Why Should You Use SMS Marketing Services?
There are a variety of reasons why email marketing has lost its effectiveness. Beyond the accumulation of messages from numerous companies that email users receive daily, spam filters and automated categories in many popular email services have made this form of marketing less visible than it was previously. Text messages, on the other hand, are almost always read. The contrast between emails, which are rarely opened, and texts, which are almost always read, is startling. While email is still useful for reaching a large number of people and sending large-scale messages, it is not as effective for delivering tailored news and offers to customers promptly as it used to be.
In addition to it being free, SMS marketing strategies are an affordable option for small businesses, and it has eight times the response rate of email, as well as a 98 percent open rate, it is not device-dependent, ensuring that all of your customers can view your marketing messages, and it doesn’t matter where your customer is located — all countries provide network coverage for SMS marketing services.
E-commerce and SMS
Mobile development is accelerating. By 2019, it is expected that the total number of mobile phone users will exceed 5 billion. Over the past four years, the proportion of online traffic coming from mobile devices has nearly doubled.
Furthermore, shopping from mobile devices is expected to continue to grow; it is estimated that smartphones were used in more than $1 trillion in retail sales in the United States in 2013. And with the rise of the retail omnichannel experience, buyers are increasingly moving between devices as they research, compare, and purchase goods. As a result of the current economic climate, people are increasingly turning to eCommerce for solutions to obtain what they require. SMS marketing for small businesses can play a significant role in increasing customer engagement with your company. Because people are making more and more purchases on their smartphones, it makes sense to market to them on the same device.
Customers can be notified of a variety of messages via SMS or in-application notifications. Customers who visit the sales platform and make purchases as a result of special limited-time offers that are based on current pressing needs can be great leads for your business. Customers can be notified when certain items are back in stock if certain items are in high demand and there is a shortage of stock for a particular item. Customers benefit from having the most up-to-date information about safety and health policies, which is updated regularly.
SMS and Chat Commerce
As a bonus, the combination of e-commerce and SMS strategy creates the ideal platform for your company to expand into the rapidly growing chat commerce market. Customer satisfaction is highest when SMS, WhatsApp, and any other messaging channel that the customer prefers is available to them, so choose a provider that allows you to scale your business across multiple channels in the best possible way.
Getting your e-commerce store started with SMS marketing services
Text message marketing is a low-cost and effective way to get into the mobile market. To take full advantage of SMS marketing automation, you need to keep a few things in mind.
Select a service provider
When selecting an SMS provider to use for text marketing for small businesses, there are multiple things to consider:
What will the cost of the service be?
Find out the specifics of the operational costs and the price to send and receive SMS messages. Using an automated marketing service provider such as Clickatell, you can get a detailed breakdown of the costs associated with your campaign.
Pay attention to how often emails are delivered and whether they bounce.
SMS providers should provide statistics on the number of messages that have been delivered. The return on investment from SMS is very good; however, undeliverable or bounced messages are a waste of both time and money.
Where do they ship their products?
You may serve customers from different states or even different countries if you run an online business.
Simple integration with your existing applications should be a top priority for your SMS service provider. Also important is gaining access to analytics to improve the effectiveness of your send and receive SMS marketing services. When it comes to your target audience, for example, a specific offer may perform better than another.
Focus
The goal of your SMS marketing campaign might be to increase sales of a specific product, or it might be to grow your VIP list to send and receive SMS marketing campaigns. It’s important to stay focused on your goal, whatever it may be.
Create a Strategy for Engagement
In any marketing channel, the path to greater customer engagement isn’t always simple. There are, however, effective tactics for connecting with e-commerce customers that can be used.
Consider including an opt-in box at the bottom of your website’s checkout page. A mobile number is a highly sought-after resource; give your customers a compelling reason to share theirs — opt-in forms that include incentives can attract 600 percent more subscribers than those that do not.
Create an email list or a strong social media presence and use your keywords to drive traffic to those platforms. Watch your list grow as a result.
SMS Marketing Strategy for Small Business Marketing
Following your preparations for a successful SMS marketing campaign, it’s time to concentrate on optimizing your message delivery and delivery rates. Here are a few tried-and-true strategies for text marketing for small businesses.
Notifications and Updates
Is there a new product in your online store that you’d like to promote? Send and receive SMS updates to your customers to keep them up to date.
Allowing your subscribers to sign up for general alerts and updates is a simple way to get started with the SMS strategy, and it will save you time and money.
To keep customers up to date on promotions, Virtual Designs, a mobile marketing agency, employs SMS marketing techniques. The SMS platform from Clickatell is highly rated by Virtual Designs for its ease of use, dependability, and affordability.
Unique promotional offers
Brick-and-mortar stores are well aware that SMS marketing is a highly effective method of informing customers about sales and special offers. For e-commerce customers, special offers and coupons have a strong pull as well. When Julep, an e-commerce beauty retailer, sent out a nail polish coupon via text message, customers who clicked on the link experienced a 17.4 percent purchase conversion rate.
Benefits that are specific to you
Just because you’re sending your messages via automated marketing doesn’t mean you can’t personalize the experience for your customers. Customer willingness to share more personal data in exchange for personalized marketing offers was discovered by a Salesforce study. Simple ways to accomplish this with automated marketing technology include sending birthday wishes to subscribers along with a special offer or incentive.
Engagement boost
SMS is a great way to build personal relationships with customers.
Snapple company sends random facts to your phone.
Sign up for Snapple’s Real Facts to learn:
Peaches are almond relatives.
Mosquitoes love people who eat bananas.
These messages may not immediately convert customers, but they can build meaningful relationships with them.
Live Promotions
It is possible to quickly share real-time promotions with the help of automated marketing, which has several advantages. Make use of special occasions such as holidays and special shopping days such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday to inspire your designs and illustrations.
Conclusion
In the competitive e-commerce world, marketing your small business can be difficult, but automated marketing with bulk SMS marketing continues to outperform other channels year after year. While text message marketing may appear to be too intrusive at first, it is extremely effective when used with caution and following the wishes and expectations of the customer base. Customers who have a direct line of communication with businesses as they transition to eCommerce to continue serving them can be enticed to purchase from those businesses and meet their needs from wherever they may be.
