Brands may use text message marketing to cultivate true relationships with the individuals with whom they communicate. You can optimize the channel and target your most engaged segments after you grasp the many sorts of text message marketing accessible for brand communication.
Marketing tools and methods are always evolving in this digital era, and as a marketer, it’s critical to stay current on the newest, most cost-effective solutions for nurturing leads and keeping your brand top of mind among customers.
Text message marketing is one of the most successful strategies for any organization or company to gain new consumers, sales, and money. This text message marketing channel may help firms stand out from the crowd, triple donations to charity and political organizations, and engage customers in real-time.
What is text message marketing and how does it work?
“SMS” stands for “short message service,” right? SMS is a marketing term that describes how a company communicates with customers via text messaging about campaigns, promotions, news, and other topics. SMS, like email marketing, is a medium that you own.
This means you have complete control over who gets text message marketing, what information you send, and when you send it. With text marketing, you have complete control over the experience your clients receive with this marketing channel from beginning to end. In addition to SMS communications, you can send MMS (multimedia message service) messages to your consumers.
With these messages, you can send photographs or GIFs (or other animated images) over text. SMS texting for businesses comes in a variety of forms. When you use SMS messaging with a trusted SMS gateway API integrated as part of your marketing plan, you can send promotional and transactional text messages to your audience.
Text messages with promotional content
Promotional SMS messages are texts sent to your target audience in order to boost sales, advertise a product, or raise brand awareness. You can use these messages to inform your customers about the launch of a new product, to offer a special deal or promotion, to share business announcements, to promote branded events, and even to provide suggestions on how to use the things you’re selling.
Promotional SMS messages that are prompted by client actions on your website are known as “event-triggered promotional SMS messages.” You may send a welcome text or an abandoned cart text to a customer who signs up to receive text messages from your business or add an item to their cart on your website to encourage them to place an order.
Text messages for business transactions
Transactional SMS messages are texts that convey information that your consumers require, such as order confirmation or delivery data. Texting customers’ delivery updates after they make a purchase could be a wonderful way to keep them informed and promote client loyalty.
Transactional texts are rather straightforward communications, and unlike emails, you don’t have much creative freedom in terms of content or style. One thing to keep in mind: If a client or website visitor signs up to receive transactional text messages, you won’t be able to promote to them through this channel unless they specifically consent.
Is text message marketing a good idea?
All data trends for text message marketing indicate that it is one of the most effective channels for customer targeting:
1: Higher client engagement and text open rates
SMS generates high levels of engagement, with 98 percent of messages being opened. While this figure may appear impressive, keep in mind that many consumers will only open a text message to get rid of a notice on their phones. As a result, engagement metrics such as clicks and conversions should be given more weight.
What’s the good news? Text messages can surpass email in terms of click rates and conversion rates, depending on the content you provide to your audience. With its SMS communications, GhostBed, for example, gets a click rate of 32%. Because text messages are frequently conversational (or may be programmed to be), you can encourage your subscribers to respond to your texts.
Consider not sending your text message at all if you wouldn’t send it to a friend. If you choose this as your sending standard, you’ll be able to have meaningful text discussions with all of your consumers.
2: Text message marketing helps businesses communicate with customers
When people receive SMS, they frequently read them rapidly. In fact, 90% of them are opened within three minutes. If you have a great offer that you want your subscribers to take advantage of right away, sending them an email may cause them to miss your message and not act in time to get the desired outcomes.
Instead, give them this timely message through text, and they’ll be more likely to see it and take the action you want. For example, you may wish to inform your existing clients that they will be able to shop a sale one hour before the general public. The best approach to sending this information fast is by text message.
3: Texting allows for more personal interactions with customers
People text to stay in contact with their friends and loved ones, so their phones are frequently within arm’s reach. Because texting is so personal, you may use SMS as a more exclusive channel, comparable to a VIP program, to communicate with your highly engaged group of clients. Allow people who sign up to receive your text messages to be among the first to learn about new items and special offers.
When is text message marketing appropriate for e-commerce businesses?
Text message marketing is a great way to strengthen your client interactions, but there are a few things to keep in mind as you get started. Because SMS is a more personal channel than email, you must consider carefully and strategically which messages to send and how frequently you deliver them to your SMS customers. Text messages are a terrific way to establish brand loyalty, but if you abuse this channel, you’ll lose clients faster.
The more you learn about SMS and gather data on what your subscribers like, the better you’ll be able to manage texting with clients. SMS will be critical for brands that want to stand out, deepen engagement, and create extraordinary customer experiences as consumers expect more personalized communications from brands and e-commerce marketers focus on building stronger ties with customers. It’ll also be crucial to pick the right SMS platform.
Is it allowed to market to people by text message?
You might be wondering if text blasting or bulk SMS is legal. The short answer is yes, as long as you follow your country’s SMS advertising regulations. The SMS inbox of a customer is a private environment, and most nations have laws in place to protect consumers from receiving unsolicited commercial text messages. Before you start sending messages to all of your consumers, make sure you understand and follow your country’s text message marketing requirements.
Conclusion
So there you have it: the basic technique of text marketing, which is a very powerful communication and marketing tool for firms that want to deliver promotional messages to a large number of customers at once.
