5 Ways to Personalise Your Next SMS Marketing Campaign

Many businesses use SMS marketing in their outreach strategy thanks to how powerful it is as a way of quickly and easily communicating with a large number of individuals. It was reported in 2013 by Forbes that, at the time, more people have mobile phones than toilets. Additionally, research has shown that text messages have an open rate of around 95%, compared with e-mails at 20%. On top of this, it has been found that 44% of consumers actually prefer to receive marketing messages through business text messaging, over any other kind of communication.
However, there are always ways in which this type of marketing can be optimised further. One such way is through personalisation. This may seem like an insurmountable challenge when you are trying to communicate with so many people at the same time. The last thing you want to do is have to send out one message at a time to thousands of numbers. Yet this isn’t necessary – in fact, it is more than possible to add several layers of personalisation to your SMS marketing. It can go a long way towards building up customer loyalty and their desire to buy from you or use your services over another competitor.
Emojis
Reports are showing – perhaps unsurprisingly – that the use of emojis is rapidly increasing across a variety of marketing channels. With the types of graphics available for use constantly expanding, there is an ever-growing repertoire of ways in which they can be used. Not all brands are using the same emojis, so there’s plenty of room to craft out your own identity with these. For example, when people talk with each other in a standard conversation, face emojis are the most popular as they help emphasise self-expression and emotions.
Emoji messages are not picture messages or MMS. They’re about adding a small graphic into the body of an SMS message in order to add further dimension and clarification to what is being said. They can help you enforce a point, or communicate much quicker and easier with your audience. They help to simplify messaging and ensure that the meaning of the communication isn’t lost. This can have a huge impact on ensuring you get the response you’re looking for with your SMS campaign. They also help in catching an audience’s attention, especially as they start to receive more messages from various brands.
It has been found that the use of emojis within marketing messages has increased by 20% each month, on average, during 2017. If you’re not already doing this, it’s time to catch up with the rest of your competitors. Some of the best ways to integrate this in your SMS messaging is to match up the emoji to your business. For example, if you sell pizza, make pizza your emoji. If you are a greengrocer, use the new array of vegetable emojis. If you are a holiday company, use the aeroplane emoji. However, it’s also important to know your audience. Younger people will understand and appreciate the value of emojis more so than an older generation will.
Adding the customer’s name
When sending out online SMS messages, another way of personalising your campaign is through adding the contact’s choice of name within the contact list for your SMS marketing campaign. This is one benefit of sending out via online software, rather than direct from a mobile phone. When using an online application to send out your messages, you can (very cleverly) add the customer’s name automatically into the body of the text message using merge tags. This just requires an extra amount of organisation, ensuring you have their names accurately listed in a spreadsheet with their numbers prior to mailing out to them.
The message sent out will then be different for each user, so it will feel as though you are communicating with them directly on a one-to-one level. This is also something that can be done with e-mail, although it isn’t seen as often in business text messaging.
Adding someone’s name always helps to make a campaign stand out, and can quickly grab their attention. It will also feel as though you are speaking with them directly. It is always worth running a few tests before you send anything, however, as it has the potential to go wrong – and this could look much worse than not doing it at all. The last thing you want is a text message to go out that says ‘NAME’ where it should be personalised.
Location, location, location…
Another great way of personalising your campaign is through audience segmentation, if possible, and then messaging them based on their demographics or location. This does require a level of data capturing at the point of getting their phone number – e.g. finding out their age, gender, and address.
However, it can then help you reach them in a much more meaningful way. If you are based in various places all over the country, it will allow you to send them offers or deals that only relate to their area, so they’re not having to read a lot of unrelated material. It can also help you track which areas are most profitable for you, or what each area responds to best so that you can continue doing this or can improve on it.
Calls-to-action
In splitting out your audience in this way, you can also target them based with specific calls-to-action, for example, based on whether they have shopped with you recently, whether they haven’t signed up yet, and so forth, to make the message mean something to the action you require from them. It will also make more sense to them that you’re sending the message and will relate to their relationship with your brand.
Key phrases
When personalising your campaign, it is also important to think about your audience and what key phrases would jump out to them most. Consider their interests, hobbies, typical places they’d shop or visit, and try to reach out to them in a considered way. You might find that your website analytics play a key part in finding out what these phrases and trigger words might be. For example, if you are a fitness centre reaching out to members who haven’t visited in a while, you may want to include words such as ‘lose weight’ or ‘healthy weight-loss’ to capture attention.
Get in touch
To find out how we can help you run your next SMS campaign successfully, contact us now.
Related Articles
Are Recruiters “really, really bad” at Texting?
We work with many recruiters who use our SMS messaging to communicate with their candidates. In today’s world, text messaging is one of the best ways to ensure you can reach people with information, especially when it’s time critical. But are recruiters using SMS in the correct way?
SMS Messaging Helps New Mothers Stay Healthy
New mothers face many challenges in the days and weeks following the birth of their child. Any parent will know most of them well with lack of sleep being a primary one. But many women are also at risk for other conditions that could be prevented by regular monitoring - enter SMS.
5 SMS Marketing Ideas for Gardeners & Groundskeepers
5 Ways SMEs and Enterprises Can Use SMS Messaging
Technology has changed how companies operate in recent decades. It’s changed how employees work too. Successful companies are taking advantage of these changes, specifically mobile phones and SMS messaging. Read our blog to see five ways you can use SMS messaging in your business.
What Political Parties Can Teach Us About Great SMS Campaigns
SMS marketing has come to be a crucial element of most businesses’ marketing strategies, and there is plenty of received wisdom within the marketing world as to how to get the most out of your SMS messages. So it might seem like there is not a lot that the world of politics can teach the world of business about SMS. But then again, there probably is.
5 SMS Marketing Tips for Opticians
SMS Marketing For The Equestrian Sector
The British Equestrian Trade Association’s findings from their National Equestrian Survey 2015 put the economic value of the equestrian sector at £4.3 billion of consumer spending across a wide range of goods and services, with the average spend per horse during the same year at £3600. It is an incredibly varied industry encompassing all types of businesses from sole traders making a living in remote areas to multinational companies. Their customer base typically tends to be busy people who lead largely outdoor lifestyles so the obvious and most effective means of communicating with them is by mobile phone, yet very few equestrian businesses appear to be utilising SMS text messaging marketing. So how could businesses in this sector benefit from this method of marketing?
Why SMS Marketing is Perfect for the Automotive Industry
Most car dealerships and garages already have almost everything in place to start an effective SMS marketing campaign. When customers go into a car garage to have a service or a MOT done, they almost always give the dealership their mobile phone number. The reason for this is simple: if a customer is bringing their car in to get checked and they don't want to wait around for any work to be carried out, they'll simply head into town or run a few errands, until the garage gives them a call on their mobile to let them know the work has been done. That means most garages will have a healthy amount of mobile numbers already in their database, but quite often a garage will overlook the potential that their database of contacts presents.
SMS Messaging Can Make Employee Relations Easier, Faster, and More Efficient
Managing employee relations is possibly one of the hardest aspects of a corporation's day to day activities. There’s usually a ton of paperwork, regulations, checklists, and procedures to follow for each employee. This is especially true when new employees join a company. How can SMS help?
Using SMS Messaging to Take Customer Communication to Another Level
When people talk about SMS marketing they usually refer to the one-way message with coupon codes for a sale. Or potentially a two-way message requiring the customer to respond with a keyword in order to get a deal. And that is customer communication for sure. It’s also marketing. But it’s just the very basics of what SMS messaging can do for your business.