Instantaneous results and immediacy are two important features of SMS which is why it is used so extensively in business marketing nowadays. You will find most of the businesses integrate SMS with their traditional business marketing strategies to make it more effective and result driven. There are several proven facts and features of SMS that makes it such an effective marketing tool in this modern world where technology reigns supreme.
- First, SMS has a very high open rate of 90% or more as compared to emails and direct mails which hovers around a meager 30%
- Second, on an average, it takes about three to six minutes to open an SMS thereby making it the fastest means to reach to people with a promotional message
- Third, you can use SMS for a large variety of purposes including product selling, business promotion, informing people about upcoming events and more and
- Fourth, it helps you to know about the last minute impulses of the customers more effectively and quickly.
However, to get the desired results and responses you will have to get all its basic components correct and in addition to that, you must time your messages most precisely so that it reaches to a larger and a more targeted audience.
- For example, if you have an event coming up on Friday night, the best time to send the message regarding the on Friday itself and latest by the afternoon.
- Or, if you have a dinner promotion, make sure you send the message at the end of that specific day of promotions and certainly not in the morning.
This will ensure that the message reaches to the people at the right time, opened and not lost among the plethora of message that they may receive all through the day.
Therefore, make sure that you do not cross the acceptable hours of sending SMS and tread on thin ice. The ideal time to send such messages is between 8 in the morning and 9 in the evening. If you follow the advice of the experts, then you can take your SMS timing a step further.
For this, you will simply have to through the past interactions of your customers with a particular text and find out the time when it got the quickest response. This ultra-targeting approach will take your SMS marketing effort beyond the demographics and region to customizes it and optimize the marketing results.
Promoting opt-in
You will need to provide all your customers with an opt-in option at every point of contact to ensure that your SMS marketing efforts do not go in vain. This is a very useful approach to follow instead of simply sending a large number of SMSs to a large number of people using the best mass text app and hoping results to pour in. To make sure that you know exactly how your messages are faring and the opt-in option is the best component to implement in your SMS marketing campaign.
You must provide it across all media including:
- Social media – Here you can add a specific field to enter the mobile number to the Facebook page sign up along with the opt-in button to sign on to the SMS campaign.
- Website – Here you will have to make sure that the opt-in button is a prominent feature and is placed at the most prominent location so that it is not overlooked.
- Newsletter: Here you will need to make sure that the opt-in button is clearly visible.
- Point of sale – Here you will need to ensure that all your employees designated are asking all the customers whether they are interested in opting-in for your SMS texts for sales and promotions.
- Snail mail – Here it is required to make sure that the opt-in option along with the necessary instructions are clearly printed on the coupons and promotional emails that you intend to send through the post.
All these platforms apart from the SMS text messaging will help your business to gain more customers and increase the chances of a sale.
Keyword and shortcode
These are the two most significant components of any typical SMS marketing campaign. Here the number or the shortcode is combined with the word which becomes the keyword.
- The shortcode is typically a six digit number that is easy to remember such as 555555 and is placed in the recipient box and
- The keyword is written in all caps such as “POPCORN” is placed in the message body.
When any customer receives this message and simply sends this message back, typically they are “opting in” to your SMS marketing campaign. The effects and results of combining keywords with shortcode are as unpretentious and easy as that.
From here on there are a few good things that you can do to ensure that your effort is worthy and fruitful. These different actions include:
- Going ahead to send them an automated and single response to follow up
- Let them know about what is coming up next and
- Add them to the list to send additional texts in the future.
However, there are other different ways to make your customers opt-in such as allowing them to submit their contact numbers online or check a specific box on the order form. Once you get the numbers, make sure that you have these verified because there is a high chance that customers enter a number erroneously.
The best ways to do so before you add these numbers to your SMS marketing campaign is to confirm whether or not they are participating with another message. You can confirm this in the following ways:
- For example, you will send “Text ‘YES’ if you are interested to receive coupons weekly”
- Once they opt-in allow the customers to respond using sub-keywords to your message.
When you send the sub-keywords such as “Hours” to get automated text messages to send telling about the business hours and “Stop” to remove them from the subscriber list, it will give your customers a better way to interrelate with the business or to opt out easily from your campaign if they do not want to receive any messages.
