SMS marketing is a great advertisement solution that can widen your business’s reach by allowing you to deliver customized messages to your target audience on a channel they use all the time. You can achieve more effective marketing outcomes with SMS because most people frequently glance at their phone’s nearly 100 times in a day and would rather text than talk. Since SMS is a permission-based marketing service, your promotional messages are likely to receive high engagement rates because you are sending them to people who want to receive them.
1.Build an SMS Marketing Team
Having qualified professionals to handle your advertising strategy can help you realize greater sales and rake in more customers from effective marketing strategies. The skilled professionals you may need to hire for your SMS campaign include:
- An SMS marketing program expert
- A discount budget analyst
- A promotions expert
- A retail expert if you have a physical business
Mobile messaging specialists like Movibate can help you manage your SMS bulk messaging and schedule your texts with ease for better campaign consistency. A great advantage with SMS marketing is that you are not competing for attention in overflowing email inboxes, crowded search engine results pages, or social media. This is because your message is immediately delivered to your prospects’ frequently viewed text message inbox. The thorough communication of SMSs can allow you to remember and cater to your individual customers needs and build a trust-filled relationship with your clientele.
2.Make Opt-Out Options Clear and Don’t Bombard Your Customers
Your best customers are loyal to you, transact with your business regularly, can promote your products to people they know and leave comments and reviews on your site. You can focus on targeting these customers with offers that appeal to them the most based on their purchase history and previous interaction with your business. Gifting customers who leave reviews with promotional discounts regardless of the rating they leave can encourage your clients to interact more with your SMS campaign.
For example, you could allow your customers to stop receiving your business’s texts by replying with the keyword ‘STOP. ’Sending excessive promotional texts to your customers can make you a nuisance and break your trust with them. You can instead consider sending an optimal number of SMSs like three texts a week to market your brand and enticing offers.
3.Track and Optimize Your Campaigns
You need to measure how effective your SMS campaign is and determine your return on investment to help you optimize and improve your strategy when you launch your next campaign. Using A/B advertising in your SMS campaign to check which of your campaigns is working better can help you get the most return of investment from your marketing. You can also place track links to track your campaign’s click-through rate and obtain knowledge on the customers that clicked your links the most.
4.Keep It Short and Concise
Since you are limited to having 160 characters in one SMS, it’s best to keep your message simple, provide relevant information and cut to the chase if you want to keep your customers engaged. Long messages with spammy clickbait language can make your customers lose their attention while skimming your text and become disinterested.
You can try to capture your customers’ interest by highlighting what’s in it for them in a short, snappy and engaging SMS. Writing long SMSs that are over the character limit will drive up your marketing costs and have your customers receiving multiple messages which can also make your business appear spammy.
5.Use a Strong Call-to-Action
Including a strong call to action in your SMS marketing messages can help you boost customer engagement and drive your clients to nor only read your copy but interact with and act on them. Some of the effective call to action keywords that you can include in your SMS campaign include:
- Buy now
- Limited time offer
- Don’t miss out
- Last chance
- Sign up
You need to establish the point of your text message and keep your customer’s needs in mind to craft a persuasive SMS that is likely to succeed. Instilling urgency in your promotional SMSs with phrases like ‘valid until’ and ‘today only’ can help prompt your customers to act immediately.
6.Personalize Your Text Message
Instead of sending the same text message to your entire customer base, you can increase the relatability and effectiveness of your marketing campaign with personalized SMS content that your customers are more likely to engage with. You can make your SMSs easy to connect with by:
- Addressing your clientele by their names
- Recommending products and services based on your customers’ purchase history
- Using a conversational tone
- Sending exclusive updates
Having a human approach towards your customers in your campaign can help make your SMS marketing feel like a friendly message instead of a sales tactic.
7.Leverage SMS Marketing To Carry Out Surveys and Get Reviews
You can gather information about your products and services as well as suggestions for improvement with the SMSs you are sending in your campaign. It’s best to keep your SMS surveys concise with a few short questions that your customers can easily answer on a scale of 1-10 and save the long-form feedback for your online surveys.
You can even add clickable links to your SMS that can redirect your customers to a platform where they can leave comprehensive reviews and suggestions. The links in your SMSs can help you track your customers’ interactions with your ads and site. You can also collect useful information such as their location, demographic and purchase history so you can send them the right messages in your future campaigns.
8.Be Appropriate and Keep Your Text Messages Legal
It’s best to avoid using slang or inappropriate language in your SMSs and proofread your texts before sending them out to ensure that they are refined and suitable for your audience. While SMS marketing is legal, some of the important regulatory requirements that your business must adhere to when conducting SMS campaigns include:
- Providing clear and easy opt-out options
- Identifying your brand and the purpose of your SMS
- Having records of opt-in consent from your customers
- Using a compliant SMS service provider
Adhering to these anti-spam laws can help you avoid potential legal issues and build your business’s reputation as a helpful and useful brand.
Endnote
People like getting text messages more as compared to lengthy formal emails and are likely to interact better with your message if it is short, precise and optimized. An effective SMS marketing strategy can promote your brand and products and help communicate offers like exclusive discounts and early access to your customers.
Comments