SMS marketing, also known as text message marketing, is a great way to stay in touch with your customers. The SMS stands for ‘short message service.’ It means that you send tiny text messages of 160 characters or less to your target market’s cellphones with special offers, deals, updates, news and whatever else you think they should know about your business.
You can use SMS marketing in a number of different ways. Most companies use it to increase sales by offering special deals to their customers and branding their business. It increases customer loyalty by keeping you in touch with them. You can also use it to get new customers.
The great thing about SMS marketing is that 80% of all mobile device users have their phones on them at all times. This means that they get your message immediately; it doesn’t end up in an email inbox waiting to be seen.
Getting Your List
It’s extremely easy to build an SMS subscriber list. Usually, all you have to do is ask. Tell your customers that if they sign up, they’ll receive deals and special offers. Most of them will be happy to get them.
You should also use your online presence to get new customers. On your website, blog and social media profiles, let people know that they can get exclusive deals. You can speed up the process by offering a special incentive just for signing up, such as a freebie or discount on your services.
The Challenge of SMS Marketing
Remember that SMS stands for ‘SHORT message service.’ As I mentioned, these messages have to be 160 characters. That’s not a lot of characters. Just to give you an idea, the paragraph above this one (‘You should also use…’) is over 200 characters long. Your messages have to be shorter than that!
It takes a bit of skill to craft such a tiny message and also give it some impact. The best way to do this is to focus each message on only one thing. If you’ve got a special sale and a new product line to tell them about, turn that into two broadcast messages. The best messages contain 3 bits of key information:
- The details of the deal, promotion or sale
- How it benefits them
- What they need to do to get it (the call to action).
One more thing about your messages – don’t use text lingo to make it shorter. That looks goofy and unprofessional.
How to Perfect Your Campaign
To do SMS marketing, you have to hire a bulk messaging provider. They’ll send out the messages for you cheaply and also track your results. The results are extremely important because they’ll help you perfect your campaign.
At first, do some testing to see what works best. For example, try sending out messages at different times of the day or on different days of the week to see what gets the best response. The statistics will tell you how many people opened the message and you can track sales. This will tell you how to refine your campaign.
SMS marketing is a great way for offline businesses to get new customers and retain the old ones. Now that everybody’s going mobile with their smartphones, it’s an even better way to keep in touch and make sales.