Marketing with text messages remains popular. It is an excellent way to reach out to new customers for your business. This blog will tell you everything you need to get your company started with SMS marketing.
What Is SMS Marketing?
SMS Marketing (Short Message Service) is a kind of mobile marketing that allows you to send messages to cell phones. It is sending text messages with information such as news, event notification, and service updates to any mobile device instantly. It functions as a medium for sending out information that could persuade customers into buying a product and/or service.
Which Category of People Use SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing is a great advertising channel to use for driving traffic and leads back to your business. SMS marketing can be used by small businesses or big business brands. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have much capital, just like other digital marketing channels, many businesses have generated high cash flow from SMS text message marketing. It is a very convenient way of reaching your prospects and customers directly.
How Does SMS Marketing Work?
These days, people are more interested in engaging conversations than mundane and predictable automated messages. That is why text messaging marketing has helped businesses establish stronger connections with their customers.
However, many businesses do not know that SMS marketing is neither spam-like nor invasive to their clients. With SMS marketing, engagement can be generated by sending messages globally to your customers, which can lead to continuous patronage and brand loyalty in the long run. As SMS marketers help their clients build customer trust through sending helpful messages, they are allowed to send relevant notifications at certain touchpoints in the customer journey.
What Ways You Can Use SMS Marketing?
Customer Polls
Customer polls are a great idea if you’re trying to gather feedback from your customers. The results you will get from these polls can help you improve your business and also know what kind of offers and promotions to offer the customer.
For Group Creation
There are different kinds of categories you can use for marketing campaigns. One is a direct group. This is the most common type. It has one or more keywords and specific instructions on what to do with anyone that responds. The other kind of group, an interactive group, is best used for surveys, polls, and other types of interactions that require multiple responses.
Sweepstakes Contests
Signing up is simple, and customers don’t have to drop a lot of information before entering. After all, it’s just a contest text. There’s no ongoing commitment to receive text messages. This is a great way for businesses to engage with their customers and offer them something in exchange for their contact information.
Drip Campaigns
There are many ways that you can use SMS marketing to your advantage. The easiest way is to send coupons or deals to customers. You can target the promotions by location, how much they have spent, and other factors.
Location-based Marketing
Send different content to people from various areas or locations. Send specific information about the latest offers and news to the customers who are interested in it. This process can also be used with SMS API integration, by getting the location of users based on their devices.
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) Marketing
MMS differs in that the messages come with images and can hold videos of up to 30 seconds in length. This can be extremely helpful if you’re looking to provide some sort of visual assistance for a complicated task or something to help explain your product or service.
Benefits of SMS Marketing
- Improve communication.
- Fast and Effective.
- Cost-Effective.
- Build Loyal Customers.
Before Running an SMS Marketing Campaign, Know These
- Permission is Required: To send an SMS message, you need permission from the mobile subscriber. Nobody wants to get spammed, or worse, charged for something they don’t want. While it is possible to send a single SMS without having the necessary permissions in place, this could give your marketing campaign a bad reputation before you even get started!
- Compliance is Key: This means that you must understand the difference between a consumer’s opt-in and opt-out rights as well as know how you are going to get each customer’s contact information to properly process their opt-in request before they can start receiving your messaging.
- Timing is Everything: Timing is a huge factor in SMS marketing. It’s the most important part of running an SMS campaign. If you send a text message too early or at the wrong time in a consumer’s day, your campaign could get lost in the shuffle and not deliver results.
- Consistency is Key: To run a successful SMS marketing campaign, you need to maintain consistency. As long as your customers know exactly what to expect from you, they are more likely to follow through with your request.
Starting a new business, improving your existing one, is not always easy. But sometimes, you need something different. Something that doesn’t cost you a dime (and even pays you with a nice return on investment). And if you want something like that, then look no further than SMS marketing.