns. All you need is an account with one of the many providers and a cell phone capable of receiving text messages. This is a great way to keep track of your consumers’ buying habits. You may also use this information to improve on the services that you offer in order to drive up your profits.

Once you’ve set up your SMS marketing campaign, you’ll be able to send promotional SMS messages anytime to any mobile number in your list. The good thing about this form of marketing is that you can send messages to many potential customers quickly and easily, which is, sometimes, referred to as mass text messaging.

If you want to do SMS marketing effectively, below are some of the things you should know.

Keep It Legal

The real challenge in SMS marketing is keeping the permission you’ve earned. If possible, keep everything legal by starting off with disclosure and telling your customers what type of messages they can expect from you.

Another thing to note is to never abuse the permission given to you. Take note that SMS is immediate, intimate, and overt in getting the attention of your customers. Use your SMS marketing campaign for critical and time-sensitive information. Overusing this may result in losing some of your customers. With that in mind, you must provide some options for your customers to unsubscribe or opt out.

Communication via SMS is like email marketing and should adhere to the laws and regulations. So, to get started with SMS marketing, make sure that you have a clear opt-out or unsubscribe function, like reply with the word ‘STOP’ to unsubscribe, consent from the recipient, and your accurate identification.

Another thing to note is to never send a lot of text messages in a day or even in a week. It’s best to send a text message once a week and make sure that it’s relevant to your business.

Know Your Customers

Whether you want to expand your business online or grow your business, you should know your customers if you want your SMS marketing efforts to be effective.

To measure the success rate of your messages, you need to use a customer relationship management (CRM) app. This will help you analyze the location-based demographics and purchase history, which may allow you to send the right text messages to the right group of customers.

For example, if you’re in the cosmetics industry, never send an anti-wrinkle cream coupon to people who are in their 20s. This is why segmenting your customers for targeted promotions may come in handy, which will help you send bulk messages for general promotions and sales that anyone may take advantage of.

Use CTA Or Call-To-Action Buttons

CTAs may help you boost your customer engagement using your SMS. So, if you want your customers to value the messages you send, make sure to use effective CTAs, like the following:

  • Buy Now – It’s a perfect CTA for targeted messages. If you know that your customer purchases a particular product, you may send text messages promoting that product with a Buy Now option to make it more convenient for them to purchase.
  • Click Here – There are times when might not have enough space in your messages to include all information that your customers might need. If you’re planning to host an event and you want to include a link to a video or map about that, or you like to add a link to your website where there’s more information, a Click Here CTA would be a good idea.
  • Text-To-Vote – This CTA can help you engage your customers in polling to know how your business is doing in terms of product quality, service, prices, and more.
  • Text-To-Win – Most of your customers might be interested to win a gift or a special prize from your business. Asking them to text to enter the contest may help boost your customer engagement rates. If you’re hosting an event or offering sales, a Text-To-Win campaign is an effective way of reminding customers of your existence and increasing your sales and traffic continuously.

Timing Is Everything

You have to keep in mind that SMS marketing revolves around immediacy. It takes people a few minutes to open their text messages. The responses to events, sales, and promotions of your clients are effective when they’re actually a last-minute impulse.

If you’re having an event for store opening on a Saturday night, send text messages on Saturday afternoon. If you have some dinner promotions at your restaurant, send the messages before the working hours end, not in the early morning. You should be careful not to send messages late at night or early morning because the most acceptable hours are between 8 in the morning to 9 in the evening.

Take your SMS timing a step further by finding the best time to send messages to a particular individual based on their previous interactions with your texts. It goes beyond demographics and region and personalizes your marketing to optimize the results.

Pay Attention To Your Best Clients

If you want to make your SMS marketing efforts pay off, you should focus on your company’s best customers. Basically, they’re the ones who are loyal, give feedback, purchase from you on a regular basis, and spread the word about your business to other people.

A good strategy is to know such customers and pay extra attention to them. They’re the ones who love and know your brand, so make sure to use their knowledge to your advantage and don’t forget to send them in-depth polling questions than sending to your bulk clients. Moreover, they’re the VIP of your company, so treat them right and use the power of SMS marketing to reward them with extra benefits and special offers.

Write Short But Clear Messages

You should always be on point when it comes to SMS marketing since you only have a total of 160 characters to express what you want to say to your customers. If possible, writing a message within that limit or doing it in less can also be a great idea. Just see to it that your message is clear and accurate. You must also avoid writing all caps, as well as using emoticons and abbreviations.

Never use an open-ended message. A good example of it is when you invite your customers to a sale, but you haven’t provided any information when the sale would end. The client will also have no idea if it’s for a month or day. By providing a specific schedule of your sale or leaving an expiration date for coupons, your customers will more likely take action since you’ve provided them enough incentives and information.

Be Honest And Open

When customers opt-in to get text messages from your business, it’s crucial that you tell them what types of materials you’ll be sending often.

For example, if you’ll send marketing messages about new products, sales, and discounts, you should make it clear. It ensures that your text messages will be sent to those who are interested. It’ll also provide you a chance to gain a high ROI and establish a positive relationship with your customers, instead of being perceived as intrusive or annoying.

Link To Some Channels

SMS messages have an excellent click-through rate, making SMS a good platform to improve your other channels. You may direct traffic to your social media accounts, landing pages, and websites by simply including links to your text. To ensure that your message remains under the character limit, it would be best to use a tool to shorten your links to keep everything in a concise manner.

A lot of businesses struggle to achieve enough open rates for emails, but sending reminders via SMS to your customers may encourage them to check their emails. With this, it can have a positive impact on your email open rates.

Provide Significant And Exclusive Value To Your Customers

Text messaging is a bit intimate and the worst thing you can do is to spam your subscribers with low-value offers and annoying messages. An SMS marketing campaign must provide high-value content and deep discount more than you do in other marketing channels.

Always treat your subscribers on SMS as VIPs and provide them access to sales before your other customers. If possible, provide content not available to your customers and send them exclusive event invitations. Offering exclusivity may reduce the rate of unsubscribes and reward others who will join.

Sending shareable and entertaining content via SMS may also help humanize your brand. Quizzes, games, access to conversations, and some interactive contents endear you to your target audience, while giving you crucial customer insights.

Optimize Your SMS Marketing Campaigns

As with any kind of marketing campaigns, you must strive to improve. To get the most ROI and compile learnings for your campaigns in the future, you must optimize your SMS marketing campaigns through the following:

  • Offer Unique Promo Codes – Send various promo codes to different segments so you may see which group does better.
  • A/B Testing – Test various aspects of SMS messages by sending a few versions to two groups. When your campaigns are over, know which ones performed better. To get better and precise results, change one attribute only.

Consider Personalizing Your SMS Marketing Campaigns

While the main goal is to ensure that your SMS marketing campaigns are relevant, it’s better when they’re customized or personalized. So, see to it that you send offers that are relevant based on your customers’ previous purchases or respective locations. Doing so helps maintain and build the relationships you currently have with your customers. It may even take your customer relationships to a whole new level since some people appreciate businesses who know what their needs or preferences are based on what they’ve purchased before.

You can achieve this by thinking when your customers would get their SMS. Take note that some have their SMS notifications enabled on their devices, which means that sending text messages at 1 am may result in customers getting annoyed with your text messages. So, make sure to keep good timing in mind and send your text messages on a schedule.

Don’t Forget To Track SMS Marketing’s Performance

Calculating some key performance indicators can provide insights into the success of your campaigns and where to make some adjustments for future campaigns. To know whether or not your efforts are paying off, consider the following:

  • List Growth – It measures how great you are in keeping your subscribers on your list.
  • Opt-In Rate – This is the number of subscribers you get daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.
  • Opt-Out Rate – It measures those who unsubscribe for a specific period of time.
  • 24-Hour Opt-Out Rate – This refers to the number of people who unsubscribed from your campaigns within a day versus the people who get the campaign. If this rate is high, you might not be giving enough value in your message.
  • Click-Through Rate – It’s only applicable if your campaign has a link. It’s the number of individuals who clicked versus the number of individuals to whom you sent your campaigns.
  • Redemption Rate – It’s the number of those who redeemed your offering over the number of individuals who got your campaign. This KPI allows you to gauge your offer’s attractiveness.

Conclusion

There are many advantages to SMS marketing as compared to other forms of advertising. Aside from the fact that it’s cheaper than traditional marketing campaigns, you’ll also be able to keep good relationships with your consumers. You’ll be able to respond to any questions or inquiries from your customers with a personal touch. With this, your customers may get to know more about your business better if you keep in touch with them on a regular basis.

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