8 Tips to Approach SMS Marketing Differently for Your Business

The significance of SMS marketing lies both in its proximity and format to consumers. Not only are smartphones always at arms-length, but text messages are also concise and easy to consume.

To top it off, the target audiences of many businesses are primarily digital natives who grew up with mobile phones at their disposal. That makes SMS marketing the perfect companion to email marketing. With that thought, we’ll take a closer look at the different strategies to implement effective SMS marketing.

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1. Keep it short, sweet, and on point

You should keep your SMS campaigns limited and also limit the characters you use in the campaigns. Your consumers’ limited attention spans mean you must get to the point and quickly.

If you have a particular offer you want to send, lead with that. If your message contains crucial information about an order, include that in the message as well. Always add a link so the receiver can get detailed information about the update/offer you’ve provided.

Another great practice is to follow up with an email. After you send something essential and timely, always ensure you’re sending complete information via email if the customer wants to learn more.

2. Use surveys to know more about your loyal consumers

You should always attempt to learn more about your consumers. These details allow you to create proper buyer personas, find people similar to them, and improve your service or product. You can use text surveys to do that, particularly when asking questions like:

• How would you rate us out of 10?
• What could we improve?
• Are you likely to purchase from us again?

Notice how those questions are short and to the point? Don’t fall into the trap of overwhelming your list with tens of questions. The smaller the task you ask customers to do, the more likely they’ll be to do it.

3. Personalize your SMS marketing campaigns

While your ultimate objective is to ensure you send pertinent SMS campaigns, it’s even better when they’re personalized. SMS is more of an intimate channel, so maintain that intimacy with your consumers by mentioning their first name or personalizing your messages.

SMS marketing offers you the ease of having one-on-one interactions with your consumers. Leveraging this idea ensures your text message marketing strategy is effective and fruitful.

This means that your text message for marketing your products should focus on sending relevant details based on location or prior purchases. This allows you to maintain a lasting relationship with your consumers.

4. Leverage the national holidays

Another excellent SMS marketing idea is to utilize the upcoming holidays and see if you can connect them with your text messages – even if it’s just a simple message to say:

• Happy Easter
• Happy Thanksgiving, we hope you have a great day
• Merry Christmas to you. We wish you a great New Year.

These little reminders indicate that your business goes above and beyond for consumers without making them feel like you’re constantly pushing them for sale. They build your relationships, which build your brand.

5. Send automated drip campaigns through text

Prepare to nurture drip campaigns through text messages. Drip campaigns are essential to keep active consumers engaged as you send them relevant and valuable content.

You can utilize your growing contact lists to send SMS drip campaigns to:

• Keep leads engaged with the brand
• Welcome new consumers
• Update on the use of sophisticated solutions

For instance, if you plan to send coupons in a drip campaign, you could send a 5% off coupon after a subscriber signs up, a 10% coupon after five weeks, and a 20% off coupon after two months. The longer your consumers stick around, the higher the potential bonus. So, you’re basically incentivizing the action you want.

6. Utilize live chat to convert leads into SMS subscribers

You can turn your business’s website into a tool for lead generation turning live chat into an automated path to SMS subscription. Live chat has been proven to increase average order value, conversions and maintain loyalty among customers.

When consumers stay connected with a business to receive real-time answers to their queries, the company can eliminate the factors hampering conversions. In fact, someone that chats on your website is ten times more likely to convert. And you can generate SMS subscribers from live chat using an opt-in widget and a bot.

7. Send exclusive deals and offers through text

Businesses utilize SMS to promote and sell because it’s one of the most engaging and cost-efficient ways to engage consumers and prospects. While waiting for people to chat with you on your website is effective, you should also reach out proactively and engage with prospects. 

After opting in new SMS subscribers, you can send bulk text messages to that audience with announcements, deals, and news. 

8. Gather sufficient feedback and data

It’d work best to end a welcome message or drip sequence with a poll or survey. This is because chat drip marketing offers businesses a channel for real-time feedback from consumers or prospects.

By preparing a survey within your drip campaign, you’ll know more about who your target audience is and what you can offer them. For example, if you receive positive feedback to a survey question related to your customer experience, you could ask the user to leave a review on platforms like Yelp or Facebook.

Endnote, 

Now that you’re familiar with the effective SMS marketing tips, it’s time to get started with your campaign. SMS marketing is the easiest way to reach more consumers around the world; you must leverage it well.