SMS has retained its relevance in the ever-changing, dynamic digital marketing industry. It enjoys high open and engagement rates across various businesses in different industry verticals.
According to Gartner, SMS open rates have gone as high as 98% compared to emails 20% across different digital marketing campaigns. That’s not all; research undertaken by Digital Marketing Magazine showed that 75% of consumers could prefer to receive promotions via text messages.
The ultimate goal of any SMS marketing strategy is to send the right message, to the right subscriber, at the right time. However, the truth is that no single SMS marketing campaign or hack will deliver messages that check all these boxes.
Effective SMS marketing Strategies take time and effort.
Here are 10 of the most SMS strategies that all successful SMS marketing campaigns have:
- Run time-limited Promotions
- Discover Insights of Your Subscribers
- Use Tags to Create Personalized Messages
- Create Alerts for Upcoming Sales
- Deliver Actionable Value to Subscribers
- Offer Exclusive Offers to Subscribers
- Set clear expectations
- Segment Subscribers to Better Target Subscribers
- Collect Feedback From Your Subscribers
- Collect Testimonials and Reviews
1. Run time-Sensitive Promotions
Time-sensitive promotions invoke FOMO (Fear-of-Missing-Out) in people, making them take customers quicker. According to Statista, 92% of shoppers use a discount code at least once a year. Therefore, for better results than this, it could be better if you offered something with a time-limited offer, such as a heavily discounted vacation for a family.
Example:
“Receive DISCOUNTS on our mouth-watering dishes this Valentine. Text “LOVE” to 12345 and get a free glass of wine for you both of you, and a banquote of red roses for the lady, with your next dinner reservation”.
2. Discover Insights of Your Subscribers
Your SMS strategies will enable you to gather deeper insights into your subscribers. These insights will help to target your subscribers better. I recommend you use Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters, which are code snippets attached to the end of the links you share with subscribers. UTM parameters let you track where your leads are coming from and are free to use with Google Analytics.
UTM parameters can also garner insights on a person’s email address, zip code, geographical location, and other relevant information you can use to enforce your digital marketing strategies, such as surveys and polls that give you a better understanding of what people think.
3. Use tags To Create Personalized Messages
SMS marketing systems allow the incorporation of a wide range of tags. i.e., names, birthdays, anniversaries, etc., that facilitate you to create and send personalized messages to subscribers. You can then use this information to send personalized offers to your subscribers related to their special occasions.
Example:
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! We noticed your wedding anniversary is coming up next week. Treat yourself to a free bottle of wine at any of our branches countrywide by forwarding this message to ‘225145’ to book your spot with the restaurant.
4. Create Alerts for Upcoming Sales
Alerts can increase your conversion rate of subscribers to buyers by ensuring subscribers looking forward to purchasing from you can prepare to buy during the sale period. Therefore, an effective alert should alert your subscribers about an upcoming sale.
Example:
SALE! 30% off on all clothing this Saturday. Use this link to view the different clothing brands and designs on offer. [insert link here]
5. Deliver Actionable Value to Subscribers
It isn’t enough to offer freebies to entice people to opt-in to your SMS campaign to receive texts. Your goal should be to offer real value to your customers. You can achieve this in different ways, such as; offering actionable benefits that address a customer’s need, providing access to exclusive offers to those who opt in, and most of all, offering your subscribers an easy and clear opt-out process.
6. Offer Exclusive Offers to Subscribers
Exclusivity of a product or service is an effective marketing strategy that has been deployed with great success. Why? This is because people want to feel that they have access to products or information that the majority of others don’t have access to.
You can send exclusive offers to people based on past customer behavior or engagement with your business, for example:
- Save 20% this weekend by using the code “SMS” at checkout
- Receive a 10% discount if you show this text message at checkout
7. Set Clear Expectations
SMS texting is instantaneous, and subscribers will expect the same speed from you for their queries. Therefore, you should make the necessary arrangements, install appropriate technology and have enough staff to execute this strategy.
It’s okay if you don’t have the capacity, to be honest about it to avoid giving your subscribers the wrong impression of what to expect from your business.
Below is an image that illustrates how to set clear expectations for subscribers.
Example:
8. Segment Subscribers to Better Target Subscribers
Segmentation is the process of separating your subscribers with similar interests and behaviors into groups. This lets you personalize your marketing strategies with content relevant to specific groups, resulting in higher conversions and engagement.
For example, to better target customers of an online store, you can set up automated triggers based on your shoppers’ behaviors.
Here are a couple of criteria you can use to segment users in an online store:
Buying behavior: customer’s previous purchases, if any, and how often.
Location: Customer’s zip code, customer’s time zone.
The better the segmentation of your customers, the better you can personalize your marketing strategies for your subscribers.
9. Collect Feedback From Your Subscribers
Request feedback from your subscribers. Why? Feedback lets you better understand your customers’ pain points and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly to increase sales. Use survey questions to collect feedback.
Example:
- How do you rate our customer services on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being poor and five being excellent
- We would love to hear your suggestions on how we could improve our service.
10. Collect Testimonials and Reviews
Positive testimonials and customer reviews can boost brand visibility and drive more traffic and conversions to your products or services. SMS marketing allows you to ask your customers to leave a public review.
Example:
Once again, thank you for your recent purchase. We hope you loved our [product name]. We would appreciate it if you consider posting an online review of our product or purchasing experience with yes. Kindly go to [URL of website] and share your thoughts about our service.
Slingshot SMS integration is an SMS marketing system that allows business phone businesses to develop and implement effective SMS marketing campaigns.
