SMS Marketing May Be the Best Marketing Channel for 2021
Internet technology creates numerous pathways to help businesses connect with potential clients. Email, social media, website SEO, search engine ads; they’re all different channels consumers regularly use to access information, and they’re all valuable in their own right for marketing your business. But have you stopped to consider the device your customers are using to access those channels? This is the benefit of SMS (text message) marketing. Among the many marketing channels available to you, SMS marketing is the only one that gives you direct access to your customers’ smartphones.
What Is SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing is a form of marketing that uses text messaging services as the primary channel. A business that uses SMS marketing hedges available tools to send short marketing messages to consumers’ mobile devices. Those messages could be anything: a simple greeting, a happy birthday message, or an outbound link with a discount deal.
How Does SMS Marketing Work?
SMS marketing shares many similarities with email marketing. Consequently, the two are often compared because of this.
Marketing via text messages requires you to:
Acquire customer phone numbers (usually via consumer opt-in)
Add these numbers to a contact list database
Connect the database to an SMS marketing service
Create SMS marketing content
Send your SMS marketing content to your list of contacts or created subgroups
If you’ve used email marketing in the past, this should sound familiar to you. The only difference is the channel you’re using to communicate. Instead of sending your marketing messages to email addresses, you’re having them sent to customers’ mobile phone numbers.
SMS Marketing vs Email Marketing
According to Charles Golvin, research director at Gartner for Marketers, “SMS remains an effective, yet underutilized, mobile tactic.” Although SMS marketing is similar to email marketing, it has some distinct advantages over email that make it an option you should strongly consider.
Better open rates. Open rates are the percentage of recipients who opened a piece of marketing material. Email marketing is often lauded for its high open rates of around 20%. Yet SMS marketing has open rates that can vary between 45% and 98%. That’s incredibly high for any marketing channel.
Quicker campaign enrollment. Unlike other marketing channels, email included, it takes only seconds and just two steps for people to enroll in an SMS marketing campaign. All they need to do is send a text to the enrollment number you’ve created, then reply “Y” or “N” to enroll.
Get directly into inboxes. Unlike with email marketing, you don’t have to worry about your text messages landing in the wrong folder. Most mobile devices push all text messages into one of two places: a single inbox, or spam. This is in stark contrast to modern email marketing, where your emails could end up in the primary inbox or half a dozen different inboxes of folders, including spam or junk. If you’re not in the primary inbox, your chances of getting read decrease. Return Path found that over 50% of Gmail users check their “Promotions” tab either once a day or once a week.
Broader reach. Most of us have email addresses, but few of us check our emails as regularly or as actively as we do text messages. Additionally, a Provision Living study found that the average American spends 5.4 hours per day on their smartphone. That cuts across all age ranges, including Boomers, who also spend 5 hours per day on their mobile devices.
Excellent for bottom-funnel marketing. Nurturing prospects at the bottom of the funnel is a critical marketing step toward conversion. Although all areas of your funnel should be actionable to a degree, the bottom of the funnel necessitates immediate action. SMS marketing is far more focused on persuading recipients to take action in response to your message. Conversely, email marketing is often far more informational than it is actionable, leading to a lower ROI.
Unsure whether SMS or email marketing is right for your business? Contact Madison Ave Media today for a complimentary consultation.
Do Mobile Carriers Block SMS Marketing?
Mobile carriers might block your SMS marketing attempts, but only if you go about it the wrong way.
The best way to keep your SMS marketing messages out of the spam filter is to get recipients to opt-in before you send them any messages. There are many ways to go about this, but you’ll likely want to use a third-party service that allows users or consumers to sign up independently.
The SMS marketing service Community is a great example of this. All you do is advertise your number alongside your other marketing content. Consumers then send a text to the number, and they’re added to your Community channel. From there, you can communicate with recipients individually, as a whole, or as select groups based on different criteria, such as age, gender, or location.
How to Get Started with SMS Marketing
You don’t need any other marketing channels to get started with SMS marketing. All you need is a service that will automate the sign-up and opt-in process for you. From there, you’ll need to create your marketing messages. However, SMS marketing works best when used in tandem with other types of marketing, including content marketing (since you’ll likely find yourself sending links to your contact list).
A few tips to consider before you begin SMS marketing:
Focus on opt-in marketing. You’re more likely to get hit by carrier filters or have recipients mark your emails as spam if you try to market to numbers that did not opt-in.
Try short codes. Some SMS marketing apps send your recipients messages with a 10-digit phone number. However, those numbers are also more prone to getting blocked by carrier spam filters unless users have already opted in or you’ve gotten your sender ID whitelisted. You may also want to consider a service that uses SMS “short codes”. Short codes (usually 5-6 digit codes) are pre-approved by carriers. They’re great for sending out marketing materials to a large volume of customers.
Don’t just send offers. Try to build a community with your recipients. This is what the Community SMS marketing service was built on, and it’s an effective strategy for any business. You can incentivize people to join or stay within your SMS community by offering value added content such as exclusive content, special offers or discounts, or giveaways
Keep messages short. Treat your SMS marketing similar to social media posting: short and actionable.
Avoid spammy messages. Carrier spam filters analyze style and content. Avoid sending messages with all capital letters, lots of symbols, excessive punctuation, unbranded links (such as shortened links using Bit.ly), and aggressive marketing language.
Personalize your voice. SMS inherently feels more personal. Use that to your advantage by offering a personal and relatable voice to your brand. Send photos or memes (as long as they’re inoffensive), use emojis, tell jokes. Give your SMS community members a reason to feel connected.
Eager to get started with SMS marketing? Contact Madison Ave Media today for a complimentary consultation.