SMS marketing is a form of mobile marketing that allows businesses to send promotional messages, alerts, and other types of communication to customers via text message.
It’s a quick and easy way to reach people, and since most people carry their phones with them everywhere they go, it’s a great way to stay in touch with customers.
What kind of things can we send through SMS marketing?
There are a lot of different things you can send. You can send promotional offers, discounts, coupons, reminders, alerts, and more. You can also send links to your website or social media pages, or even ask for customer feedback. The options are really endless.
How to get started with SMS marketing
The first thing we need to do is build a list of phone numbers.
You can ask your current customers if they’d like to opt-in to receive text messages, and you can also include a sign-up option on your website and social media pages.
Once you have a list of phone numbers, you can use a service like Twilio to send SMS messages.
How do you make sure your SMS marketing efforts are successful?
Firstly, you need to make sure you’re sending relevant and valuable content to our customers.
No one wants to receive a bunch of spam or irrelevant messages, so you need to make sure you’re providing value with every message we send.
You should also make sure you’re not overloading our customers with too many messages.
It’s important to strike a balance and find the right frequency for sending texts.
Finally, you’ll need to make sure you’ll using compelling calls-to-action and make it easy for your customers to take action.
How do you track the success of your SMS marketing efforts?
There are a few different metrics to gauge the success of your SMS marketing.
Some key metrics to keep an eye on include the open rate/delivery rate (although not all providers know the open rate), the click-through rate, and the conversion rate.
In most countries, you only really know the delivery rate – that is, how many of the SMS messages were delivered. Be mindful that people with their phones off (or roaming overseas) may not have their SMS delivered until they are back online.
The open rate tells us how many people are actually opening and reading our messages, while the click-through rate tells us how many people are clicking on the links we include in our messages.
The conversion rate tells us how many people are actually taking the desired action, whether it’s making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.
There are a few other things to keep in mind:
- Make sure you have permission to send text messages to the people on your list. It’s important to only send texts to people who have opted-in to receive them.
- Keep your messages short and sweet. People are more likely to read and act on shorter messages, so try to keep your messages under 160 characters if possible.
Best SMS Marketing platforms
- Omnisend — Take the shortcut to revenue growth with Omnisend’s easy-to-use platform for ecommerce email marketing, SMS and automation.
- SimpleTexting — The Only All-In-One Text Messaging Service – easy, fast and affordable to send SMS marketing campaigns or engage in 1-on-1 conversations with customers.
- Sendinblue — Take your digital marketing to the next level.
- Aloware — Contact center software for inside sales teams. Turn more leads into deals with Aloware.
- Moda — Grow your eCommerce business with high-converting email and SMS, backed by data superpowers!
- Twilio — Connect with customers on their preferred channels—anywhere in the world. Quickly integrate powerful communication APIs to start building solutions for SMS and WhatsApp messaging, voice, video, and email.
- Ontraport — CRM, sales and marketing software for small and mid-sized businesses.
- Plivo —
Plivo is a cloud-based communication platform that enables businesses to build, scale, and manage voice and SMS applications. It provides APIs and SDKs to integrate voice, messaging, and other communication features into applications.
- BirdEye — Birdeye is an all-in-one customer experience platform that helps businesses improve customer satisfaction, increase sales, and boost online reputation. It offers customer feedback management, customer surveys, online reviews, and reputation management tools.
- MessageBird — en/
MessageBird is a cloud communications platform that enables businesses to communicate with customers via SMS, Chat, Voice and Video. It helps companies to reach customers quickly, reliably and securely, with features like automated messaging, two-way conversations and analytics.
- Customer.io — Customer.io is an automated messaging platform for tech-savvy marketers who want more control and flexibility to craft and send data-driven emails, push notifications, and SMS messages.
- Sinch — Connect with customers and make engagement personal with our simple, programmable SMS, voice, video, & verification tools. Find out more information today.
- Infobip — Drive deeper customer engagement with secure, personalized communications across SMS, RCS, Email, Voice, WhatsApp, and more.