The Power User's Guide To SMS Marketing
SMS, the only universal mobile messaging tool, although 25 years old, remarkably simple in comparison, extremely effective as a marketing tool, no other channel can come even close to the reach of SMS marketing services.
- Compatible with any and all mobile phones – 5 billion+ mobile phone users in the world.
- And, then there’s this open rate – 90% of text are read within 3 minutes.
- The response rate is 8 times that of an email.
With such high potential, getting the most of your SMS marketing service becomes paramount. But how can you get the most out of your SMS?
By doing what the power users are doing – tapping the potential of an SMS at every possible level.
The Power User’s Guide To SMS Marketing Services
- Target Individual Segments
Most marketers recognize the importance targeting and customer segmentation hold in a direct marketing campaign. But what even the best of them don’t realize is that with SMS, you can segment your audience into a far smaller category offering them more curated content.
Unlike other direct marketing channels, with SMS campaigns, there’s no additional cost to create multiple versions of the same offer.
- Personalize Your Text – Recipient
Researches show personalized marketing to have a higher response. By simply addressing your customer by their first name you’re demonstrating that you know them and are speaking to them as individuals.
It can be very easily done by using the custom and dynamic fields as it allows marketers to customize the text based on each customer’s activities, interests and personal information.
- Personalize Your Text – Brand
Yes, we have been over this point, but this one here is the other side of personalization – more to do with brand recognition.
The personalized SMS you send helps customers identify your brand easily when you send it with a unique Sender ID that helps differentiate your brand text from the others.
- Personalize Your Text – Language
Yeah, it’s all about personalization and once you start doing that you’ll know why we are talking about it so much.
After segmenting the audience, creating the right sender ID for your brand, next in SMS marketing guidelines of personalization comes language-based.
2,430 web consumers in 8 countries were surveyed to learn about how language affected customer purchasing behaviours. The result says it all:
- 72.1% – spend time on websites in their own language.
- 72.4% – more likely to buy a product with information in their own language.
- 56.2% – the ability to obtain information in their own language is more important than price.
Did you know Quora is available in 9 different languages including Hindi, Wikipedia in 22 and Facebook in 11 regional languages in India?
This is personalization and this is what you need to do. Regional SMS allows you to send text in 18 local languages expanding your audience while hitting them right where it matters. For starters, take your cue from SMS campaign examples.
- Use Custom URL Shortener For Weblinks
With just 160 characters, every one of them counts. Maximize the number of characters by shortening the website address using the custom URL Shortener. Not only a custom short URL is an easy way of maximizing your characters, but it also allows you to track the metrics.
6. The Right Text At The Right Time
A single missed SMS can be damaging and so can be a text sent at the wrong hour of the day. So how can you ensure that your SMS is sent and that too, at the right time? Schedule SMS and send it later.
You can schedule your SMS to be sent later automatically at a future time and date. All you need to do is: Designate recipients – Type your message – Select the date and time – ScheduleYou can also designate a repeat frequency and even ensure you are asked timely before the text is supposed to go out.
- Ensure The Delivery Of Your Text – Each time, every time!
There are times when the timely delivery of your text becomes imperative – take the case of a one time password or OTP (one time password should be sent only via a dedicated OTP platform, we’ll take more about it).
Agreed, there are multiple route partners and if an SMS gets stuck in one queue it can be passed from the second or the third or the fourth… but it is a matter of few seconds that are ticking away and more importantly your customer’s faith in your services and the fear of losing out on an important transaction.
Your SMS needs to be delivered – on time. And, for that the best SMS marketing services include a backup, here it is voice. The voice backup ensures your SMS is delivered, no matter what.
- One Time Password
An OTP or one time password or a means for 2FA, are critical and time-sensitive messages that experienced marketers who follow and sometimes even make the SMS marketing guidelines know should be sent only via a dedicated OTP platform and not from the transactional SMS route.
- Integrate API In Your Workframe
Thanks to APIs, best SMS marketing services can be integrated into your current workframe via plug-in and add-on offering a ready-made fit for various tools and language including CRM, ERP, CMS or other software. This proves to be a handy resource to create an exchange between the customer and the product/service.
- Automation Is The Need Of the Hour
Progressive marketers realize the importance of marketing automation, no matter the size of the organization. And, they also realize that automation is incomplete without SMS.
Integrating SMS automation in a workflow not only saves resources or makes the communication flow independent, it also allows you to create targeted campaigns and automatically gear relevant content and messages based on previous customer communications.
The ROI for SMS marketing services is one of the highest and you should know we are not saying it based on the numbers floating around the web. A progressive marketer likes to explore different angles and go beyond the tried and tested SMS marketing guidelines. To start your SMS marketing services look around for some great SMS campaign examples and try and include the positives in your SMS marketing guidelines.
If you’d like to progress from theory to practical, you now know how power users are using the best SMS marketing services and to guide you more, we’re always happy to help.
Happy Messaging 🙂
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