How to Run an SMS Marketing Campaign in Shopify

How to Run an SMS Marketing Campaign in Shopify

In a highly competitive environment, how are you planning to skyrocket your sales and bring in a high return on your Shopify store?

No strategies, yet? Then this article is the best for you.

To scale the new level of achievement in your marketing strategy, we put forward SMS marketing for you.

Unlike other marketing channels, with a 98% open rate and a 5x click rate, SMS is the best fit immediate channel for Shopify stores to get noteworthy outcomes.

With SMS marketing, retailers can understand the customer journey and obstacles their customers face, which can entail better Shopify conversion rates.

Why have an SMS Marketing Campaign in Shopify?

SMS marketing for Shopify is an out-of-the-box strategy to boost store sales and business performance.

Take into consideration the following key features of an SMS marketing campaign in Shopify:

  1. Recover Abandoned carts: On a mobile device, the average cart abandonment rate is over 80%. It seems that mobile users are quite impatient when it comes to long checkout processes, unclear shipping details, and unresponsive web design. To overpower this situation, SMS marketing campaigns send automated SMS messages to the customers when they abandon the cart to recover lost sales.
  2. Retarget existing customers: Around 4.2 billion people are texting worldwide and as Modern inbound marketing suggests meet the customer where they are, so SMS marketing is the best place to re-target. All the segmented customer databases by your Shopify store can be used to keep customers engaged with SMS marketing campaigns.
  3. Increase lead generation: According to 61% of marketers, generating traffic, and leads is their top challenge. This challenge can be vanquished with the use of pop-up forms and Shopify SMS campaign codes to encourage customers to opt into campaign lists.

Besides this, SMS marketing campaigns have a high success rate and proven ROI for Shopify retailers. It can also promote and support other marketing channels like email and social marketing. 

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7 Steps Game-plan to Run an Effective SMS Marketing Campaign in Shopify

If you are new to the world of Shopify SMS marketing, you need to learn the fundamental steps of running a campaign to understand how it works.

Consider the following steps on how to integrate SMS marketing and run a successful campaign right away: 

Use Your Brand Name

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SMS with a brand name or a string of random numbers, what do you think customers would prefer more?

To promote brand recognition, using the brand name is extremely important. 

With the Sender ID feature, you can personalize a text message with your brand name. It instantly creates a unique connection with your recipients and directs them to the targeted company page they are looking for.

To begin this step, start the message with the (CompanyName) tag or include it in the message. This way, customers will instantly recognize whom the message is coming from.

Make it Personal

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Nothing gets a customer’s attention more than their name in the message.

Adding a personal touch to marketing texts is critical — specifically if you don’t want them to feel like a generic marketing text.

It gives customers a hint that the message addresses them.

For this step, use the {CustomerName} tag in when composing the text message template.

Be Concise and Catchy

Customers lose interest while reading something long-winded and prolix.

The Concise message conveys a clear and direct message to the customer within 160 characters.

It helps grab and hold your customers’ attention and make a lasting impact on them.

The main objective of this step is to be considerate of the customer’s time and interest.

For an effective SMS campaign and to increase your read rates, share offers with the customer in the form that they can understand why they have received the text and don’t consider it spam or irrelevant.

For instance, “Friday sale 25% OFF on apparels” or “Thanksgiving special discount: Get 20% OFF”.

Link your Site Properly

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Links sent via SMS campaigns are sent as hyperlinks, in a notable format that they take you directly to your company website. 

Before inserting the link in your messages there are few points to keep in mind :

  1. Do not forget to paste your site as https://myshopify.com as many mobile operating systems do not recognize the format myshopify.com or www.myshopify.com so your link might not color up and thus customers won’t be able to click it.
  2. The link must be at the beginning or at the end of the message as if it is placed in the middle, a preview will not be displayed. 
  3. Avoid adding more than one link in the same message to be able to visualize the preview. If there is more than one link, the preview visualization system will not be available.

Shorten your Link to Save Space

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Using a shortened link in SMS messaging doesn’t only lessen the number of used characters, but also permits you to estimate the efficiency of marketing actions and analyze the recipient’s behavior.

A shortened link is simply a short URL address of your company website that redirects customers to the website. In this, the long URL address will be shortened and will be shown in SMS in this form

You can use the Rebrandly to shorten the  Link using the custom domain name. 

With Rebrandly link shortener, the app will automatically shorten your link and will permit Rebrandly to track your campaign results for customers who purchased via their mobile devices.

Pair the Link with a Discount

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Unique discount codes are a great booster for converting as many customers as possible using text messages.

This step enables you to automatically add unique discount codes to the links in your SMS automation and campaigns to enhance revenue and customer relationships.

With this link, customers don’t have to enter the discount code as they will be directed to the targeted page with an in-built discount coupon.

On the bottom left checkbox, click the “Add discount code”. This will provoke a pop up with all your accessible Shopify discount codes displayed.

You can select the discount code from the dropdown and click on the “Apply” discount code.

When a discount code will be applied then it will be displayed in the brackets.

With this pairing, the customer will not need to enter the code at checkout instead the code will get automatically applied when the customer clicks your checkout link.

Verify the Campaign Parameters 

When you are done with the 6th step then show up the last vital step to analyze your overall step and test your campaign parameters.

In this step, you will see a screen with a campaign summary before sending the campaign out.

Draw attention to the following sections:

  • SMS Count: To not pay any extra charge, make sure it is on 1 
  • Shorten Links: Should be Yes (recommended)
  • Unsubscribe Text Included: Yes (recommended)

If everything is fine, click Yes and proceed. If you need to make some changes, then click No and cancel the process.

Also, including campaign parameters to the target URLs you use in your SMS campaigns, you can gather data about the overall efficiency of these campaigns, and also find out where the campaigns are more effective.

Bonus: Use Emoji

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In today’s age, people are 4 times more likely to respond to a text message with an Emoji.

Emojis are extremely powerful as they add personality and emotion to the most prosaic text messages, and they make them more fun and memorable.

You can stimulate campaigns and give them an edge by selecting between a ton of emojis. Once you select the emoji, just press on it and it will appear in your text message. 

Customers can also respond to your message with an Emoji.

For example, your customers can send you a burger (🍔) emoji to opt into your SMS list. 

Final Thoughts

The golden rule of inbound marketing is it should be a win-win situation for everyone. While you convert leads into loyal customers, they should also receive a great deal of value and assistance from you. 

With the right approach, SMS marketing campaigns in Shopify can create powerful inbound marketing strategies to streamline your communication with customers to recover lost sales, understand customers, and increase customer engagement. 

If you are looking for an Omni Channel marketing strategy to engage with customers at each stage of the customer funnel to help increase conversions and ROI for your Shopify business, then try our robust SMS Marketing and Automation app, Wigzo for your Shopify store. (Free Demo Available)

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Rashi Kundra

Rashi Kundra

Rashi is a literature graduate from Delhi University. She is a content writer at Wigzo. In her spare time, you will find her meditating while grooving on EDM beats.

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