Does the all too familiar tone of the notification on your phone drive you to pick it up and check the notification? Studies suggest that the notification sound sends an emergency signal in the body, forcing us to immediately check our phones as soon as we hear that sound.
We check our phones as much as 160 times a day!
Our phones are always with us and we are ready to check it as and when required.
This coupled with the fact that SMS has an open rate of 98% can really help businesses in their SMS marketing strategies. SMS marketing or text marketing if leveraged properly can help your business immensely. This brings us to our next question, what is SMS marketing?
What is SMS marketing?
SMS marketing or text message marketing is the use of the ‘SMS’ or Short message Service to send promotional messages to the customers by businesses.
In simple words,sms marketing is texting with one’s customers. Businesses use this messaging service to send marketing campaigns about new product releases, updates, promos and much more.
The next thing that one might ask is ‘how to do sms marketing’? We’ve got you covered.
How to Do SMS Marketing? Best Practices of Text Marketing
The first thing that one needs to be clear about before sending promotional text messages is the intent of the message. The base intent of any communication with one’s customers should be to create a good and healthy communication with them.
Once the customers identify you as a trusted business the purpose of the messages is conveyed more clearly. Here are the best practices
This being said, one of the most important and necessary steps with SMS marketing is making sure that your customers have agreed to receiving the texts.
Customers need to opt-in to receive texts. In the USA, it’s necessary that your business complies with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act or the TCPA. Simply put it requires that customers give their consent to receive messages and also have available the option to opt-out of the services if required.
Now that this important step is out of the way, let’s see how one should do SMS marketing.
The best practices for SMS marketing include:
1. Keep Your Customer List Ready
Maintain a list of customers who have opted to receive messages from your business and keep updating it. Make sure that the messages are going to the people from this list only as this is the list which is in compliance with the TCPA. This not only ensures that customers don’t view your message as spam but also pay attention to it.
2. Craft Text Messages Properly
As you would know with text messages you have a limited number of characters, so you have to make sure to craft a message that catches your customers attention and also sends across the message properly. A well written promotional message would contain the following elements-
-Name of your business : So that the customers know who is contacting them and be able to recall that they have given explicit permission to receive these messages.
-Purpose of the message : Is it a promotional message, an order confirmation, an appointment reminder etc.
–A CTA : This will lead the customer to the intended page to view the information offered by your business.
–Option to opt-out : If the customers decide that they no longer wish to receive messages from your business over text, they should have a clear option to opt out of this service.
3. Send Messages At Appropriate Timings
It’s important to be mindful about the time at which you send the messages. Although text messaging warrants instant communication and high open rates, you should not try and abuse this power by reaching out to customers at odd timings.
Be rest assured no one wants to receive text messages at 2am.
4. Do Not Send Too Many Messages
Yes, the customers have given a go ahead to receive messages, but that doesn’t mean you bombard them with messages. If you want to keep the relevance of your messages you need to make sure that the messages you send out are properly spaced out and are relevant.
Sending too many messages may make the customers view your text messages as spam and lead them to unsubscribe from your messaging list.
Is SMS Marketing effective?
You are free to make a decision about the effectiveness of sms marketing campaign’s after reading these points
1. High Engagement Rates
Yes, SMS marketing can produce great results with open rates as high as 98%. But is that all required to generate results from the campaign?
No, we need good conversion and click rates. A well crafted (depending on the content you share with your audience) text messages can outperform email on both click rates and conversion rates.
Since the nature of text messages is conversational, customers are more likely to respond to them, thus not only increasing the open rate, but also the response rate.
2. Instant Delivery
Along with SMS marketing being highly reliable it is also very quick.
Once you craft the message and hit send, the message is in your customer’s inbox.
It is the best method to convey any urgent messages you want customers to see.(Flash sales, reminders etc.) As much as 90% of messages read within the first three minutes of being received.
3. Helps Create Personal Customer Relationships
Texting by its nature is a more personal means of communication than others.
It’s how people majorly communicate with their friends and family.
Thus it helps draw more attention towards it. You also get the opportunity to personalize text messages. You can personalize according to the customer’s name, location etc.
Use Cases of SMS Marketing
SMS marketing and SMS customer service require more than a simple messaging app on your phone. SMS marketing platforms like Emitrr to help you incorporate SMS into your marketing and customer service strategies. You can use these services to send :
1. Appointment reminders
You can use text messaging to send updates about upcoming appointments to your customers. Not only that, you can also set up multiple appointment reminders and space out when to send them. For eg, 1 day before the appointment, 1 week, an hour etc.
2. Surveys
Text messages containing links to surveys you wish to conduct can also be embedded. It will help make gathering feedback from customers much simpler.
3. Scheduling
Get in touch with your customers via text and let them schedule appointments with your business. A simple, ‘Hey haven’t seen you at {business name} for a while, would you like to book an appointment, Y/N” can help get customers back to you! Leverage it and increase customer recall rates.
Text messaging can be used in a lot of capacities for your business. Don’t shy away from embracing this highly effective method to engage customers!
4. Drip Campaigns
5. Alerts
– Notify customers about change in operating hours
– Send order updates
6. Review Requests
7. Missed Call Follow Ups
8. Promotions
9. Birthday wishes
10. Product launches
How To Get Started With SMS Marketing on Emitrr?
Emitrr is the best text marketing platform that businesses can use to send all their marketing campaigns. Here is how you get started with Text marketing on Emitrr:
Step 1: Login to the Emitrr Dashboard
Go to accounts.emitrr.com and sign in.
Step 2: Navigate to the left panel
Select ‘campaigns’ on the left navigation panel.
Step 3: Choose from ‘Manual’ or ‘Automated campaigns’ according to your need
Craft the text message. Add related triggers if you choose automated campaigns.
Step 4: Add relevant contacts
Upload list of contacts or choose from an existing list of contacts.
Step 5: Schedule the message
You can either schedule the message for later or send it out immediately.
And there you have it, you have successfully sent your first text marketing campaign!.
FAQs
1. Is SMS marketing illegal?
SMS marketing requires that you obtain consent from customers before sending out campaigns. Once you have received consent from your customers to send marketing material, you are good to go. Not doing so could land you in legal trouble!
2. Is SMS Marketing spam?
Text marketing would be considered spam if you send messages to people who have shown no interest in the content of your messages. Only send marketing texts to those who have shown interest in receiving them. Otherwise your campaign could be considered spam.
3. How much does SMS marketing cost?
Text marketing costs around $0.01 – $0.05 per message, based on the carrier fee.
Conclusion
Suffice it to say that you are really missing out as a business if you do not have texting mechanisms in place. Text message marketing or SMS marketing is great way to engage your customers and form a lasting relationship with them. The highly engaging nature of SMS provides businesses with a plethora of options to get in touch with their customers. Be it through reminders or personalized promotional offers, text messaging will ensure that your message lands up in the customer inbox and is read. Ready to learn more about text message marketing? Schedule a demo with Emitrr today!
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