Retailers Can Use SMS Marketing For More Than Just Coupons
Discount codes, limited time sales, special exclusive pricing…you may have seen, or used, all of these in a text message campaign. For retailers, it is the most obvious and direct use of SMS marketing. It works and it’s cost effective. But are there other ways you can put your SMS channel to work for you? Yes, there are. Let’s take a look at three of them.
Your Order Is On The Way!
Who doesn’t like to get messages like that? Whether it is a simple order confirmation, or a shipping confirmation, everyone likes to know their order was received and successfully processed. A simple message like that can help reduce calls to customer service to check on order status, and ultimately improve customer relations while potentially saving you money.
I Think You Forgot Something...
Abandoned shopping carts are the bane of online retailers. It depends who you ask, but abandonment rates average between 60-70% industry wide. If you can recover even a small percentage of those sales, then your profits will skyrocket. To do this, you’d need to integrate your shopping cart or back end with an SMS service (or have some very detail oriented staff to do it all manually). You’d also need rules to define at what point in the shopping cart process a text message would be triggered. If someone quit at the last screen, perhaps they had a problem but really wanted the buy. Offer them another chance or offer to help. Someone who just put stuff in their cart but didn’t go any farther in the process might just be window shopping. A text reminder would be annoying and unhelpful to them.
Come Back! It's Here For You.
Some retailers offer the option to receive email notification when an out of stock item is back in the store. Adding the option for someone to request a text message instead offers yet another way to bring visitors back into your store. And given the personal nature of text messages, if someone provides their mobile number to receive updates they must really want the item. Hopefully a text message from you will help complete the sale in your store before they buy it somewhere else.
These are three great ways that SMS marketing helps you to keep in touch with your customers. But before you dive in, just remember to ensure you have them properly opted in for these messages. And always offer a way to opt out in each text message. If you do that, SMS messaging can make for very happy retailers and customers.
Related Articles
5 Reasons SMS Should be a Major Part of Your Marketing Mix
81% of mobile phone users use SMS or text messaging and 90% read text messages within three minutes of receipt. But it's not just a convenient way to chat with friends, fix a rendez-vous or remind people to do things; it has also become a powerful marketing tool for businesses large and small, national or global.
How to Increase Website Traffic with SMS Messaging
Read some practical advice on how you can use SMS messaging to drive more traffic to your website. Include a shortened url in your SMS marketing message that sends the recipient to a special offers page or a how-to video or even a top-up page for consumables. But make sure the page is mobile friendly.
How to Use SMS Messaging to Improve Customer Service
Global brands are increasingly taking advantage of a Short Message Service (SMS) to connect to customers and improve customer communication and engagement. This trend is taking root amongst small companies too, as they grasp the potential to not only communicate effectively in real-time but use SMS to save time and money in their customer relations procedures.
Build Brand Loyalty with SMS Messaging
In a world where your competition can be found in just a few seconds, instilling brand loyalty in customers is a greater challenge than ever. One way to proactively reach out to customers is via SMS. The personal nature of SMS messages, combined with high read rates, gives you the opportunity to develop relationships with each customer.
Always Follow Through on Your SMS Marketing Promises
The other day I received a text message promising me ten days of deals. All I had to do was reply “DEALS” to the shortcode each day and they would send me a coupon for their service. This was great I thought, because my kids had been asking about the company for a while. A deal was just what I needed to get me to let my kids have their way...
Insights Into The Best SMS Marketing
It’s been said that to be successful at something, you need to find someone that’s already done what you want to do, then emulate them. You don’t need to create or rewrite the rulebook every time. This is true of marketing too. While it’s a creative field, there are tried and true examples of what works. This is why case studies are so important to helping you understand how something like SMS marketing can work for you.
Top Three Things Retailers Should Do to Keep Customers on Their SMS Opt-In List
You've run a successful SMS opt-in campaign for your retail store. Now that you have your list, do you have a plan to keep them from opting out? Wait, you mean there's more to this than just sending out coupon codes? There is if you want to keep your customers from opting out.
How SMS Can Help Your Local Business Optimise Your Local Campaign
One of the great advantages of SMS: it's completely trackable so you know exactly how your campaigns are engaging your opted in customers and clients. And if you’re a small business, operating in a specific geographical location, then that local knowledge can be invaluable in targeting your campaigns to a local audience.
Work 24/7 Without Being in The Office! The Benefits of SMS Scheduling
In our demanding, 24/7 world it is difficult to stay on top of your SMS marketing campaign but with scheduling you can ensure you are getting your message to your audience whatever the time.
How to use SMS for Highly Targeted Marketing
While brevity might be one of the keys to good advertising, perhaps the most important is to make sure your message reaches the right people. The goal of targeted marketing is not to bombard so many people that some will inevitably listen, but rather to target and nail down your core demographic.