Gone are the days when small businesses could rely on single-channel marketing to build relationships with ideal customers and sell to them. Surviving the fierce competition requires thinking outside the box and searching for marketing channels that will yield more positive results with fewer resources. Many small businesses invest much in email, social media, and search engine marketing, while paying little attention to SMS marketing.
In this post, I will discuss five reasons your small business should consider SMS marketing.
What is SMS marketing?
SMS (short message service) marketing is the process of sending text messages that are promotional in nature. Businesses use it to engage and communicate with their target audience to sell their products and services. It doesn’t require a lot of technical know-how like other forms of marketing.
SMS marketing is similar to email marketing where can send an email newsletter, promotional emails, etc. In fact, platforms like SendPulse allow businesses to combine SMS campaigns with other channels like email or conversational chatbots for various messenger and social media platforms.
Let’s look at the five reasons you should consider using it.
Higher open rates
According to simpletexting, 60% of customers check their text message notifications within 1-5 minutes of receiving them. Compare this to the 16.97% average open rate of emails. A customer that hears a sound or feels a vibration in their pocket notifying them of a text message is likely to swipe down their phone to take a look.
This is unlike emails, where a customer may only check them at a convenient time.
A higher open rate boosts engagement and increases chances of the customer taking action.
Short and concise communication
In today’s marketing, every business has something to sell, and people tend to have a shorter attention span than goldfish. The sooner you get to the point, the higher the chances of them reading your content. That’s where SMS marketing shines and the 160-character limit becomes an advantage. With SMS, businesses get creative and ensure the content of their message is short and concise. Customers engage because they have to spend less time reading.
Cost effective
SMS marketing is cheaper than other forms of digital marketing. Cloud telephony companies offer bulk SMS services through their platforms or API. You pay per number of contacts in your list. You can’t compare it to email marketing, where you subscribe to monthly or yearly renewable plans. Whether you email your list or not, you must renew your subscription to continue to use their services. This is different from SMS marketing, where you can pay only when you want to text contacts in your list.
Lower spam rate
Customers receive SMS on their phones after they voluntarily give their phone numbers to businesses. This is unlike email marketing, where some businesses get the email addresses of target customers in unethical ways. That naturally lowers the rate of unsolicited messages, which rarely get to the user. An email or message that is marked as spam is useless. The target audience doesn’t see or engage with it, which means the resources spent on it can’t yield any return.
Integrates with other marketing campaigns
SMS marketing doesn’t just operate in isolation. You can integrate it with other marketing campaigns to boost lead generation and sales. A common example is SMS marketing integration with Facebook campaigns.
You can send an SMS code to your contacts for them to use to participate in a product promotion on your Facebook page. When they click on the link, they are redirected to your Facebook page, where they will enter the code to participate in the promo.
Also, you can retarget potential customers on Facebook using their phone numbers. Because some of your contacts have registered their phone numbers when they signed up on Facebook, you can import their phone numbers and retarget them.
In conclusion, SMS marketing is worth trying because it is cost effective and has a higher open rate. Relying on a single channel for marketing is like putting all of your eggs in one basket, and is never a great strategy.
