Why SMS Marketing Is Crucial To Your Business

1 January 2019   |   by Sameer Kohli   |   Blog
Why SMS Marketing Is Crucial To Your Business

What is the first thing you see when you check your phone after a long time? Do you immediately reply to all the emails that are unread, or give a call back to all those unanswered or do you check the texts?

Umm.. May be it depends on every individual, as everyone behaves differently on every medium. Right?

But If I talk about text messages, do you know what is the approximate rate of SMS open rate?

According to Wikipedia: Text messages have a 98% open rate (compare to email’s 20%), and are read within 3 minutes, making it highly effective at reaching recipients quickly

Also consider these stats:

  • SMS is the most widely accessible marketing tool.
  • People who receive text messages have a 40% higher conversion rate than those who don’t.
  • Approximately 90% of the people open and read text messages which are sent for the purpose of direct marketing.

So, it’s become clear that SMS is one of the most sensible advertising channel in some parts of the world. That’s the reason, “why SMS marketing makes such noise.”

SMS marketing is a convenient marketing medium that has the potential to reach your prospect at all times, no matter whenever they are done. Also, it allows you to produce instant yet better results as compared to other marketing channels.

In this guide, we will help you discover different yet effective strategies of a successful SMS marketing. You will also get the opportunity to learn more about SMS marketing and its functioning.

What is SMS Marketing

SMS marketing often referred to as text message marketing, is the process of sending text messages to people for marketing purpose. SMS marketing can be used for both inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Inbound marketing focuses specifically on lead generation, whereas outbound marketing focuses on sending messages for sales, promotions, contests, donations, appointment and event reminders.


At present time, there are literally tons of big brands who consider SMS marketing a pro-medium to advertise their products and services to attain instant results. Once you understand your business needs, then you will be able to understand which marketing form will suit you well. If SMS marketing is what you are missing on then you need to start working on it. It is really wonderful how sending text message allows you to communicate with your prospects and drive immediate action. Have a look at the advantages of this marketing tool.

Advantages of Text Messages/SMS Marketing:
  • Higher Open Rate
  • Cost Effective
  • Better Engagement Rate
  • Fast Delivery
  • Trackable Platform

Let’s dive a little deep.

Higher Open Rate: As discussed above, SMS has a 98% open rate. the pro benefit of SMS marketing is that texts are opened and read within three minutes. As people keep their phones in their hand most of the time, there is a higher chance of communicating with your prospects.

Cost Effective: SMS marketing is a great choice for businesses and the good thing is that it absolutely cost effective. It takes less investment and gives more results, Isn’t it exciting? What you can do now is, just make sure your business needs the right type of SMS marketing to take leverage of.

Better Engagement Rate: As you may have experienced, you may be missing on promotional emails that are sent to you for the marketing purpose. But you cannot ignore the text messages! Mobile messages are comparatively more engaging and there are higher chances that people would reply to your text or click on your link.

Fast Delivery: In mobile marketing, you don't need to wait. Once you touch on the send button, it certainly goes out. As the open rate of a message is much higher than emails, you don’t need to wait for people to take long hours to see.

Trackable Platform: Once you create the campaign, you can track the performance and optimize the campaign accordingly. With the trackable platforms, you can track ‘who opened your message, ignored the message and also who performed a desirable action which might include link clicks and subscription replay. Basically, you can track every step of the conversion process.

Also Read: Instagram: The Marketing Hulk of Social Media

Things to Consider While creating as SMS marketing campaign

SMS marketing isn’t rocket science, it is as simple as any other marketing forms. You just need to do with some consideration and you are done. Here are a few things that you should keep in mind when creating SMS campaign.

Understand the Rules of SMS Marketing

Your SMS marketing will never be successful if you’ll not send the text messages to the right contacts. According to TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act), you can’t send marketing messages to recipients who have not opted in to receive those messages.

In email marketing, your routinely promotional emails are sent to those people who are interested and have subscribed the newsletter, or signed up for the free stuff on your website. However, this is not possible in the case of SMS marketing.

So, the right way to do this is to ask your prospective clients by giving them a choice of receiving your messages and activate this service by sending a text message with the specified keyword

For example: Text “PizzaLover” to “555555” to subscribe our weekly list of flavour.

sms

But, One important thing that should be kept in mind is to make sure that the message sent to the prospects, targets their wants. Asking for a replay isn’t that easy, that's why you have to impress them with some exciting offers, deals etc. It will help you ensure that your messages are delivered to the interested people only.

If this step is taken forth in the proper manner, then there would higher possibilities of response from the recipients. This might seem a little strenuous because this makes a lead acquisition difficult but the leads will be more valuable and consecutively convert better.

Let’s Kiss: Keep it Short and Simple

We often receive ads through text messages but somehow we repel from reading it. This may happen because of the longness of the text.

Also, did you know when you send a long message, more than 160 characters, the mobile network breaks the text into small pieces. Whereas Some networks neither break nor merge the messages rather refuse to carry such texts.

So the end result is that your recipients may either miss out on the messages or the messages may not get delivered in order of preference sometimes.

However, in SMS marketing, the main focus should always be on the text. The content needs to very specific as that decides whether you will get a lead or not.

Timing is everything

In SMS marketing, timing is one of the most important things which needs your close attention. The timing can make a big difference. Just imagine you receive a coupon just after your purchase? Obviously, it would be annoying.

So design your time strategy according to the preference of your industry. The frequency of the messages and the duration of it all depends on the type of your industry. Basically, you have to make sure that you are giving your customer enough time to respond to a message.

Include Call-to-action

SMS marketing doesn’t let you add attractive buttons or links on anchor text. So, here you have to be creative with the text. Your text copy should be appealing, clear and to the point.

One of the most effective ways to catch people’s attention is by adding phone number and links to the main content. As link can increase the number of characters, the best way to be character specific would be to shorten the link with tools such as bit.ly and goo.gl. They further help in tracking the performance of the link as well.

Pro Tip: Have an opt-out option

If someone no longer want any updates and promotional message from you, this option allows your recipients to stop receiving your messages.

For example: Add “test STOP to opt-out” or “Reply STOP to end”

Bonus Information
How to grow your SMS list with Facebook

Social media marketing is also one of the best ways to reach people. So, why not combine the two together and create magic? By that I mean, instead of using one marketing tool, we should use multiple channels together to achieve the goals.

SMS is a game of numbers. No matter how impressive your message is, the success of your campaign will purely depend on the number of people it reaches. If your contact list is not big enough then all your efforts would become secondary and not give results. So, In terms of increasing the SMS marketing list, Facebook lead ads can help you work better.

Lead ads is the best way to collect data and information such as phone numbers, emails etc. It gives people a quick and privacy-safe way to sign-up and receive information from businesses, in the form of newsletters, quotes and offers. Basically, it is very effective in building a large subscriber base.

Let’s check out how we can integrate lead ads with the SMS campaign.

First open the Facebook ad manager, then create a new ad and choose the Get More Leads as your objective.

sms

Here Learn: How to Create a Lead Ad

After choosing Lead Generation, name your campaign and fill in the required section such as dynamic creative, audience, placements, budget & schedule etc.

Once you are done with these things, Click on the instant Form and Create a new form.

In the new form, it will ask you for the questions to be specified in the form. Just head down to the “lead form” option to set up your ad and collect phone numbers.

sms

After all the steps, here is, how your lead form will look like:

sms

Once all your settings are configured, you are ready to collect phone numbers immediately and start your first SMS campaign off the ground.

Final Words

There are still some small and local businesses who do not consider SMS marketing much effective. But, It’s equally necessary and needs to be included in your marketing strategy. These are literally huge benefits of it as I discussed above, you just need to do it effectively. This marketing entails several benefits along with it, give it a shot in the most effective way.

Do let us know the next time you try SMS marketing as to, “how did SMS marketing help you grow your business”.

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