SMS text messaging is a powerful yet simple-to-use solution that is an efficient and cost effective method for businesses to help reach their customers. As a direct marketing channel it is relatively uncluttered and virtually spam-free.
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Text messaging campaigns offer numerous benefits and enable marketers to easily compose, send, and track mobile marketing campaigns.
- SMS campaigns are easy to track – in real time you will be able to determine the success of your marketing or promotional campaign.
- SMS text message campaigns are green! Have a positive environmental impact and reduce the amount of paper used for traditional direct marketing campaigns.
By integrating an SMS API into your business systems, you will be able to send bulk SMS from your PC or computer to your contacts. You can choose one or two-way messaging, and depending on your provider, you will be able to match replies to specific messages sent, allowing for a far more personalized customer experience.
Sending text messages from a computer has an added productivity gain. It is definitely a lot faster to type your messages from your computer keyboard than from the small keyboard of your cell phone.
Other benefits available for companies that take up quality SMS text message software is the reporting functionality, the ability to automatically handle opt-out requests, SPAM blocking technology and security controls for you and your customers peace of mind.
When you are considering SMS direct marketing as a channel for your customer communication, there are a few questions you should ask:
- What is the best way to execute this campaign - mobile communication, email or direct mail? Choose the most appropriate.
- Critically assess if the communication is time-sensitive. If it is, SMS may be the best option, if not, it’s worth reviewing alternatives.
- What do you expect your customer to do with your message? If this is a campaign that relies on two-way communications then SMS could be the best option. However if they don’t need to reply or gain nothing from replying then you are probably wasting their time and they won’t want to hear from you again.
- For those who have opted in to this mobile campaign – do you have enough content to keep them interested, or will they quickly stop seeing the value in your SMS messages?
When you take all of this into consideration, you will ensure that your SMS text message campaign is set up to succeed and deliver leads, sales and/or productivity and efficiency gains for your business.
While text messaging is the king of mobile messaging, and the most widely used data application in the world, SMS marketing is only now beginning to gain popularity. Due to regulatory controls, SMS text messaging is relatively uncluttered, which makes it a great channel to consider in your mix, however here’s our guide to the top five things to consider.
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- Limited creativity - the maximum limit for a text message is 160 characters, this is not very much advertising space and it is just a text- there are no options to add sound, animation or graphics
- Cut through and differentiation is key – a lot of preparation is required to produce a really good SMS text message campaign, because the messages are so short. And you can’t just keep sending out the same message time and time again, each message must be worded and presented differently to take into consideration the target customer , the time, the place and the relevance of the message
- The challenge of opt-in – surely this is the ‘holy grail’ for marketers, the customer who chooses to opt-in and receive text messages from you. There are not many customers who would willingly do so, and even if they do are they going to read every message you send them?
- Age and audience – regular text users fall into quite a specific demographic, so the audience is limited. And of this limited audience only a small percentage may opt-in to receive messages, even less would actually read the message. This does limit the potential size of your audience
- Above all, make sure you work with an SMS provider that is committed to developing a long term and sustainable relationship with you. Look out for our article on choosing your best SMS partner for more information.
Take a good look around you; wherever the eye can see, there’s a high probability there will be an advertisement of some sort. We are being bombarded by marketing messages as marketers desperately try to break through the clutter and communicate with customers and prospects in any way possible.
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As reported by to leading Australian media agency Mitchell & Partners, Australians will see around 1,500 commercial advertisements from mainstream media every week. And when you consider the USA, consumer research company Yankelovich, in the United States suggests this figure grows more than ten-fold to between 3,500 and 5,000 marketing messages per day. This may seem an awful lot but when you think about it, messages and logo’s are not only where you would expect them to be, they are everywhere else as well; on the side of trucks and vans on the road, on our favorite TV shows as a form of paid product placement, at any counter or check-out and in sponsored SMS text messages on our mobile phones.
SMS text messaging is the most widely used data application in the world; and the mobile channel is getting established as an integral part of the marketing media mix. This form of marketing is known as SMS direct marketing, and SMS Gateways make running a text message campaign a breeze and as a simple as sending a single text (or bulk SMS) from your computer.
A key characteristic of direct marketing is that it generally requests a response from the customer; that is, it drives a call to action. This is a sound reason why SMS direct marketing is gaining popularity with marketers the world over and why you should consider SMS direct marketing in your marketing mix and assess the various text messaging software options for your business.
Marketers know that the best way to interact and communicate with customers and prospects is through using a variety of channels and media. All of an organization's channels and customer touch points must be integrated to convey a consistent and personalised experience that is meaningful and relevant to the customer and in the case of direct marketing it must be above all, timely.
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SMS is still a relatively uncluttered and spam-free marketing channel. It's also the one form of communication that many people are tethered to 24/7. As reported by the NY Times, this fact does help to explain why, at a time when in-boxes are filled with hundreds of never-opened e-mail messages from direct marketers, 97 percent of all SMS marketing messages are opened (and 83 percent are opened within one hour).
The computer that people once used has become the smart phone in their pocket or the tablet in their hands. Cell phones are getting stronger, faster and better– they have become palm-sized laptops. All of this means we are relying more and more on our smart phone handsets and they are unlikely to be far out of earshot. Marketers have their captive audience. And SMS text messaging provides a "killer" application.
Integrating an SMS API into your business systems will help to streamline this communication process with customers and prospects. SMS direct marketing campaigns can be timed to the minute, when you work with a reliable provider that has solid carrier relationships and offers a 100% uptime guarantee. SMS text messages can be more personalized when you have the software that allows you to match replies to specific messages sent.
The very portable and inherently personal nature of a cell phone is a key to SMS direct marketing success. An SMS text message is always readily available as most people carry their cell phones with them wherever they go. Customers are very familiar with SMS technology and the ease with which they can respond to an SMS creates an instant and interactive communication gateway.
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Marketing your product or service using SMS text messaging is an excellent way to reach more customers because:
- the people who opt-in to receive SMS text messages from an organization may not be many in number, but you can be sure they will be quite keen to know more about the product or service you are offering
- companies can offer “spot” deals to customers, as messages are sent in real-time and are instantly delivered via an SMS Gateway
- SMS text messaging is highly interactive and can be used to prompt customers to vote, complete questionnaires or participate in research surveys – with good results
- SMS marketing is a good alternative for gathering user data, this knowledge can be applied to advertising campaigns to support making changes or adjustments where necessary
- customer participation can be easily and quickly rewarded, and, if the campaign is tightly integrated across multiple channels and uses various other mobile social media, customers will be able to promote and share the message via word of mouth.
Some 83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project asked those texters in a survey how they prefer to be contacted on their cell phone and 31% said they preferred texts to talking on the phone!
