4 Tips for SMS Marketing Success

SMS marketing is one of the most effective and efficient marketing channels currently available, enabling businesses to directly communicate with their target customers. SMS campaigns can be built within a matter of minutes, giving companies the opportunity to react to information almost instantly. SMS messaging is a cost effective way to communicate with a large customer base, as it requires only the cost of the text.

Business text messaging also has an incredible 97% open rate, thanks to the nature of the channel. The messaging is text based, so doesn’t need to be constructed by a team of designers and have the process slowed by delays from requested design adjustments. With so many benefits, it’s no wonder SMS marketing is rapidly becoming one of the most popular channels brands are using to communicate with their customers.

If you’re considering building your first SMS marketing campaign, or you have already ran a campaign but achieved limited success, read on to see how you can build an effective SMS marketing campaign to achieve your business objectives.

1. Respect your customers

This might sound like an obvious point, as every business should be treating their customers with respect, but it’s a great starting point for every SMS marketing campaign you build. SMS text messaging has the advantage of being a very direct way to communicate with customers, but remember that you are directly entering their personal space by texting their phone, so you must ensure your respectful with the information you send and the time you text.

Don’t waste your customers’ time by sending offers or information they will be sent on other channels; keep the offers or discounts you send via SMS messaging unique to that channel. That gives your customers an incentive to opt into text messaging from your business, and gives you a very straight forward way of measuring the success of your SMS marketing. You’ll be able to analyse the number of recipients of your SMS discount and the number of take ups, which will give you an indication of how effective that channel is when you are trying to connect with your customers.

You must always ensure you follow compliance guidelines around SMS marketing and ensure you have given your customers a chance to opt in or out of marketing via text from your business. Whilst you might be reluctant to give customers the option not to receive text messaging from your business, if you make it beneficial to your customers you won’t need to worry about people not opting in.

2. Integrate information

In every SMS marketing campaign you send you should be giving information which requires your customers to take action. For example, you might ask customers to respond to your text or to click a link within the text to go onto the next stage of conversion. Whatever it is you want your customers to do, you need to be very clear in your SMS messaging, so that the important message you’re sending isn’t missed.

Once you’ve decided on the action you want your customers to take, you need to ensure you’ve made it as simple as possible for your call to action to be completed. It’s very straightforward to include a short URL in your text messaging next to a clear call to action to encourage your customers to visit your website. You need to ensure that, once you have included your web link within your SMS messaging, that your site is optimised for mobile usage. Nothing is more frustrating than clicking a link on your phone, then visiting a site that can’t adapt to the different usability allowed on a mobile.

Another way to integrate your SMS campaigns with other marketing activity is to use the same language in your text messaging as in your online and offline marketing. You could text your customers asking them to use a certain hashtag on your social media channels which could enter them into a prize draw, communicating with your customers across multiple channels.

3. Make it personal

One of the biggest benefits of using SMS marketing to communicate with customers is that it’s an incredibly direct form of marketing. Your message will land directly in your customer’s inbox, usually alerting them you’ve got in touch, and will be opened by the intended recipient. For all these reasons, SMS marketing is simply one of the most effective methods of mass marketing available.

As the nature of the communication is so direct and personal, your text messages need to acknowledge this. Addressing your customers personally using their name is a far more credible way to communicate with your customers than sending a generic message. If you’re going to enter into someone’s private space on their phone, you need to make it personal enough to them so that it doesn’t feel invasive. By communicating on a personal level with your customers, you will help your brand appear friendly and approachable, instead of a faceless company. This will help to increase the levels of trust your customers feel towards your business, increasing both their likelihood to purchase and the chances of them returning to your business in future.

4. Use being time bound to your advantage

Creating time-sensitive SMS marketing campaigns is a great way of increasing the number of conversions you see. You could use your text messaging to customers as part of a ‘VIP’ service, one they will receive exclusive deals and offers from, which is likely to increase the number of people you have signing up for SMS campaigns from you in the first place.

By adding a sense of urgency to the copy of your messages, you will increase the chances of people converting and taking the action you want them to – whether that be clicking a link to visit your site or showing their text in your store to receive a special discount. Test your messaging, too, to see which time frames produce the best results. This information will help you to increase the effective of future campaigns.

If you’re ready to create a SMS marketing strategy and launch your first campaign, contact FastSMS today.