Are you looking for a new, cost-effective marketing channel that can let you reach customers directly to boost engagement, draw in more business, and learn more about your customer base? SMS marketing could be the answer.
Text message marketing reaches customers where and how they want to be reached. Most people prefer to engage with their friends and family members via text, but you may not know that they would also prefer engaging with their favorite brands over text. And because customers place a high value on the texts they receive from brands and businesses, these messages are likely to hit their mark. In fact, text message marketing tends to be much more effective than other forms of marketing, like email, and campaigns can yield solid data that you can use to improve your future marketing endeavors.
Text Message Marketing Works
Thanks to the CAN-SPAM Act and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, companies have to get consumers’ permission to send them marketing texts. These laws also govern the frequency of marketing text messages, and, to some extent, even their content. You would think that would be a thorn in the side of any company that hopes to put together a successful SMS marketing campaign, but in fact, the regulations serve to give consumers confidence that companies won’t bombard them with unwanted, spammy text messages.
Customers want to be able to engage with their favorite brands via text message — it’s much easier and less invasive than calling, especially when you’re reaching out for a routine matter like an appointment reservation. As of 2017, 89 percent of Americans want to communicate with their favorite businesses via text. Text message verification rates are 295 percent higher than verification rates through phone calls, and 200 percent higher than through emails. Almost all text messages — about 98 percent — are opened within 15 minutes of delivery, which is far better than you can say for email marketing messages, which are opened at much lower rates.
ROIs for SMS Marketing Campaigns Are High
It costs practically nothing to send a text message — just a few cents. Of course, those few pennies add up when we’re talking about SMS marketing campaigns run through a text message service for business. You’ll have hundreds, maybe thousands or tens of thousands, of phone numbers on your messaging list. But the low cost of text message marketing, coupled with the overall effectiveness of marketing text messages, means that you’ll see a significantly greater return on your investment into text message marketing than you would for other forms of marketing.
It’s not just that customers want to receive your texts. Your existing customers might want to opt into your text messaging program so they can get exclusive offers, insider updates, access to contests, or just the chance to schedule or change reservations and appointments without having to speak to another person or navigate a weird automated messaging system. But new customers also want those things, and they’ll be more likely to become loyal customers if you can draw them into your text message program with incentives and then keep them there with useful messaging content.
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Plus, you can use text message marketing for those urgent, last-minute promotions that might lure impulsive customers. If you own a restaurant, text out your lunch specials to appeal to hungry customers. Marketing text messages reach customers with a sense of urgency, and can influence them to make purchasing decisions on the fly.
You’ll Get Solid Data to Improve Your Campaigns
It’s not always been easy to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, but with text message marketing, you can gather meaningful data about delivery rates, open rates, and response or verification rates. That data allows you to build a deeper understanding of your customer base, and tweak your SMS campaigns to make them even more effective as time passes.
Text message marketing can give your company a means to engage with customers in a way that they’ll really respond to, and that can mean more business from repeat customers, more new customers coming in, and more money in your pockets. Don’t wait any longer to start marketing to your customer base via text. You’ll be glad you jumped on this particular bandwagon!
