With the rapid adoption of technology like internet services and mobile phones, the conventional advertising scenario has changed dramatically and now even small businesses can compete very easily with their larger competitors using digital communication channels like websites, email, social media, and SMS. While there has been a huge hype regarding the use of websites and social media, SMS, which has been around ever since the early days of mobile phones and has been a topic of conversation at many leading business industry conferences as visible in the Shoptalk agenda, has been largely overshadowed even though the growing penetration of mobiles the world over is making it even more effective.
SMS – A High Impact Communication Channel
Despite the fairly wide penetration of the Internet, you can never depend on it for access all the time, especially in remote areas. Accessing the internet with your mobile phone also assumes that you have a smartphone, which despite its popularity, is not used by everyone. Text messages have a very high acceptance with more than 75% of consumers who have opted-in to receive the messages finding them to be okay and non-intrusive. What marketers find most interesting is that SMS messages have the highest open rate at 98%, which means that customers are sure to receive and read your message. According to studies, a whopping 90% of the messages are read with three minutes of being received. They also elicit a response rate that is more than twice that of email, phone calls, or social media. Now that you are convinced about the power of SMS marketing, here are some tips for maximizing the success of your SMS marketing campaign:
Form an SMS Marketing Group
Text messaging may seem to be extremely simple conceptually and indeed, it is when compared to email or social media marketing, however, it is still not exactly a DIY job. To get the maximum performance from your text messaging campaigns, you will need to assemble some experts who are familiar with the concepts of conducting an SMS marketing campaign, retailing, social media, promotions, coordinators for on-ground activities as well as discount budget specialists. These specialists need to get together and work very closely to evolve the optimum plan for campaign execution and deliver the maximum return on investment. The more professional and expert your team, the better results you are likely to achieve.
Know Your Target Audience
Even the best of text messages will have no impact unless they are sent to the right people who are interested in your products or have the profile that is ideally suited to use your products. You can use your earlier sales data to find out details of previous purchase behavior and the demographics of the people who are your best customers so that you can construct the ideal profile of your prospects. According to https://www.forbes.com, it is vital to think who your audience is, what they want, and segment the database accordingly. If you are a local business, you need to use location parameters to profile your audience because all the messages that you send to people outside the ambit of your marketing reach are a complete waste of effort and money. You should try to ensure that your messages are appropriate for the recipients so that the chances of a purchase happening are maximized. The better you can define your audiences, the better your ROI will be. When you have a huge database, you should be able to segment them according to multiple parameters so that the text messages are always bang on the target.
Compose Clear Messages
SMS messages are restricted to just 160 characters so it becomes very important that you express what you want to in a language that is clear, unambiguous, and crisp. It is important not to use abbreviations despite the temptation, as they might not be universally understood. Sending messages in all caps is a strict no, as they tend to be extremely irritating to the recipients. Do not leave messages open-ended; for example, if you are announcing a sale, mention the start date and the end date so that the customer knows the duration of the promotion.
Include Powerful CTAs and Attractive Incentives
Because you want the recipient of the text message to respond to the message, you must use a compelling call-to-action to raise the level of engagement. By doing so, they will value your messages more and interact with them. Even with the limitations of the character count, you should build in attractive incentives to make the CTAs more compelling. For example, if you are a restaurant owner promoting a happy hour menu, you can mention that by showing the text message, a customer will get a handsome discount. If you want to display the menu, you can add a “click here” in the message to take the recipients to your website.
Send Messages at the Right Times
The element that sets text messages apart from other methods of communication is the most people read messages immediately after they receive them. This makes text messaging extremely valuable, as recipients tend to respond better to promotions, sales, and events promoted through SMS with impulsive behavior. When you send the messages regarding some events that have a particular time associated with it, it can be better to time the message transmission closer to the event time rather than sending it days in advance when it can be easily forgotten. Of course, as an ethical marketer, you should not disturb recipients with messages that arrive late at night or too early in the morning. By analyzing your data, you can easily find out what the responses have been at different times of the day, and settle on the time when the customers respond the best. If you have a huge database, it may be even worth the effort of asking your subscribers for their preference of the time of contact and address them accordingly.
Conclusion
SMS is indeed a very powerful tool and given the increasing penetration of mobile phones all over the world, it is unlikely that the impact is going to be any less in the days to come. As a marketer, you can make your SMS marketing campaign extremely effective simply by keeping in mind the nature of the communication and certain ground rules that increase its impact.