What is SMS marketing?
SMS (short message service) marketing is a permission-based
text messaging technique which is used to spread promotional messages.
Customers are required to opt for receiving promotional text
messages, new product updates or more information. A confirmation response is
saved by SMS marketing software and sent a receipt for opting in, with an
opt-out code for unsubscribing in future.
SMS marketing aims to create a subscribers database to
increase customer loyalty. While applying marketing tactics, text messages
are best way to notify people about any immediate offers, events or deals
without having to use push-notification applications.
Common rules and best practices for SMS marketing
·
Make sure your contacts have opted in to SMS
- Don’t send an SMS campaign without recipients’ permission.
·
Be mindful of the timing of
your messages - Look out for convenient time to send an SMS campaign to
reach more audiences. Avoid interrupting people when they are most probably
busy or asleep.
·
Include your company’s name in your messages
·
Implement personalization- Personalize
your SMS marketing technique to give your audience a comfort and pleasant experience.
·
Write an original text – Be original and
don’t imitate your competitors. You should be flexible enough to promote your
product and intrigue consumers. Try to be as short as possible. Try to convey
your message using every word to the point.
·
Segment your audience – Segmentation
provides you an opportunity that you can filter and send messages to different
people based on similarities like gender, country and preferences.
·
Use SMS marketing tactics that complement to the
rest of your digital marketing strategy
Why is SMS marketing effective?
SMS is considered as most useful marketing channels for
several reasons:
·
Ubiquity of Smartphones: With most
of the peoples having mobile, SMS is powerful way to reach customers directly.
·
Closes the Email Marketing Loop: Email
and SMS marketing have lots of things in common while implementing strategy but
SMS marketing has its own magic. While email contains more text content , you
can use SMS to send short and instant notifications.
·
High Engagement Rates: SMS
engagement rates are phenomenal as compared to email, with more than 50% of SMS
messages read within 3 minutes of receiving them. This makes SMS clear choice
while delivering critical information with low failure rate.
·
Great for Emerging Markets: SMS
is a much better channel to communicate information for the locations where wi-fi
is less common and usage of internet is expensive.
Types of SMS marketing
There are two types of SMS marketing:
Campaigns: These are “one-to-many” bulk text messages basically used
to communicate promotions like coupons, sales etc. or general information about
upcoming event details, updates etc.
Transactional: These are “one-to-one” messages
that are triggered by a certain event or activity for example order confirmation,
shipping notification for purchase or
parcel tracking information etc.
How to Do SMS Marketing
·
Create an SMS campaign
·
Fill in the name of the sender
·
Insert text
·
Choose the recipients
·
Launch the SMS campaign.
·
Track your campaigns and optimize
Measure effectiveness of your SMS marketing campaign basis –
number of responses and return on investment then try to optimize it for the
next time. Experiment with different text, different offers or may be with
different time of the day or different segment of people to find which works
best for you.
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