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Why You Should Use Text Message Marketing For Your Business
Winback Team on Jul 5, 2021 3:21:00 PM
SMS marketing has led to quantifiable results across a myriad of industries. The strategy has proven results in improving brand awareness and return on investment for various brands under retail, banking & finance, healthcare, education, e-commerce, and many more. Countless brands including, but not limited to, Facebook, Reebok, Ikea, Tommy Hilfiger, CNN, and Express stand as a testimony to the efficacy of this marketing strategy.
Global Reach
The top reason for adopting SMS marketing as your marketing strategy is its accessibility to the vast majority of the world population. Mobile phones have long been part and parcel of everyone’s day-to-day life. As of April 2021, there are 5.27 billion unique mobile users who account for 67.1 percent of the total world population.
Another study identifies that an average mobile user spends around 4.2 hours per day. SMS is an inbuilt feature in all phones, whether or not it is a smartphone, which gives you a platform for advertisement on all varieties of mobile phones. Given that the mobile culture has ingrained itself in people’s lives and SMS technology is synced between all the global mobile phone operators, SMS marketing gets an edge over other marketing strategies.
Source: Twist Article
Cost-Effective
Source: Freepik
SMS marketing stands out as the go-to strategy, especially for small businesses, non-profits, start-ups, and all other businesses with low marketing or advertising budgets. In general, there are only two costs associated with SMS marketing; the fee for sending the message and the rental charge of keywords.
While the cost of SMS marketing may vary depending on the volume of your text, the number of keywords and other desired features, many leading SMS marketing companies offer packages that suit your requirement and budget. Compared to marketing strategies like buying ad space on social media platforms, billboard advertisements, or print collaterals, the costs associated with this strategy are pretty nominal.
Immediate Delivery
Source – Freepik
Imagine yourself in the customer’s shoes! Will an appointment reminder for a service at the salon hold any significance if you receive the reminder an hour later from the scheduled time? Or if you receive breaking news after the day of occurrence? Or your travel ticket details after your flight have taken off? Or a coupon after its validity has expired? For messages that are more relevant in real-time such as weather and news alerts, appointment reminders, order confirmation, updates, and much more, the immediate delivery adds value to the purpose of the message only if they reach the recipient’s message inbox on time.
With an SMS marketing strategy, your audience is only a click away from your advertisement or notification, and the message is delivered when intended. Over 90 percent of all messages are opened and read within three to five minutes. You are assured as a marketer that messages you are sending across are opened and read almost instantly.
Immediate Results
You can track the click-through rate of these messages to study which campaigns are working and which aren’t. You can instantly know who is seeing your messages and whether they are calling in or replying. Based on these results, you can make changes to your promotional campaign for the best results.
Integration with other Strategies
Source: Freepik
To fully utilize the power of the marketing mix, channels need to integrate multiple marketing channels, and adding SMS marketing to the mix can do wonders for your business. After all, using SMS in conjunction with other marketing strategies can render better customer engagement.
A successful call-to-action via SMS on a print or digital ad, or cross-promoting to reach out to different demographics and audiences has proven to deliver the best results to marketers. But it is noteworthy that every communication channel is unique and drives engagement for different audiences, so the content should for each channel also be unique and align with the overall brand strategy.
Personalization
In contrast with other channels, SMS reaches your audience at a very personal level. A personalized message to an individual or a group of people with common interests significantly ups your marketing strategy game. However, you must not misuse the leverage to message via a personal communication channel, and you should draw boundaries to avoid becoming overbearing or annoying. There is no spam filter for messages, and typically people are conscious about sharing their phone numbers due to privacy and safety. If you have anyone’s phone number and permission to send them messages, it implies that you are trusted, and you should respect their personal space.
Simple and Easy
Source: Freepik
There is beauty in Simplicity, and it holds for SMS marketing. Everyone who owns a mobile phone will not find any complications in opening and reading a message. On top of that, there is a limit of 160 characters for each text message. A crisp and concise SMS that conveys your purpose, and leaves an impact does the job. You do not have to write long stories and essays to grab attention from your audiences; just a few carefully crafted words can do the job.
Industry segments that benefit the most from SMS Marketing – Does your business belong to any of these industry segments?
Irrespective of your business, SMS marketing has a positive impact on the success of your business; however, there are certain types of business models or segments of industries that thrive on SMS marketing, more than others. If you are a part of one of these businesses, then you should not wait any longer and integrate this strategy into your marketing efforts at the earliest.
E-commerce
In these unprecedented times, people are now more than ever dependent on e-commerce platforms for purchasing goods and services. People can now buy any product or service from the comfort of their homes within no time. The businesses in the e-commerce industry leverage this strategy by keeping their customers informed about the ongoing promotions via texts, and transactional information such as order confirmation, shipping details, or cancellation is sent on their phones via messages in no time.
If you are an e-commerce store owner, you must leverage SMS marketing to reduce cart abandonment rates, a major headache for e-commerce business operators globally. An expert like Winback can help you set up an SMS marketing system, which can help you recover up to 34% of the cart abandonment rate. Not only that, store owners who signup for Winback’s plans receive ROI up to 35X on every dollar that they spend on Winback. Go ahead and get in touch with the Winback team through the live chat option or through email.
Source: Freepik
Travel Companies
Businesses in this industry need to keep their customers updated with real-time information about flight time updates, gate changes, weather alerts, bookings, or cancellations to provide their customers hassle-free and satisfactory experiences. Any delay in such information might lead to inconvenience, and SMS is the best channel for the fast delivery of relevant information.
Source: Freepik
Non-Profits
Typically, non-profit organizations have low-budget for marketing. In such situations, SMS marketing comes as a handy tool for non-profit businesses for educating or raising awareness among the masses, or fund-raising. Engaging people in a cause to take actions and campaigns such as text to donate works for such businesses.
Source: Freepik
Service providers that require an appointment
The healthcare providers, spas or salons, or any service businesses that require appointments can send reminder messages to their customers about upcoming appointments and avoid no-shows.
Source: Freepik
Schools and Universities
Right from pre-schools to universities, life at all these institutions is quite eventful; school closure, exams and tests, results, assignments, emergency alerts, and much more. Teaching and non-teaching staff, students, parents, caregivers, and everyone else associated with these institutions prefer to keep themselves up to date. In such scenarios, SMS is a quick and easy channel to communicate and keep everyone informed. While 84 percent of college students have reported that they find text reminders useful, 86 percent of students informed that they completed an assignment they had not done due to SMS reminders.
Your Customers Are Waiting for Your SMS
By the end of 2020, the number of consumers who opted in to receive text messages from their favorite brands was more than 48 million; still, there is plenty of room to grow. While 54 percent of consumers say they would like to receive SMS promotions, only 11 percent of businesses send them that way. Furthermore, 66 percent of consumers want service notifications via SMS from the brands they use, but they receive the same from only 23 percent of the brands.
According to Digital Marketing Magazine, 75 percent of customers would like to receive SMS with discounts, coupons, and special offers from businesses. Further, 50 percent of people with customer service queries prefer communication via SMS. The inquiries pertain to payment confirmations, availability of products, and status of order processing or shipping.
Quantifiable Outcomes
Open rates of SMS are high as 98 percent, which is higher than any other marketing channel. Based on Benchmark Report by PostScript, based on campaign, while the common conversion rates for SMS campaigns may vary between 1.1 percent and 9.1 percent, the clickthrough rates may vary between 7.5 percent and 30.3 percent.
Wrap Up
SMS marketing can, indeed, be a game-changer when used effectively. It is especially true for e-commerce businesses as SMS marketing can bring down cart abandonment rates drastically, enough to change the fortune of any online store. Thus, when used appropriately, SMS marketing can become the simple and cost-effective go-to marketing strategy for your business. That being said, it is crucial to rely on experts to set up SMS marketing strategy, as they know all the ins & outs of SMS marketing. When it comes to experts at SMS marketing, Winback is a leader and offers multiple cost-effective plans. Reach out to us to further discussion.
Topics: SMS Marketing
