How to Use SMS Marketing to Boost Your Business?

Marketing is an essential part of today's modern world. These days where competition is constantly growing, businesses that do not have a solid marketing strategy will suffer. Different forms of marketing are available in the market, and one of the most common and traditional forms is SMS marketing. Even in today's world of the internet, SMS marketing is still known to be a valuable choice for businesses.

Search engine marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing are crowded, but in order to get the ideal reach, SMS marketing is the best solution. With SMS marketing, it becomes easier to customize the message you want to convey according to your requirements. Before we go into some other details, let us find out what SMS marketing is.

What do you mean by SMS marketing?

SMS marketing refers to the form of sending promotional or transactional messages to customers. It is a popular form of marketing where marketers leverage the benefit of text messages. These messages can be a valuable choice for businesses to communicate updates and offer an alert for their customers, who have provided consent to send a text message to the business.

There is no secret about one fact that business is all about creating great relationships with customers. However, the reality is that it takes a lot of work to develop such relationships. Therefore, if you want to increase the reach of your customers, it is true that you cannot wait for them. Consequently, it needs businesses to choose proactive solutions and reach the market. With mobile devices readily available in their pockets, companies need to leverage several ways of marketing to reach their potential clients.

Sending text messages along with push notifications, WhatsApp, and email messages will give you increased benefits as you will be able to directly contact the customers. Even people with no internet connection will be able to read your marketing messages as it is over mobile networks. This is one of the most common and effective forms of communication businesses choose to reach their consumers.

What is the basic use of SMS marketing?

There can be multiple ways of using SMS in a business. Here we will share some of the most commonly used cases to help you get a better idea regarding the potential of SMS and how it can be beneficial for any business.

Promotions for e-commerce and retail businesses:

When it comes to sending promotions and coupons to businesses, SMS marketing is chosen as the most fantastic way of driving more people to the website or store. If there is limited time promotion or sales, you will certainly like to send it to as many people as possible. Therefore, choosing to create an SMS marketing campaign can be a great way to communicate with the office.

This is especially true for customers while they are constantly on the go. This way, your valuable customers will also not miss a single update as it is over mobile networks. They will receive all the crucial notifications in time.

Updates on customer orders or Events:

When there are moving parts, or it is about planning or executing an event, SMS marketing can be of great use. You will certainly want more people to attend the event, which is why it is crucial to communicate the message to everyone. Choosing SMS marketing is the simplest form of communicating your message to people and makes it more accessible.

With SMS, it can become easy to communicate cancellations, changes, updates, or provide any other general information regarding real-time engagement, compared to choosing any other channels or emails.

Reminders for appointment:

If your business is associated with providing services and has the availability to schedule appointments, using SMS services can be beneficial. There are chances that your customers will forget the meeting and show up late. It can be frustrating, but it is better to constantly remind your clients regarding their appointment through SMS. When clients show up late, not only is it about wasting your valuable time but also reducing clients.

Therefore, sending reminder texts to customers can be a valuable way to inform them about their appointment. This is a great marketing automation that can be set up for every appointment booking so that the client receives messages on the scheduled time and date.

Internal alerts:

When your business has a huge number of employees, it can sometimes become hard to communicate some messages to everyone. It can be emergency updates, office closures and a lot more. Calling everyone individually can be time taking and prone to making mistakes like missing someone to let them know about the information.

You can also choose to send emails, but not everyone will check emails every time. However, sending SMS guarantees that people will check them. Therefore, it is known to be the finest way of providing alerts and information to people in the organization regarding important information.

What makes SMS marketing so effective?

With the availability of different forms of marketing, the marketing forum is constantly evolving. From the traditional to the advanced forms of marketing, SMS marketing is considered one of the most important and easiest ways to reach customers and communicate your messages. Following are some of the most common reasons why SMS marketing is considered to be highly effective.

The constant growth of smartphones:

It has been studied that over 85% of adults use smartphones. The number is constantly rising with the involvement of new smartphones available at reasonable prices. Therefore, SMS marketing is chosen as the most effective way of reaching customers directly. As SMS does not require using the internet, it can help reach multiple customers. A business can choose to convey a text message regarding the important notification or include a link in the text so that customers can easily tap on the link and visit the website for more information. Most commonly, since SMS does not require using an internet connection, it is not restricted to anyone.

There will be no email marketing Loop:

Even when SMS and email marketing have several similarities in their implementation strategy, they can be the best when you work on both at the same time. Therefore, when there is an essential notification that you want to send to your valuable customers, you can choose to send emails along with using the power of text to send instant messages. Email generally has long-form content like newsletters, but SMS generally contains short notifications. This is also the reason why SMS tends to become a likely choice for customers and a valuable resource for businesses.

Increase rate of engaging:

Engagement of SMSes is considered much more compared to that of email. 90% of the users who are receiving SMS text will read it within three minutes after receiving them. This is also one of the common reasons why it is a critical choice for businesses that want to send valuable information. As it has higher engagement and open rates, most companies choose SMS marketing to improve their engagement rate.

It can be an excellent choice for all the emerging businesses:

Suppose you have started a business and you are trying to operate it in different countries where data can be costly and Wi-Fi is not a common option. In that case, SMS is considered one of the most beneficial ways of communicating. As SMS can be sent over mobile networks and does not require any Internet, it becomes one of the best ways of sharing information. This is a better channel with improved open rates to increase customer engagement.

Which are the businesses that can benefit from SMS marketing services?

As you have to make an effort for digital marketing constantly, isn't text messages can be a great addition. Whether it is about corporate communications or small businesses, SMS is chosen to be the most effective form of communication. It is a valuable way of sending urgent information in the most reliable manner. However, it is valuable for certain types even when it can be a good choice for most businesses. Here we will take a look into those businesses that can have the ultimate benefits of choosing SMS marketing form.

● E-commerce businesses: Whether it is about sending promotional campaigns or providing knowledge of shipping or order confirmation, SMS is chosen to be a common way of communicating information, especially for e-commerce businesses. This way, customers will get all the valuable information regarding their moving goods.

● Service businesses related to appointments: If you have a business that is associated with providing certain services, it requires taking appointments. Whether you are a company providing AC repair service or cosmetic services, you will undoubtedly take appointments in advance from your clients. Therefore, it is a need for your company to leverage the advantages of text messages to remind people about their appointment. This will save you a lot of money and time that is wasted on the clients who appear late or do not appear on the date of meetings.

● Travel agencies: If your business is related to travel, SMS is a vital need. The reason is that your customers are constantly in search of getting real-time information while they are moving. You have to make sure that your customers are provided with real-time data so that they don't get frustrated. This generally includes updates with flight time, weather, alerts, changes in gates, flight cancellations, and a lot more. Travel companies must leverage the potential and can increase customer satisfaction with the use of SMS marketing services.

● Bigger enterprise: Companies that have a huge number of employees with more than a hundred plus might not find email a valuable form of communication. When it comes to sending a piece of urgent information, SMS seems to be a better approach. Making use of SMS for internal communication can be the best way to make sure that all the employees in the association get the information in real-time.

Best practices for SMS marketing:

So now that you have got a rough knowledge of the industries that can leverage the potential of SMS marketing, you must be looking ahead to find out more about the way you can leverage it. Undeniably, there are multiple ways, but here we will also take a look into some of the best practices that you need to keep in mind while creating your SMS marketing strategy.

Ensure that the contacts have chosen to receive SMS from your business:

Text messages are known to be very effective as it is a direct line of communication between businesses to their customers. However, there are specific rules and regulations that companies need to follow when planning the SMS marketing strategy. Without the right approach, meeting the objective can become a real-time challenge.

So, the foremost thing that you have to make sure of is to get permission from the contacts to send the SMSs. You can simply take consent from your customers before sending marketing messages, the way you do email marketing. However, don't forget to always provide them with the option of unsubscribing by giving a link to every text message.

As mentioned earlier, SMS has the ultimate open rates, but sending a message to people who do not require them is not helpful. Therefore, it is required to get opt-in for SMS marketing in most countries.

Make sure to check the message timing:

Compared to social media or email marketing messages, which people generally check a few times when it comes to opening text messages, it is done immediately. These typically serve as urgent messages, but it is equally important for businesses not to make wrong use of them. It is a must for companies to consider the timing of the contacts and not to send messages in on ours.

Your customers would surely not like to get SMSs at 2 AM on the midnight of the running out of coupons on a Thursday night. This will eventually make them irritated and unsubscribe from your marketing messages. Therefore, there are many countries that have laws against it, but making sure of sending SMSes in the daytime is chosen to be the most valuable and communicative.

Make sure to include the name of your company in the messages:

If your business is associated with sending bulk SMSes, most of the providers use a short code to send them. This also means that the contacts might not be aware of the company or the source.

Therefore, it is important for you to let the contacts know about the business from where they're getting the message. You will certainly not want your customers to send promotional codes without letting them know about your business. Remember that when your customers get to see the company is sending them coupons or better deals, they start getting more inclined to such brands.

Don't forget to add a call to action:

Similar to other forms of marketing, when it comes to SMS marketing, you have to keep in mind to follow the most general rules of sending marketing messages. To increase the urge in people, you have to make sure that you use a proper call to action. You have to make sure that you write the call to action correctly so that it drives the click-through rate. Always interlink it so that they can directly visit the website.

SMS can be a great choice to be done with your digital marketing strategy

The best part of digital marketing is that there are several channels that businesses can choose according to their needs. As it is about interacting with your customers, the business depends on the medium they would most likely prefer. However, channelling all the different ways together can create a great communication system. When it is about improving customer relationships, you have to pay attention to improving communication.

Choosing email marketing and SMS marketing channels can be really complimentary. As these campaigns can be created for different channels, SMS can be a better choice for urgent or time. Sensitive information, along with emails, can be chosen when it comes to providing detailed information.

How is SMS marketing different from email marketing?

Email and text marketing indeed have several similarities, but these are two different marketing practices. Of course, one of the pre-dominating differences that can be easily understood between the two marketing strategies is the way it gets delivered to its customers. When it comes to similarities and differences between email and SMS marketing, it is important to have knowledge about it, especially for businesses that are willing to use both in tandem.

SMS marketing:

SMS marketing is most commonly chosen as another common term for text messaging. However, the reality is SMS marketing is more than that. These messages are generally limited to 160 characters and do not contain any other images, which means that it is a must for businesses to create clever and concise text.

SMS marketing is a crucial part of any successful business marketing strategy because of its increased open rates, delivery, receptive audience and timelessness. It is a powerful strategy that is expected to grow to a $12.6 billion industry by the year 2025.

Email marketing:

Email marketing is equally effective, and it is defined as the way of sending marketing messages to customers over there in boxes. It might be referred to as a form of direct marketing message regarding sales or events, but it is also an excellent choice for including specific things like sending different kinds of emails.

Email marketing also has profound marketing benefits, but it requires the right strategy. It is known to be one of the effective choices for increasing traffic and brand recognition.

Does SMS marketing work seamlessly for any business?

You might be thinking about whether SMS marketing would be equally beneficial for your business or not; then, you need to understand the kind of products or services you are into. If you have already been using email marketing, you can easily include SMS marketing with it and create a proper strategy for both to get an increased number of customers. The following are some of the most common reasons why SMS marketing can become a good choice for your business.

● It has higher engagement.

● It can be quickly delivered.

● It provides information to customers in real-time.

● It works as a complement to email marketing.

● It is directly connected with the customers.

Bottom Line:

When it comes to increasing the number of sales, it is important that a business have the perfect marketing strategy. No denying that SMS marketing is a common approach chosen by people for a long time now as companies realize its potential. With the availability of SMS marketing software, you can now send bulk SMSes to your consumers.

However, you have to make sure that you choose an SMS marketing provider properly to send SMSes. Keeping in mind the right time and creating the correct text message is equally essential for a successful mass SMS marketing strategy. You have to keep in mind privacy and confidentiality before sending Text messages.

It is always beneficial to hire experts who have the competency to create SMS marketing strategies. They can make sure to properly use different software and create messages with the most engagement and opening rate.

Frequently asked questions

Which businesses can use SMS for marketing?

Businesses that are related to services or products can definitely leverage the potential of SMS marketing. It is an excellent choice for different sorts of industries that are associated with customers. B2C companies that want to provide coupons, discount codes, reminders, alerts and emergency notices to their customers can take advantage of SMS marketing software.

What are the most common benefits of choosing SMS marketing?

While there are several advantages to choosing an SMS marketing strategy, one of the basic advantages is that it has the most open rates. As 90% of the customers open SMSes immediately, it has increased engagement rate compared to other marketing formats.

Can businesses use bulk SMS marketing with email marketing?

Yes. Businesses that use email marketing with SMS Marketing can have the most advantages. As email marketing can be a great approach to sending detailed messages, SMS marketing can be valuable for sending urgent information.

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