Published on March 11th, 2020 | by Manish Gehlot

Tips to Leverage the Power of SMS Marketing

Not every SMS marketing campaign is created in the same way. Some corporations incorporate SMS campaign fully, in their business strategy, while others see it as a parallel project. Based on a survey conducted by ScanLife, 89% of clients use their mobile devices while spending and 64% of the Americans had a smartphone as of 2015. Given that, which corporation will have the most effective marketing campaign?

If you are already subscribed to the SMS promotion service, here are tips and recommendations on how to increase your business success.

1. Know Your Client

Use the Customer Relationship Management application to measure the achievement of your SMS. For more information on the best available CRMs, see this guide.

Analyze location-based demographics and acquisition history, so you may send the correct messages to the precise customers. If you have a beauty line, do not send a twenty-year-old girl an anti-wrinkle ointment coupon.

Divide your customers for specific promotions. Send mass messages of general transactions and promotions that anyone from anywhere can benefit from.

2. Generate an SMS Marketing Group

SMS promotion campaigns are not DIY. You will need a diverse group of qualified professionals to make the most of your advertising strategy. One or a small number of people can play many of these roles, but you will need: text message marketing expert, retail expert, book coordinators, digital creativity artists, social media specialists, promotions expert, return on investment, analyst discount budget and much more.

These areas should be coordinated, and because the SMS schedule is becoming increasingly instant, the marketing team must communicate regularly about strategies, implementation, and plans and also work closely. The more solid your SMS group, the more the advantages you will get from effective promotion strategies. Finally, you’ll need a service provider to send out your messages. Use a bulk SMS service to transmit your messages easily.

3. Compose Clear Messages

Get direct to the point: you have a maximum of 160 characters to convey your message. If you can, write it in fewer characters. Ensure the message is concise, clear and written in simple English. Avoid shortcuts, symbols and all capital letters.

Do not use open messages. An instance of an open-ended SMS is one that invites customers to sell but does not specify when the transaction ends. The customer has no clue if it’s for a day or month. By setting a particular date when the transaction ends or by placing an expiration day on a voucher, customers are likely to respond because they have received enough information and incentives.

4. Get the Right Timing

SMS is mainly about proximity. It takes an average of three minutes for people to open the texts. Customers’ responses to promotions, sales, and events promoted by SMS are most effective when the last minutes are broadcast. In case you have a shop opening occasion on Friday night, send the SMS on Friday afternoon. In case you have a promotional dinner offer at your restaurant, send it at the end of the business day, not morning hours.

Be cautious not to ride thin ice by directing messages very early in the morning or very late at night. The acceptable schedule is at 8 am and 9 pm.

Perform one-step SMS sync to discover the best period to send an SMS to a specific person based on your previous interactions with your text messages. This extreme trend extends outside the region, affects demographic factors and personalizes marketing to improve results.

5. Focus on the Best Customers

Your best customers are the loyal ones, who purchase constantly, make comments and promote your products among their family and friends. The smart approach is to recognize this circle of clients (influencers) and allocate additional resources and time. They love and know your trademark. So, make use of their awareness to your advantage and send them deeper survey questions than those sent to bulk clients. Also, they are the VIPs in your company, so treat them this way. Reward their loyalty with special deals and additional benefits.

6. Use the Call to Action Keys

Call to action increase client participation in their business SMS messages. This is exactly what you need from them: to share, rate the messages you send, read them, relate with them and act accordingly.

These are some of the winners of a call to action:

• “Show this text”. Requesting clients to earn a discount on the text is a perfect and efficient way to entice them to participate in the promotion. Example: “Show this text with a 50% discount off your dinner tonight.”

• “Click here”. At times, you do not have sufficient space in the SMS message to take in all the info your client will need. You can organize an event and want to add a link to a video or map about the occasion or a link to the website where they may find more details. In this case, the “click here” key will offer a link to the essential details.

• Text to win. Many customers are interested in having the opportunity to win a prize or a gift from your corporation. Requesting them to send text messages to participate in the competition helps increase customer participation. If you are not assuming that you are selling or organizing an event, winning text campaigns are an efficient way to remind clients of your presence and continue to drive traffic and deals.

• Text to vote. Involve clients in mobile surveys to learn about your company’s performance in product quality, terms of service, and prices.

• “Buy now”. It is the ideal CTA button for specific messages. In case you know that a client regularly purchases a specific product, you can direct a text message to promote that particular product using the “Buy now” button to facilitate the purchase.

Conclusion

Regardless of the type of company you possess, you can increase the benefits of your SMS marketing campaign if you spend time developing effective messages, analyzing the demographics of your customers, participating in an SMS campaign team and promoting your text movement in your company.

Tags: best tips, marketing, SMS, top tips

About the Author

Manish Gehlot I am a privacy, security, encryption and software freedom enthusiast. I am into VPNs, TLS security. Recently I also got into technical writings. I am working as a VPN support and consultant at some nordic VPN providers.