SMS Marketing is making use of text messages to send promotional campaigns or transactional texts for the sake of marketing. These messages are usually designed to provide time-sensitive communication, updates, and alerts to people who have agreed to receive these messages from your business.
It’s no secret that building relationships with customers take work and time as well. If you want to reach your customers, you can’t wait for them to come to you. You have to be diligent and go where you are. The best and effective thing that you can do is to contact them through texts messages so that they would know about you.
As people become more attached to their phones, texting becomes a direct line of communication. This has made text messaging, or SMS marketing, one of the most effective ways to communicate with customers when done in the right way.
Strategies for SMS Marketing
Following are some of the rules and regulations and some strategies that you can follow to build up your business of SMS Marketing:
Make sure your customers have opted into SMS
Texting is a very effective and efficient way to communicate with a customer. However, there are many rules to consider when planning your SMS marketing strategy. First and foremost, get permission from your contacts to send them SMS messages. Because if you don’t get the permission, people might find it offensive and that would be a loss for you.
SMS has a very high level of unlocking, but this will not help you when sending messages to people who do not want it. Not to mention that entry is a requirement for most countries. As it is the first step to go for this business, it is a very crucial step and you can’t miss it while making your plans about your business.
Be careful about the timing of texts
Unlike email, which is only checked a few times daily or we can say that people do not open it often in a day, people open text messages almost instantly. This is good for emergency messages, but you don’t want to abuse this power by interrupting the audience at unusual times of the day. Timing is all you need for this business.
Imagine that you are sleeping and your sleep is interrupted by the noise of your mobile phone. Would you like to expire and use the coupon that just woke you up at 2 AM at the time you fell asleep on your holiday? None of us would consider it important or sometimes people often block that specific number in fury.
Some countries even have laws on when to send text marketing messages. For instance, France does not allow SMS marketing on Sundays, holidays, or any time after 10 PM. This rule was designed so that their people do not get disturbed at any random time in their day when they are busy doing something else or relaxing.
Always use your company name in messages
When you send bulk SMS messages, most providers send them with a short code, which means your contacts won’t know it’s from you. This is why you should let your contacts know who is sending the message in the first place. This is the rule that you should follow if you don’t want to offend your customers.
You would not like the idea that you send messages to your customers without letting them know about your company name and they like that product or anything that you are suggesting but as they don’t know about you or your company they would just go to the market and buy it from anywhere else.
This is the main reason that you must mention your company’s name so that if they like or want to buy something by getting inspired by your messages then they should know about the right company to buy their desired product.
Describe your strategy by using text
The beauty of digital marketing is that there are many channels you can use to communicate with your customers. All of these channels come together to form a marketing communications system that allows businesses to build customer relationships and lead on a large scale.
If you are interested in digital marketing of any kind, you must know the importance of the relationship between you and your customers as they are the stakeholders and are the ones who would promote or buy your product. In any business, your relationship with your customers defines the worth of your work.
SMS and email marketing are two of the most compatible channels. You can create campaigns on both channels, using email to enter detailed information and SMS to communicate sensitive or urgent information.
Summary : Business messaging is a short messaging service (SMS) that allows two conversations between business employees and customers. When enabled, the business feature of text messaging gives customers hope for easy access to or respond to business directly from their text-enabled phone.
Benefits of SMS Marketing
There are many additional benefits of using SMS Marketing throughout the company. These are still in use and are ignored by many businesses. Some of them are as follows:
Helps in building loyal customers
SMS Marketing is a great channel for communicating and building loyal customers. Give your customers promotions and provide information about your business if you feel the need. This makes your customers or clients feel appreciated by keeping them more focused on your business. The more you give, the more it comes back.
Generate word of mouth
Use SMS to not only engage your existing customers but also to promote new business in your company. If you have something of value to offer your customers, they will spread the word to family, friends, and colleagues. Word of mouth is a powerful tool and SMS encourages this with instant communication.
Improve communication
Communication is the key to building lasting relationships. SMS Marketing can be a huge benefit if you build on this relationship. SMS is a personal message from you to your audience. Let them go into private sales, a simple post-buy thank you a message, inform them of any sale or offer, when their delivery is ready, the list goes on. SMS Marketing is an easy, fast and reliable way to communicate with all your customers.
Fast and effective
SMS Marketing allows you to reach a large number of people at once. Text Messaging is a fast marketing tool, which brings your message into the hands of the right audience if you want it. Customers keep their cell phones in hand, making it easier for them to convey your message.
Opt-in-option
Building your website in the right way is very important, not only for Data Protection purposes but also by asking your customers to sign up to hear about you, you have already started the marketing process. These Opt-in are existing or potential customers who want to hear from you, do not embarrass them.
Opt-out option
Throughout the SMS campaign, your business should always give customers the opportunity to unsubscribe from other text messages. The Data Protection Act states that if you are to communicate with someone in writing, they must be able to unsubscribe from the text.
Cadoo can provide you with a complete product that will quickly update your database and keep you compliant. The great advantage of this is, you will not be sending unwanted documents to those who are not interested.
Cost effective
SMS Marketing is an inexpensive way to communicate compared to traditional marketing. It will help your business to tighten its budget belts. Many companies pay for public and private expenses on a daily basis by sending text messages instead of sending letters or brochures, this is always great in our area too.
Integrate into your marketing campaigns
The biggest benefit of SMS Marketing is the power it has when you incorporate it into any of your marketing campaigns. It is well known that social media and traditional media are not always the most effective way to reach your customers on time, simply combine SMS with these other marketing methods and direct a message to your customers, making sure they know what to offer them.
Straight to the main point
With only 160 characters allowed when sending a text message this ensures your message is clear and concise. Reaching a point is important, telling customers exactly what you want them to know and making it easy to read will benefit both the customer and your business.
Time management
Everyone knows that ‘Time Is Money’, with SMS Marketing you will save a lot of time, which allows you to focus on other areas of business. It is a simple and easy process. With the SMS editing component, you can simply schedule your SMS marketing campaigns with the latest date. This is a great advantage as it allows you to manage your time effectively.
Summary : SMS is one of the fastest, most reliable ways to reach customers. These excellent levels of
lead companies to use business messages to provide instant customer service or support solutions and deliver valuable alerts.
|Advantages|Disadvantages|
| — | — |
|Coupons and discount codes are the bread and butter of text message marketing. Businesses send texts with coupons to encourage their subscriber list to visit their store or shop online.|It’s a multi-channel marketing jungle out there.Inspirational Instagram posts – tick. Facebook recommendations – tick. Trending Twitter hashtags – tick. Emails – tick. It’s exhausting.Throwing a new channel into the mix can pose a challenge to marketers already wearing a lot of different hats.|
|SMS marketing can encourage loyalty with weekly or monthly specials to customers. Some even take it a step further by creating a VIP text club.|With text marketing, you need people to text. It sounds obvious when you put it like that, but it’s something that businesses overlook when considering SMS as a new channel.|
|SMS marketing provides an effective way to build brand awareness, attract a more robust audience, and increase event attendance without breaking the bank.|To be an effective SMS marketer, you need to collect phone numbers from your target audience. Then you need to keep these subscribers interested with different calls to action (CTAs). Sending the same 160 character promotional message or coupon every two weeks is a surefire way to increase the number of people unsubscribing.|
|SMS marketing is a very affordable channel. That comes as a surprise to most marketers who expect the cost of sending texts to be prohibitive.|Marketing is all about starting a conversation. You want to reach out to potential consumers and form a relationship with them. With the limitations on how much and what you can send through SMS marketing, you have to be short and to the point with enticing offers. There isn’t much room to form a relationship of any sort|
Frequently asked questions
Following are some of the questions often asked about SMS Marketing:
1. Is SMS Marketing effective?
Texting online has become one of the most successful marketing platforms due to its 98% openness, high conversion, and its ability to improve other channels.
2. What are the types of SMS Marketing?
Following are the other types of SMS Marketing:
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Advertising deals and discounts.
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SMS Coupons.
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Text contests to win.
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Flash sales.
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Loyalty programs.
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Notifications and notifications.
3. Is SMS more effective than email?
If your message needs urgent action or is time-sensitive, SMS is an effective communication channel. If your message needs to be kept by your customers to get the latest date, email may be the best way to go.
4. Why SMS Marketing is considered a bad idea?
SMS has text, and that’s what makes it fun. It becomes very difficult to put everything you want to say within the limit of such small letters. Frustrated advertisers try to compensate for this by using excessive capitalization or exaggerating even in the wrong English and posting offensive text messages.
5. What is the open rate for SMS?
The average opening rate of a text message remains at about 99%, with 97% of messages being read within 15 minutes of delivery. It is clear that SMS has a personal touch and that getting one from a product sounds like receiving it from a friend or family member.
6. How to get customers with SMS marketing?
The traditional way to get new customers with SMS Marketing is through bulk SMS text messaging. This process usually requires an upfront investment in a professionally created list of cell phone numbers or shortcodes. To attract potential customers, organizations can offer special promotions and offers via a text message without worrying about printing expensive brochures which may be discarded after reading it. There are other ways to get new customers through mobile messaging such as mobile chats which have been proved effective in increasing online conversion rates for retailers and brands boosting their bottom line by 62%.
7. How can I reach 10,000 people at once with SMS marketing?
The traditional way to get new customers through bulk SMS text messaging usually requires an upfront investment in a professionally created list of cell phone numbers or shortcodes. To attract potential customers, professionals can offer promotions and offers via a text message without having to worry about printing expensive brochures that may be disposed of after being read. There are other ways to get new customers through mobile messaging such as mobile chats that have been proved effective in increasing engagement rates for retailers and brands which boosts their bottom line by 62%.
8. How much does it cost for SMS marketing?
This will depend on the budget, country/state/province of your business, and the final size of your target audience. We’ve seen our SMS marketing clients send messages to 50,000 users for as little as $200, up to 10 million US mobile numbers for $100 or less. The source of your message or ‘channel’ will also impact whether you need to pay per
9. What is the difference between SMP and SMO (SEO)?
SMP is an abbreviation for Social Marketing and refers to the process of influencing people by using social media or other digital channels. SMO or SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it’s the practice of using search engine friendly techniques in order to achieve a higher ranking in Google and Bing.
10. Does WhatsApp work for text messages for business?
No, WhatsApp is primarily geared toward consumer communication. Businesses most likely use SMS for text messages (a text message with the recipient’s phone number pre-filled).
Conclusion
To simply put, SMS Marketing is a powerful tool that can promote your business to success. This includes sending promotional items and commercial messages via SMS. This could be in the form of sales deals, promotional donations, and loyalty awards. It can also be an appointment reminder or an invitation to respond to the survey.