If you’re like most business owners, you consider online marketing to be a priority at the moment. It seems like we’ve completely abandoned most forms of direct marketing besides email.
It’s time to turn back to the basics.
Let’s remind ourselves: what is SMS marketing? It’s a promotional technique of direct contact with the lead through text messages. Small businesses can benefit a lot from that strategy, especially when they want to make a time-sensitive offer.
But as any other advertising technique, SMS marketing has to be done in the right way.
10 Tips: How to Do Text Message Marketing the Right Way
1. Understand What SMS Marketing Is and What It’s Not
Short Message Service – that’s the term behind the SMS shortcut. It says a lot: if you plan to engage in SMS marketing, you should use it for brief messages that won’t disturb the recipients. Don’t even think about sending multiple messages in the same day. Don’t bother the recipients with messages about the same thing over and over again.
Be brief and go straight to the point.
2. Consider Using Social Media Messages, Too
When you offer leads to become part of your SMS marketing campaigns, they might have their doubts. You can offer a completely harmless alternative: Instagram direct messages.
They will get notified about these messages, and you can send the same offers that you’d make via SMS. The best part is that they will also get Instagram messages on Mac if they use an app for that. This expands your message through multiple devices.
Slowly, you’ll start gaining their trust and more of your followers will subscribe to the SMS campaign.
3. Use a Reliable SMS Marketing Service
If you plan to hire an agency to tailor and perform this campaign for your brand, it has to be the most reliable one. It should enable mass messaging to your entire audience in a matter of minutes. The messages will be automated, so you won’t need to send them one by one.
But you’re sharing the private details of your audience with this service, so it has to be the most secure one you can find.
4. Use SMS Marketing for Time-Sensitive Offers
Although they have access to online messaging services, 92% of smartphone users still rely on SMS. When they receive one, they treat it as something urgent, and they tend to read it in the first few seconds after they get the notification. They get their phone to check who it is from, so they might as well read it.
This is why text message marketing is perfect for sharing a time-sensitive message, which requires the recipient’s immediate action. You can notify them about current discounts and offers that will run out if the user doesn’t benefit from them right away.
5. Personalize the Messages
96% of marketers agree that they can improve the relationship with their customers by relying on personalization.
Including the recipient’s name in the text can do a lot. Yes; they know that it’s an automated message. But it feels different when someone directly addresses them. You can send an SMS for their birthday, and include a special promo code that’s valid for a week.
6. Track the Performance of the Campaign
Social media platforms give you reports, which show the effectiveness of your promotions. How will you track the effectiveness of the text campaign?
These are the factors to measure:
- The rate of responses from the overall number of messages sent
- The amount of money your business earns vs. the amount of money you spend on the campaign
- The number of leads who sign up for the campaign vs. the number of recipients you projected
If you use a great text marketing app like ProTexting, you’ll get analytics that are ready to read. But if you plan to execute your own campaign, pay attention to those factors!
7. Use the Message as an Opportunity to Get Website Visits
Most of your recipients will get the messages on smartphones. They can tap a link when they see it. Use that opportunity, and include links in your messages.
A text message doesn’t give you too much space to talk about your offer. The link can replace a lot of text and visuals. Then, you can measure the clickthrough rates.
8. Segment Your Audience
Segmenting is similar, but not the same as personalization. It means that you should categorize the audience in groups and send messages that are tailored to the needs and wants of each group. You may categorize them by age or by the type of product/service that they tend to use.
9. Evolve!
Each report that you analyze gives you info on how to improve this campaign. Learn your lessons!
- If you don’t get the results you expected, try something different. You can offer unique promo codes for repurchases on the products that individual users like.
- Perform A/B tests. You can send two different SMS messages to two groups. By tracking the links, you will see what method worked better.
10. Enable an Easy Opt-Out
First and foremost, you must get the recipient’s permission before you start sending messages. The second most important thing is to offer an easy opt-out.
They may use one or two of your offers and then get tired of them. You don’t want to keep bugging them. Enable them to exclude themselves from your SMS campaign by sending a simple message: STOP.
Don’t Doubt It; an SMS Marketing Strategy Can Be Effective!
… You just need to tailor it properly.
Let’s sum up the tips you just got:
- Get educated, so you’ll understand what you’re dealing with
- Combine SMS with Instagram messaging
- If you plan to work with a service, choose the right one
- Send time-sensitive offers
- Personalize the messages
- Track the campaign performance
- Include links
- Segment the audience
- Progressively build your campaign
- Enable a simple opt-out for the recipients
It’s not complicated at all!
