With the advancement of technology, many people are starting to use video conferencing solutions and businesses are using an explainer video to introduce their brands to target consumers. It is a great way to connect with someone on the other side of the world and provide a higher customer service level. However, this form of marketing scheme can be difficult for some businesses with high broadband connections or those who don’t want their customers’ personal information to be recorded and stored by a third party.
In this article, we will discuss six ways you can improve business conversion rates through SMS marketing.
SMS Marketing: What is it?
SMS Marketing is a quick and easy way to communicate time-sensitive offers, updates, or alerts to your customers. It’s the perfect option for businesses that need an immediate response rate but don’t have access to email addresses.
SMS Marketing does not have to be a boring marketing strategy anymore. With the right technology, SMS can help you reach your target audience with timely alerts and offers while simultaneously capturing analytics that show their engagement level in real-time.
Benefits Of Integrating SMS To Your Marketing Campaign
Multi-channel marketing is becoming increasingly effective as brands look to target customers on the move through SMS. Despite this, few digital marketing agencies offer SMS as a core service, leaving clients without a useful way to communicate with customers and increase ROI.
Mobile marketing is generally misunderstood by organisations as requiring heavy investments in apps and offering ineffective personalized, targeted communication, without strong ROI analysis. Getting access to mobile consumers (both smartphones and non-smartphones) is much easier than perceived, and it’s just a matter of sending a targeted, personalised text message.
As long as legal requirements for consent protect consumers’ privacy, two-way SMS messaging is essential to building brands in households throughout the world.
- It is an immediate and direct channel of communication
- It is capable of supporting a variety of marketing channels
- Integrating shortcodes can simplify and streamline the process of creating a response
- Increasing engagement with your customers is the key
- Knowing your target customers allows you to make informed business decisions
- Your response data can be improved, tracked and monitored with it
Know Your Customers
To successfully market a product, businesses need to understand their target audience and best advertising. It is essential for your SMS messaging strategy, and you should tailor the tone you use to your audience’s preferences.
Moreover, knowing your customer gives you a clear advantage because it becomes easier to determine what type of content they’re interested in, and you can then tailor your messaging accordingly.
For instance, if you were running an advertising campaign geared towards millennials, your text messages would need a different style than one directed at people looking for long-term investments because they differ in their interests and demographic factors like age or gender.
Disseminate Clear, Short, and Engaging Messages
Keep your messages short and concise. It will help you reach a wider audience without overwhelming them with the information they are not interested in. Keep your messages brief to make them as clear and effective as possible.
Your writing should be straightforward, using plain English rather than complex words or phrasing difficult for others to understand. When you invite customers to a sale or program, put a date that the coupon will expire or give them detailed information that they know when and how long the offer is good so they can act on it if interested.
You can accomplish having an engaging message by integrating CTA phrases like ‘call now’ into each SMS marketing campaign. Most consumers find interactive messaging more engaging than traditional ones where there is no opportunity for dialogue.
Use Relevant Content
Make sure the content of your message is relevant to what people want or need. Otherwise, it’s an instant turnoff for both parties. If someone receives a text advertising something they don’t care about at all, then it’s rudely interrupting their day, so be mindful when creating these messages–you’ll get fewer responses back if this happens!
You don’t need to be a marketing genius or have the best ideas to succeed. You need an audience that feels like they hear something relevant and meaningful from you. If your customers are talking about you, they’ll share it with their friends. But if the tone of voice in marketing doesn’t resonate, then people won’t be interested enough to talk about what’s being sold – no matter how great a product or service is.
Timing is the Key
Timing is an important key when it comes to sending out messages. Sending texts outside of your target audience’s hours will result in a lower response rate and may even deter recipients from wanting to hear back from you at all!
SMS marketing is about immediacy.
The average person takes 3 minutes to check or open messages, and it’s highly effective when clients are prompted with what we call the last-minute surge for responses like sales, promotions, or events in the afternoon before they leave work.
Take the SMS approach one step further by sending a message at an appropriate time based on individual past interactions between you and your texts.
Personalize Your Messages
It can be tempting to send people one-size-fits-all messages, but if they are not personalized, then readers often feel like spam junk mail instead of being seen as someone who genuinely cares about them. It takes time for sure, but the payoff might make it worth the effort after all.
It can’t hurt to have an idea of which clientele base appreciates all aspects of life at the top level – after all, every customer has different needs depending on many factors such as age group, family situation, and profession.
Concentrate on Your Top Clients
How do you keep your top clients coming back? You want them to be loyal, buy from you consistently, give feedback on their purchases and let other people know about how much they like doing business with your company.
One smart technique is making a list of these VIP customers (who are the ones who love what you sell) and sending more detailed surveys that only they get so as not to overwhelm yourself or make it seem cookie cutter for everyone else. Reward those individuals by giving them special offers just for being awesome.
Furthermore, your business must determine what keeps your customer loyal. People buy again because they believe receiving consistently good products/services justifies spending money each time – even if there are cheaper alternatives available.
The best way to keep customers coming back for more and making the most of their investment in your product or service is to give them awesome deals and add-on features.
Disadvantages of SMS Marketing
There is no denying that SMS marketing has numerous advantages.
With so many new messaging apps and alternative forms of advertising available, SMS marketing may not be the most profitable option.
It isn’t perfect, like any other marketing strategy. Here’s what you should know about the drawbacks of SMS marketing and which platforms you should use instead.
What Are the Drawbacks?
SMS marketing has remained popular over the years, but it’s difficult to ignore the areas where SMS falls short of its competitors.
It’s Short
Your messages can only be 160 characters long. Anything longer risks fragmenting your message into several smaller messages. This means that a consumer could receive three or four notifications from a single offer. That is not something anyone wants.
It’s Simple
In addition to the character limit, you cannot send any rich media. You don’t have enough space to send any audio or image files, so you only have 160 characters to work with, and it’s difficult to be creative in such a small space. Furthermore, you run the risk of links breaking or images failing to download.
Many SMS marketing campaigns are also overly vague. Because there isn’t enough room to include an enticing offer and a call to action, most messages fall flat.
Consumers Have to Opt-In
SMS marketing cannot be outbound. Every lead must be inbound; you cannot text consumers unless they subscribe and give permission. In order for you to legally market to someone, they must sign up for your SMS list.
It Can Be Spammy
Although consumers are not technically spammed when they opt-in, sending too many promotional text messages can still feel like spam. So, you can’t exactly send that many promotional messages in a day, or even a week (adding to the already small character limit). SMS marketing can easily come across as spam.
It’s Easy to Block Unknown Numbers
Like a spam box in email, most cell phone users have the option to block incoming texts or calls from unknown numbers. This automatically filters any texts that don’t come from a saved contact to be filtered into a spam box where the consumer may never even realize it’s there.
You Can’t Tell If Texts Have Been Read
Unless you’re texting someone with the same phone and they have their read receipts turned on, there’s really no way to tell if your SMS messages are being read on a consistent basis.
Granted, the majority of people (90%, in fact) read their texts within three minutes of receiving them, but there’s no way to know for sure.
It’s Strictly Regulated
If you do not follow the SMS marketing opt-in/opt-out regulations, you could face a hefty fine.
It Isn’t Conversational
Marketing is all about starting a dialogue. You want to connect with potential customers and build a relationship with them. Because of the limitations on how much and what you can send via SMS marketing, you must be concise and to the point with enticing offers. There isn’t much room for any kind of relationship to develop.
What Should You Use Instead?
In today’s world, technology is an integral part of communication. Text messaging has been around since the days of the flip phone, so it may be time to experiment with one of the newer messaging platforms.
Messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, offer more features and options than SMS, allowing you to further personalize your marketing efforts.
Some of these advantages include:
- Pay attention to Notifications. Most messenger apps notify the sender whether or not their message has been received and read.
- Concurrent Conversations. In messenger apps, you can seamlessly transition your conversations from desktop to mobile. Furthermore, most of them support in-app voice and video calls, allowing you to have multiple modes of communication in one app.
- There is no need for cell phone service. Messenger apps can be used while connected to Wi-Fi. You don’t need a data connection to use them, so you can use them even if your reception is spotty.
- Stickers and other forms of media. Stickers, GIFs, videos, and other creative media tidbits that are difficult to send over text are easily sent within messaging apps. Additionally, you can create branded stickers and image overlays to supplement your marketing efforts.
Messaging apps are clearly a more profitable investment for marketers than SMS features. There are so many more options for personalization and creativity that SMS marketing simply does not provide.
Final Words
Whether you’re a small business or multinational corporation, it’s easy to reap the fruits of your SMS campaigns by providing time to craft and convey a compelling message and analyzing customer demographics.
By investing in a highly effective and experienced SMS-specific closeout and promotional team and marketing this strategy throughout our media channels, we can help businesses maximize their revenue from mobile customers.
SMS or text messaging has been around for a long time. It is used by billions of people every day to communicate with friends, family, and loved ones worldwide. But many businesses have found ways to use this technology as an effective marketing tool to increase their conversion rates.