How to Make the Most of Christmas with SMS Marketing
As the most important holiday in the UK calendar, Christmas is a key time for businesses of every shape and size to get their message out. Whether you are selling a product or service or simply out to increase brand recognition, this is the one time of year that it matters more than ever that your brand is seen to be joining in the spirit of things – and SMS Marketing is the obvious solution. So how can businesses and brands use SMS Marketing to increase profits and build their profiles this Christmas? Here are some ideas you can try.
1. Christmas Competitions
Let’s admit it, everyone likes to be in with a chance to win – especially at Christmas. SMS Marketing lends itself perfectly to text competitions, often known as ‘text to win’. The basic concept is that your audience participates in a contest or sweepstake to win a prize by sending an SMS message from their phone to an SMS shortcode – ideal for combining your SMS and print marketing campaigns. With fast entry and instant confirmation, it is one of the easiest possible ways for customers to enter a competition and has proven incredibly popular – especially at a time of year when it is natural to offer gifts.
A text to win campaign is a great way to increase engagement with your brand and ultimately drive traffic to your business, be it physical, online or both. They are great for high profile publicity campaigns and can generate a great deal of hype if well thought out.
2. Join the club
Another great way of fostering continued customer loyalty is to invite them to join a special VIP club by signing up to your SMS Marketing database this Christmas. It really is as simple as it sounds, but it is a well-known fact that customers who feel they are part of a special ‘VIP’ group are highly responsive to offers and incentives and likely to become repeat customers. Studies also indicate that the cost of retaining customers is considerably lower than that of acquiring new customers – and with SMS Marketing the overheads of maintaining a loyal customer base couldn’t be lower.
Retail stores, in particular, have an outstanding opportunity to build a text club database from their festive foot traffic and find out more about the individual consumers who walk into their store and what they think about their products and services.
3. Updates and alerts
Text message alerts (also known as SMS alerts) are a great way to engage with customers with relevant information which keeps your brand top of their minds and makes sure that you do not vanish into the crowd as brands compete to capture the Christmas market. Text messages work for a variety of purposes – from telling customers about your Christmas product or seasonal sales, bursts of news or simply keeping customers informed about an area of interest. SMS alerts can be used on their own or as part of a larger Mobile Club program – see point 2 above.
The key is to encourage as many customers as possible to register their mobile details with you at the earliest possible stage of their relationship – and the checkout is a great place to do this. If you have the budget available for the staff, why not even get somebody on the shop floor to capture sign-ups. Just be sure to comply with the PECR rules concerning SMS Marketing.
4. Customer surveys
Let’s face it, in the modern world everyone has an opinion and people love to share them. So rather than see it as a threat, why not cash in on it in your SMS Marketing strategy? SMS powered customer surveys are a great way to engage consumers in the retail environment, as well as giving you valuable feedback on products or even the customer experience. With retail environments becoming more interactive than ever, mobile marketing is totally natural for developing complete consumer interaction.
Consumers carry their phones with them practically 24/7 and check them almost constantly, so interacting with them in the retail environment is as easy as tapping into their mobile device. A customer survey can be a great opener to invite them to join your SMS marketing list. To incentivise participation, consider offering a reward scheme such as a prize draw. It really is a win-win scenario.
5. Season’s Greetings
SMS Marketing doesn’t just have to be about the hard sell. As we mentioned at the beginning, it is a hugely versatile tool for increasing brand exposure and market penetration at this busy time of year. An incredibly simple way to use SMS Marketing is to simply send a message of Season’s Greetings to your customers. By simply appearing in their SMS inbox, you will keep your brand at the forefront, and may well remind customers to check out your products or services simply because they have been reminded of you.
There’s still plenty of time to get your Christmas SMS Marketing campaign underway – give our award-winning team of experts a call now on 0800 954 5305 and you’ll be ready to send in no time with the UK’s leading provider of low-cost business bulk SMS Marketing bundles.
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