What is SMS marketing? Otherwise known as short message service marketing, SMS refers to the strategy of using text messages to connect with your customers or consumers. You may be familiar with the concept of sending newsletters or developing email campaigns to engage with your customers and remind them that you exist. And with stock photo coupons and a mailchimp membership, creating these campaigns has never been easier. We like CouponPuppy for hosting offers
SMS marketing is simply the process of interacting with your customer base via text message. To better understand how it works and why you need it, jump in and take look at five ways you can use SMS marketing to grow your business.
Opening Rates are Highest of Any Marketing Campaign
Because text messages are such a broadly-used feature of any mobile device, the opening rates for SMS marketing campaigns are very high. Contrast that to the opening rates of email newsletter campaigns, which average at about 30 percent, if you’re lucky. With text message marketing, the opening rate is typically around 98 percent. Moreover, the customers receiving a text message from you tend to open that text message fast, usually within 15 minutes of receiving it. Who wouldn’t want to invest in a marketing campaign that boasts such an extensive read-through rate?
SMS Marketing Increases Customer Loyalty
If you retain the services of an SMS marketing agency, you will have the option of automating your messages to include VIP subscriptions. As part of a customer loyalty campaign, prospects can subscribe to and access VIP information, tips, deals and promotions. This tactic achieves the objective of segmenting your customer base into groups of those who are likely to buy and those who are not as likely to buy.
SMS Marketing is Lightning Fast
Not only do recipients open SMS messages with a high level of frequency, but they also do so with relative immediacy. Therefore, SMS marketing is a great way to get out news on end-of-the-month promotions, time-sensitive deals, and information on product launches. If you need everyone in your prospective customer pipeline to see a message fast, text message marketing is the way to go. In addition to being an underused channel, it’s a marketing avenue that’s functional in real time.
Drip Campaigns Are a Thing of the Past
Selling to your customers is all about creating a sales journey. What if you could notify your customer contacts of educational information, whether that be to your leads, potential prospects, or to your customer base, to keep them educated and to engage with your brand? Not everyone has the time to read the long emails or newsletters that are part and parcel of modern drip campaigns. Keeping your business relevant is about getting to the forefront of peoples’ minds. Text messages that are succinct to the extent that they serve to remind your customer contacts of your presence are key, therefore. SMS marketing represents the next level in terms of keeping your business relevant.
You Can Increase the Lifetime Value of Each Customer
Marketers often brainstorm ways to maximize customer lifetime value. Often abbreviated CLV, customer lifetime value is a term that refers to the potential benefit associated with reaching out to a potential customer. Everyone knows that it’s easier to re-sell to your existing customer base than it is to prospect for new customers. If you could get some additional sales from customers that you already have, that would function to increase business revenue in a meaningful way. Like an email drip campaign, text message marketing is simply an additional channel that you can leverage to capture additional sales.
The value of SMS marketing cannot be overstated. If you use the tool to its full potential, you can tap into an underserved marketing channel that’s convenient and that integrates well with your other marketing efforts. If your goal is to build customer loyalty without the associated costs of content campaigns, long newsletters, or advertisements that no one sees, SMS marketing is the way to go.