Text marketing and why you need to start doing it.
Text messaging or SMS (short message service) marketing, is an often overlooked method of staying in touch with your customers and keeping your brand front and center.
There are several ways to incorporate these quick, short and concise messages into an overall marketing campaign. You may have already experienced businesses that are using text messaging in conjunction with email marketing, specific campaigns, or even to provide reminders of product reorders or to send a follow-up message after a purchase.
The Importance of SMS Marketing
The beauty and the functionality of text messages is what makes them such a positive as part of a marketing campaign. According to market research, approximately 95% of text messages are read within 5 minutes of receipt. This is amazing when you compare the fact that Salesforce reports that only 33% of marketing emails are opened, even with a unique and appealing subject line.
The advantage to text messaging is there is nothing to open and no decision to make. As soon as the text is received it is fully visible, which provides a great opportunity to provide keywords, offers and promotions to drive customers to respond.
Incorporating texts into your marketing
There are several ways to attract attention, drive traffic to business websites, or to even connect customers with your social media sites through SMS programs. A few examples any business can use include:
- Thank you text messaging after a purchase with a suggestion for a related, similar, or complimentary item.
- Using text messages to get people to text back to become part of a complete SMS campaign. This will require the use of a “shortcode” a string of numbers, that identifies the subscription. There are shared shortcode options that are very low cost, or for larger companies it may be more important to have their own. These shortcode messages are also used to get people to sign up and receive a gift, perhaps a free download or a discount coupon for a first purchase.
- Providing reminders of upcoming events. These could be in-person events such as product launches, book signings or even trade shows, or it could be a reminder of a live video streaming event, the posting of a new video or perhaps new content or products added to your website.
- Checking in on customer satisfaction and reminding customers to leave a review of the product on the website.
- Notifying customers of a new email campaign and highlighting what it offers customers to boost read rates for the email to follow.
Using text messaging is simple, interactive and it is much more favorable for most consumers than email marketing, making it an important aspect of an over sales campaign.
