3 Tips on Making SMS Messaging an Integrated Part of Your Marketing
One of the key takeaways from the Salesforce 2015 State of Marketing Report was that when mobile is integrated into your marketing strategy, everything performs better. That makes sense when you think about it. Mobile is a unique channel that provides you a direct link to your customers. When you’re able to use that channel to help your overall marketing goals across all channels you should see improvement.
But while mobile marketing is viewed as successful on its own too, it’s clear you’ll see more benefits after it’s integrated. But integrating a new marketing channel into your existing strategy isn’t always easy. Here are three tips on how you can start your integration using SMS messaging.
Plan for it. You’re probably pretty practised at looking at your marketing channels and deciding how one can be used to support another. Mobile is just the same way. You may be unfamiliar with it and how SMS messaging works, but if you view it as “just another channel” it makes the process easier. And if you need some ideas and guidelines on how it can work for you and fit in with your other channels, check out our guides or business sector pages for inspiration. Then when your next campaign comes, you’ll be able to integrate SMS into the overall plan and see your improved results.
Start quickly and easily. If you use a CRM system that uses email for communicating with customers, you can get started sending SMS messages using the same system. Our Email to SMS solutions enable you to send text messages to customers without the need to learn new software or the time it takes to integrate directly into an application.
Work towards a complete solution. Chances are whatever software you’re using to manage your marketing enables you to see all your channels (or most of them). The best way to make sure SMS is part of the overall strategy is to ensure it is also part of your processes – and accessible within your existing software. A full integration into your marketing platform also opens up many other possibilities for what you can do with the information you have on your customers. You can use our Application Programming Interface (API) for this type of integration.
What might an integrated campaign look like? Here are just a couple of very simple examples:
- Drive website traffic to a specific promotion with text messages containing links to the mobile versions of the web page. Given nearly 100% of text messages are read you’re likely to see a much improved response over email – meaning more traffic to the promotion page.
- Use emails or print materials displayed in store to promote the SMS opt in campaign by including all the information they need to join via text message (such as a keyword and shortcode). The more channels you use to advertise the opt in campaign, the higher number of subscribers you’re likely to get. You can also offer incentives for sign-ups: special deals, competitions, product reviews, whatever works in your industry sector.
Adding something new to an established marketing routing might seem like a lot of trouble, but in the end the Salesforce survey results prove it’s worth it for mobile marketing.
Related Articles
3 Common Errors That Will Ruin Your SMS Marketing
You worked hard to get those customers on your SMS marketing list. But now they are unsubscribing like crazy, or maybe just no longer responding to your messages. What happened? Maybe you’ve committed one of the following common, but easy to fix, errors that can completely drive your customers away.
Advice and Predictions for the Future of SMS Messaging in 2017
SMS messaging took off in 2016. And that’s saying something for a technology that’s been around twenty-five years. Come take a look at the past year and see what we think 2017 will bring to the industry and how you can use it in your business.
5 Ways Restaurants can use SMS Marketing for a Festive Full House
Increase Conversion in Your SMS Marketing by Doing This One Thing
Good copywriting is something marketers understand. But it's easy to forget the basic principles when running SMS marketing campaigns. You only have 160 characters after all (or 453 characters if you're using fastsms). While there are many elements to successful copywriting, there's one element that is often either overlooked or over-used. What is it? Urgency.
How to Choose the Incentive for Your SMS Marketing Opt-In Campaign
You’ve decided to try out SMS marketing. But you’re stuck on that first step of choosing the offer for your initial opt in campaign. Don’t worry, if you know the story of Goldilocks then you’ll understand just what to do after reading this blog.
12 Great Quotes to Start Your 2018 SMS Marketing Campaign
Proof SMS Messaging Gets Results: Giveaways and Contests
Companies use contests and giveaways all the time. It turns out that doing them over SMS messaging works really well, and offers some advantages over other channels. Read our blog to see the types of results various companies achieved when using SMS giveaways.
9 Factors That Prove SMS Marketing Really Works
Marketing is all about finding the balance between gaining a personal relationship with a client and communicating in a professional manner. SMS marketing is all about experimenting with that balance and has now become a highly popular form of marketing. Here are 9 reasons why SMS marketing actually does work.
SMS Marketing – 4 of the UK’s Best Ever Campaigns
Discover how to come up with an SMS marketing campaign in this article which looks under the surface of some of the UK's most successful ever SMS marketing campaigns. Whether you are looking to boost revenue, improve customer satisfaction or help your brand stand out with a unique and memorable promotion, this article shows how a simple approach to SMS messaging can work wonders for your company.
