SMS marketing strategy along with the right tools and just the right strategy, any business can implement a similarly powerful text marketing strategy. Getting the customer till your store is one thing but keeping them is altogether a task and that too the hardest one and while technological advancements are quick with their advancements, Most of them still have a long way ahead of them before they can provide a one-stop solution. Hence, you need a solution that delivers what it promises whether it’s a good ROI or keeping things simple for you.
The uses of SMS marketing in eCommerce are no longer constricted to just normal product announcements or order confirmations however those are equally important. SMS marketing campaigns are now used to improve the fostering relationship between the customer and the brand.
And with that, SMS marketing has an impressive 98% open rate, compared to 20-30% open rates achieved by email campaigns.
What Is SMS Marketing?
SMS(Short Messaging Service) Marketing is a permission-based text service used for promotional purposes. SMS marketing uses the same workflow as email marketing, only instead of sending your customers an email, you send a text message with a character limit. Well, that’s the whole point, you want the customer to read the precise information without having to go through their noisy email inbox.
Why SMS Marketing Over Emails?
As we have known email to be the king of marketing, all thanks to the phenomenal ROI it brings along. But, ever since SMS marketing came into the big scene and created a niche for itself where the businesses can directly connect with the customers. Having said that we wouldn’t say that email marketing is a fad, it is very much in use still everywhere but, the high speed and flex of the SMS are creating the renaissance for the tool.
Advantages Of Using SMS Marketing
Doesn’t cost your customer anything
One of the biggest advantages of SMS marketing is its a cost-effective way of engaging with customers. It is extremely affordable for small businesses.
Fresh & Untapped
While many eCommerce sites are really hitting it with text marketing, it still hasn’t hit the masses. Many people still haven’t even considered it. This offers you an edge over many competitors who likely haven’t taken SMS marketing too seriously yet! Many brands are aware that texting is a quick way to reach their customers, but they’re still figuring out how to best utilize it for their company’s specific needs. By starting SMS marketing early, you’ll have more time to learn what works for you and see results for the undeniable ROI.
Easily Trackable
Examining SMS marketing campaigns can be tracked in a similar way you track your Google Adwords or Facebook campaigns. You can get analytical insights about what works and what does not. Your conversion rates will rule what you do next.
Engagement Rates
Considering how the masses, especially the Millenials open their phones as soon as they open their eyes in the morning the engagement rates are bound to be high. Talk about the click-through rates or the open rates, they soar higher than the email any day given the convenience factor. The stats show that all engagement over text messages happens within the first 5 minutes.
Let me draw some comparisons here; The average click-through rate for an SMS marketing campaign is around 36%. Compare that to email click-through rates and it falls to the floor at just above 3%. That is insane!
Fast & Easy To Personalize
Extending a personalized gesture of addressing a customer by their first name on SMS can boost your response rates by making the customer feel valued. Another great thing is that they have super fast transmission.
How To Get Started?
SMS marketing is a powerful and affordable tool to get things in motion. To know read more:
Decide On Your Goals
It’s always a good idea to take baby steps when starting with something new in order to understand the challenges you might be facing in the beginning. Start small and simple. Don’t set too many targets at once and try to run after too many objectives at the initial stage of your SMS marketing campaign.
Now, your goal could be anything, just set an eye on one for starters. Be it the number of subscribers you want to target or you want to run a campaign for a specific product in order to drive more sales for it. Whatever your goal is just to stay focused.
Service Updates
Each message brings value—especially if you’re including links with delivery status updates and since it is increasingly trending for large shipment and delivery companies to offer a complimentary SMS update to the customers expecting their parcel. This use of SMS improves the customer experience to a great extent as it conveniently alerts them of the exact time slot they need to be available at.
This could also be used in cases where your store has a new product just launched. Keep your customers informed with an SMS update
Have A Clear Call To Action (CTA)
SMS campaigns require powerful, concise messages with a call to action, that you want your customers to take. It allows you to measure the success of your targeting when the customer goes ahead in the exact workflow as you decided for them.
Provide Customer Support
Businesses do not always have the time to respond to messages that customers send. However, it would be bad practice and offensive to ignore their attempts to reach out to you in case they have doubts. For this reason, Automated Acknowledgment Messages are crucial. This type of automation involves setting up a customer service channel that requires minimal input from the company’s side. The SMS platform responds automatically based on keywords it detects in the customer’s message.
Abandoned Cart Reminders
A simple SMS works like a magic for abandoned shopping cart recoveries. Some people don’t really abandon carts deliberately. They may have been distracted while shopping and forgot to complete their purchase. In this case, you just need to nudge them with a gentle reminder about their purchase. If your eCommerce strategy provides this phenomenon wherein you can identify abandoned carts, you can set up text message alerts then, it will work wonders. If your game is on point, you’ll already be doing this via email. However, sending a personalized text reminding them to pick up where they left off is more powerful. If you do this, make sure you give hem a direct link to their cart so they don’t have to hover on the complete website to continue down the funnel.
Ask For Feedback & Purchase Reviews
In case you are actually wanting to better your customer experience whether in-store or online, then SMS review or feedback polls make a brilliant deal. It is a popular practice for companies to text customers after they have made a purchase, or if they called a customer service line or received delivery in order to rate their experience about the quality of service being provided. This is done by replying to a text with the relevant number on a scale of 1 to 5. This information is extremely valuable and can give you a real insight into the necessary improvements required at your end to take your brand to the soaring heights.
You can also send out a poll to customers or maybe a short survey asking them what they think about your most recent product launch, brand redesign or anything else you feel that would help you with customer engagement and acquisition or retention for that matter. Remember that it should include everything from how convenient it was to navigate through your site, to your product availability, and ease of check out. Once a person has elected to receive texts from you, it’d be a good idea to set up an SMS survey to auto-drip out 10 to 20 minutes after they’ve completed their purchase. This gives them some “relaxation” and doesn’t make them feel “plagued”. Be sure to keep your survey BRIEF, yes that’s what is vital here else it will just not interest the client contextually. Additionally, you may want to focus on rewarding each person for taking your survey to boost participation.
Send Personalized Rewards & Messages
Just because you’re using an automated marketing tool to send your messages to your customers doesn’t mean you can’t make the experience PERSONAL. A Salesforce study found customers were happy to share more personal data in exchange for personalized offers. One simple way to achieve this with automated technology is to send them birthday wishes along with a special reward. The beauty of fetching data about your customers when they checkout, is how using that information can help you personalize your text messages, which definitely results in higher engagement rates alone.
Send your customers personalized birthday gifts, such as discounts coupons on their favorite products. Nothing more says you’re paying attention and making the whole experience for them a great deal. Tailor-made coupons make your customers feel like a million bucks and add value every time.
Add Promos
Marketing your business no matter how big or small, can be tough in the competitive and ever-growing eCommerce world, but automated marketing with bulk SMS continues to crush other channels. A benefit of automated marketing is that you can quickly share real-time promotions. You can even make your group message personalized with group merge messaging. It’s pretty straight forward too. You’re simply doing a text blast to your subscriber list with some type of offer that drives people to your website eventually. Some use cases would be – get creative and draw from special events like holidays and big shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
People love being the first ones in the row and know about discounts on products they love. SMS marketing is a great way to grow your eCommerce business by giving you the opportunity to notify VIPs about your promotions.
Direct Customers With Links
In order to increase your store sales, you need to provide your subscribers with a link to your product in your SMS message. This will increase the chances of conversions because subscribers don’t have to go to your entire website to look for the product. Click-through rates on texts are around 50% and so it is also a great way to keep their interest. You can provide a direct link to the product or product category that you’re looking to push. Because you want to make things as easy as possible for your customers and not hard. Take that load of site navigation out and send them directly to where they need to be.
Key Takeaways
- Write simple, short and understandable texts
- Schedule well-timed reminders
- Choose a perfect provider
- Segment your users
- Grow your subscribers
- Reach out to people without smartphones as well
- Develop an urgency always
