So you have your business all set up and your products are well crafted with plenty of images and videos available for your potential customers to view, yet, your website traffic is still minimal. Therefore, you want to get your products and services in front of new eyes. While automated email marketing campaigns are heavily relied on by many major companies, email conversion onto an e-commerce website isn’t usually very high. A report from Mailchimp notes that the average open rate is just 21.33%.
Since email conversions have decreased significantly, the one method that continues to grow in both popularity and conversion rate is SMS messages, which stands for Short Message Service or a “text message”. SMS messages are reported to be opened by an average of 99% of recipients. On top of that statistic, about 97% of those SMSs are read within the first few minutes of delivery.
Is SMS Truly Effective?
By reaching out to customers via text message or “SMS”, marketers can inform customers about any upcoming campaigns, sales, discounts, special offers, new product launches, and anything else that may be relevant to your business. This also includes sending personalized text messages while deciding how often and how detailed each message should be. Like email campaigns, you can tailor each text to suit your customers’ shopping habits and interests.
As many as 75% of consumers prefer special offers via SMS over email and are therefore more likely to initiate action on your online store. At this point, SMS isn’t just effective with consumer interaction but is now expected by most online shoppers.
Benefits of SMS Marketing:
1. Instant Message Delivery
Now that a majority of the world and 97% of the U.S. has a smartphone, consumers can receive text messages and alerts at any given time, no matter their location. SMS marketing plays a huge part in customer convenience and is something that should be utilized more often by businesses looking to boost their sales and customer base.
Since most text messages are opened and read within the first three minutes of delivery, direct communication with customers can result in an immediate purchase or website browsing.
However, people that do not have smartphones (but maybe flip-phones or old models) can still receive text messages from your company. This makes SMS marketing one of the most accessible and effective tools for instant promotional delivery to your customers.
2. Personalization and Awareness
Since text messages are sent directly to a customer’s handheld device, it’s already more personal than other forms of communication (especially since the only text messages people usually receive and send are to and from family and friends). Since your SMS marketing messages are being sent directly to your consumers’ cell phone message inbox, you’ll have more freedom to use a casual approach with friendly and modern language, instead of stern, traditional sales language. You can craft your SMS messages as if you send a relaxed but well-written message to a friend. This allows you to build a personal relationship with the consumer.
Implementing effective SMS messaging is a great way to attract and engage customers throughout their customer journey, thus, increasing brand awareness. Since the average person checks their text messages quite frequently, you can consistently keep them informed with SMS messages. Consistent messages that have a personal flair to them can result in trust and loyalty with your consumers. With this is mind, they’ll trust your brand enough to recommend your products or services to a friend or family member – further increasing and expanding brand awareness.
Conclusions
Since SMS marketing is inexpensive compared to other marketing solutions like email marketing, you can send plenty of messages directly to your customers in order to keep them engaged and informed about your brand. From there, you can count on your text messages having a high open and response rate, therefore, you can expect to see a higher return on investment. SMS is a fantastic tool to add to your overall marketing strategy.
