Using SMS Marketing to Reach Customers | Agital
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Using SMS Marketing to Get in Your Customers’ Pockets

A study by Asurion shows that Americans check their phones 96 times a day. That’s once every 10 minutes. The main goal of marketing is to reach your target audience and effectively communicate your brand value to it. Communicating your brand effectively is the only way to show customers why they need you and why they should choose you. What better way to do this than with a marketing channel where 90% of all messages are read within the first three minutes, 85% of customers prefer to communicate directly with their favorite brand via text, and 75% of customers prefer to receive SMS ads over retargeting and social ads?

Is most of your site traffic coming from mobile? If so, SMS is perfect for you. Get in your customers’ pockets with SMS and see how quickly your brand can grow.

Uses of SMS Marketing

Adding SMS to your marketing mix will help keep your brand on your customers’ minds, give them a more personal way to connect with your brand, and utilize a channel that they are already checking. Use this channel for growing subscriber lists, converting prospects, one-time send campaigns, engaging your best customers, recovering abandoned sessions, nurturing the post-purchase relationship, and much more.  

SMS best practices include defining the customer-brand relationship as well as being clear about how the platform will be used. Some ways to execute these best practices:

  • Send time-sensitive and urgent messages.
  • Deliver exclusive SMS offers or sales.
  • Personalize your content.
  • Provide immediate value.

SMS vs. email? More like SMS + email.

There are many differences between texting and email, the main one being that text messaging is a more intimate channel and the messaging and response rate must reflect the more personal platform in order to be successful.

Personalize your customer experience even further by adding multiple contact channels for your customers to pick from. Adding SMS allows your brand to be front and center in an area where customers spend a good portion of their days.

“I have email marketing, why bother with SMS?”

SMS is not a replacement for email; it’s a complement to email. Teaming up your email strategy with your SMS strategy gives you the best marketing results.

  • Email campaigns are much more customizable than SMS as you only have 160 characters to work with when using text messaging to contact customers. Email should be for your longer, content-rich messages that are not very time-sensitive.  
  • SMS, on the other hand, is best for time-sensitive messages that are concise. Combining both email and SMS marketing will give your company the perfect marketing mix to successfully deliver different messaging types.

Attentive, an SMS marketing platform, reported that 20.5% of their customers’ total online revenue was generated from SMS and their retail ecommerce industry clients generated $71 for every $1 spent on SMS. The report included, “As shoppers continue to embrace a mobile-first mindset and use text messaging to interact with the brands they love, the bottom-line impact of SMS will only continue to grow.”

Start combining SMS with your current email marketing strategies to build a stronger brand and generate more customer contact and personalization.

Getting Started With SMS Marketing

While getting started with SMS might seem overwhelming, you can get this new marketing channel going by completing these 5 steps.

  1. Collect consent. A great way to do this is to add SMS opt-in to your website sign-up form.
  2. Set up the types of SMS messages you want to send in terms of campaigns and automations.
  3. Understand SMS best practices, listed above.
  4. Unite your email and SMS strategy. Treat your SMS subscribers as your VIPs.
  5. Set up your creative materials and content; keep your SMS messages short and sweet!

Next Steps

SMS messaging allows you to stand out in your industry. It also gives your customers more control over how they wish to be contacted. Build your customer relationship through SMS and watch your list grow. It’s time to get in your customers’ pockets! For more information about leveraging the power of SMS to grow your business and meet your customers where they are, contact us.

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