14 Ways To Leverage The Power Of SMS Marketing
If you want to grow your business and promote your products successfully, marketing to audiences on mobile devices can make a huge difference to get great results. Remember, almost everyone owns a mobile device, and most people use such gadgets to access the Internet and search for the products they’re looking for.
Fortunately, there are various ways to reach out and spread the word about your business to mobile consumers. One of these is the use of Short Message Service (SMS) marketing, which is a high-return and low-cost method that uses text messages to convey content to customers.
There are countless reasons why you should leverage the power of SMS marketing. Other than being affordable, text messages have high open rates, and most people read SMS content. Once this marketing is used successfully, it can create an effective platform for communicating with your mobile customers. This is especially true if you use text marketing software like Drop Cowboy for your SMS marketing campaigns.
If you want to maximize your success with SMS marketing, make sure to keep the following in mind:
1) Contact Customers Who Are Likely to Engage
Targeting your whole customer base and casting a wide net isn’t a tactic you’d like to employ with SMS marketing. This is true if your demographic has a huge age range since the tendency to engage with SMS may differ widely among various groups.
So, focus on the ones who have proven that they’re likely to engage with your messages. This concept applies to the service or product that you’re marketing. You may analyze the purchase history or previous interaction of your customers with your business to know what kind of offer appeals the most to them.
If you’re running an online store, you should also consider the geographical location of your recipient. This is crucial when you’re offering clothing items since the apparel needs of your customers may vary from one region to another. Those who tend to engage with your business in the past are the perfect candidates for SMS marketing.
If you want to level up your business when contacting your customers, you can call your customers using the services provided by companies like Power Dialer to help you manage your time efficiently by working with your existing phones, so you can contact more customers without spending too much time waiting around and dialing.
2) Track and Optimize Your Campaigns
You should measure how efficient and effective your SMS campaigns are, determine your return on investment (ROI), and figure out the responses you got. In this way, you’ll be able to learn and understand how your campaigns work. Plus, you’ll know what to optimize and improve the next time you launch another SMS marketing campaign.
As with any type of marketing campaigns, there are various ways to get the most ROI with your SMS marketing campaigns, and these include doing the following:
- A/B Test – Test several aspects of your text messages by sending two versions to your target groups. When your campaigns are over, check which one performs better. To get precise results, don’t change all of the attributes and change only a certain element.
- Track Links Using Codes – Track your campaign’s click-through rate using codes or links that direct to the same webpage but look different in the analytics system of your company. This will let you know the customers who clicked the most.
3) Build Your Own SMS Marketing Team
If you’re planning to launch big SMS marketing campaigns for your small business, you have to take note that these aren’t something you can do on your own.
To achieve results, you’ll require the help of skilled professionals. Several people may fill these roles, but you’ll typically need a retail expert, SMS marketing program expert, social media expert, discount budget analyst, promotion specialist, creative digital designers, and so on.
Such roles must be coordinated, and since the timeline for SMS is getting more immediate, your marketing team must work closely and often communicate about execution, strategies, and plans. The more complete your SMS team, the greater benefits you’ll enjoy results from doing effective marketing strategies.
4) Know Your Customers
Use your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to measure the success of your messages. Your CRM can help you analyze location-based demographics and purchase history, so you can easily craft and send the right messages to the right customers. For instance, if you’re offering beauty products, it won’t make sense to send an anti-aging cream coupon to your teenage customers.
For a more targeted promotion, segment your clients. However, if you’re aiming for general promotion, send bulk messages instead.
5) Keep Your SMS Fun
You have to remember that SMS is a highly informal and personal channel, which makes SMS marketing perfect for entertaining campaigns. Think of polls, promotions, interactive content, and games. Use it as your opportunity to provide memorable and fun experiences to your customers.
Note that most SMS marketers also use shortened texts in their campaign copies. Feel free to do the same while ensuring that your message is easy to read. For instance, instead of using ‘text,’ you can just use “txt.”
6) Write Concise and Clear Messages
Be straightforward when sending text messages to your customers. After all, you only have a total of 160 characters to express yourself. If you can, try to do it less and ensure that your message is concise and clear. Avoid typing in all caps and using emoticons since not all phones can read the symbols.
It’s also not a good idea to use an open-ended message. An example of it is when you invite your customers to an upcoming sale, but you didn’t specify the promo period. With this kind of open-ended message, your customers won’t have a clue if it’s for a month or a day.
By giving specific dates when the sale ends or putting expiration dates on coupons, your customers are more likely to act since you’ve provided them enough incentive and information.
7) Be Appropriate with Your Messages
It’s best to avoid the use of slang or inappropriate words in your SMS and consider proofreading your messages before you start sending them to your customers.
A well-constructed sentence is essential. The standard and good abbreviations are effective and great, but talking about something or taking too far can isolate some of your target audience. Always bear in mind that you should reach more audiences regardless of their gender and age, so a good text message can help you widen your reach.
8) Use Call-To-Action (CTA) Wisely
CTAs can help you boost customer engagement with your SMS marketing messages. Well, that’s what marketers want from customers: to value the text messages, be engaged, read the copy, act on them, and interact with them. This is the reason why you should use CTAs wisely.
If you don’t know what type of CTA to use for your text messages, make sure to consider the following:
- Click The Link to Discover More – A click can make a difference to your SMS marketing campaigns. The only thing you should do is to provide a link to click in your text message to lead your audience from their mobile device to your website.
However, you should ensure to send them to the right spot and never just take users to the homepage. If possible, show them something they might not have seen before, like you can direct them to your new blog or any fresh content.
- Show The Text – If online purchases are still not yet available for your small business, you can tell your customers to show the text messages they’ve received once they order or pay for the items on the counter.
In this way, they’ll still be special and can help drive more sales. All you have to do is to be creative with this CTA and make it work for your business.
- Subscribe Today and Get Free Items – Another smart CTA you can use is a subscription command. This may do wonders for your marketing strategies and success as a business. Once your customers subscribe to your texting list, this can help you widen your digital footprint and show off your brand.
9) Instill Urgency
Immediacy is one of the primary benefits of SMS marketing. So, make sure to use it to your advantage. You can do that by pairing your text messages with location-based campaigns to send promotions to users once they pass by or arrive at your store.
To instill urgency, use phrases ‘today only,’ ‘valid until’ or ‘expires soon’ in your messages. Such phrases can help you prompt your recipients to act immediately.
10) Get Your Timing Right
Once you use text messaging for your business, you have to take note that it revolves around proximity. It takes a few minutes for people to open and read a text message. The responses of your customers to sales, promotions, and events promoted by SMS are effective when the last few minutes are broadcast.
For instance, if you’re opening an event in your store on a Friday night, send your SMS to your customers on an afternoon at least a day or two before the schedule. Avoid sending it during morning hours when most people are busy with their work.
To know the best period to send an SMS to your target audience, do one-step SMS sync based on the previous interactions with your SMS. This will help you improve your marketing results.
11) Focus On Your Best Customers
Keep in mind that your best customers are the most loyal ones who transact with your business constantly, promote your products to people they know, and leave comments or reviews.
So, make sure to take advantage of your best customers and send them with SMS regularly, as they can be your brand ambassadors without hiring influencers to do the job for you. No matter what your SMS marketing campaigns are, don’t forget to include them and make sure to reward your best customers with additional benefits and special deals.
If you treat your best customers as your VIPs, they’ll stay loyal to your business and stick around for a long time, especially if you have amazing rewards like discounts.
12) Provide Significant and Exclusive Value
Text messages are quite intimate, and the last thing you like to do is spam your subscribers with low-value offers and annoying messages. SMS marketing campaigns must also offer high-value content and deep discounts.
Treat your SMS subscribers well and give them access to your sales before the rest of your clients. You can also send them exclusive event promotions and provide them with content that’s not available to your general audience. Once you offer exclusivity, you’ll likely get great results with your SMS marketing campaigns as you’ll keep your customers engaged.
13) Converse and Respond in Real-Time
Once you send text messages to your customers, you have to note that you’re making a personal connection with them. You’re providing them the chance to respond or give you valuable feedback on the items you’re offering.
Your customers may tell you how much they like your brand, act on coupons to make immediate purchases, or start productive conversations. If you want to keep your customers engaged, you would want to make use of an auto-responder to automatically and instantly send follow-up and personalized text messages. In this way, your customers will feel that you care about their concerns, queries, and feedback.
14) Personalization Matters a Lot
One of the ways to leverage the power of SMS marketing is to focus on personalization. Personalizing your messages may go a long way to increase your customer’s level of engagement. One of the simplest ways to do it is by addressing your customers by name instead of using a user ID or an order number.
There’s more familiarity with using names for your messages. Besides, the more human your approach towards your customers, the more your SMS marketing campaigns will feel like a friendly message instead of a sales tactic.
Other things you can include in your SMS are the discounts related to their previous purchases, product recommendations, referring to products they’ve placed in their shopping cart, and so on. In simple words, tailor your text message exactly to your specific customer to have the best possible results.
Wrapping Up
No matter what type of business you’re running, whether it’s a startup or a medium-sized company, considering SMS marketing as one of your marketing strategies can be beneficial. If you want to achieve success with your SMS marketing campaigns, make sure to consider the above tips and see how SMS marketing can help make your business grow and gain more customers in the long run.
