SMS — Short Message Service, or simply texting — provides businesses the opportunity to connect with customers where they are spending the most time; their mobile devices. And whilst the use of Email and Social Media apps isn’t going anywhere, SMS can be the fastest way to interact with customers.
Here's 5 reasons why your marketing team should be considering the use of SMS in 2021.
1. Low cost
The channel’s simplicity means it’s incredibly cost-efficient – Not only can price per message be as low as £0.027, but there’s minimal need for creative or copywriting resources, unlike other channels, such as Email or Social Ads.
2. High open rates
SMS marketing often generates Open Rates of up to 98%, one of the highest for any marketing channel; with messages being opened and read by up to 98% of recipients you’re getting a great ROI. Comparing this with inboxes and social media feeds as they’re becoming more and more congested it’s easy for communications to be missed or scrolled past, but with our reliance on mobile phones and the popularity of texting, SMS messages generally don’t get ignored.
3. Quick to launch
SMS campaigns are very simple compared to many other digital channels. No eye catching templates to create or algorithms to contend with, just the snappy message you want to write and the list of people you want to receive it.
4. Easy to integrate
As much as SMS is a really effective channel, it becomes stronger when integrated with the wider marketing mix, especially email.
Nowadays CRM technologies will either have SMS built in, or they’ll allow you to integrate with another 3rd party SMS provider. Either way it should be a priority to link these systems up. SMS can be entwined into many of your existing automations to improve overall performance – abandoned checkouts, shipping confirmation, product launches, customer winbacks etc.
5. Simple opt in/opt out
When was the last time you asked your customers how they would like to hear from you? Don’t fall into the trap of assuming your customers always want to hear from you in the same way – give them options.
Permissions for SMS can easily be added to your existing sign-up processes and it gives the power back to your customers. Letting them control how and when they hear from you.
Thinking about myself and how I’d prefer to hear from my favourite brands, I’d love their weekly and monthly newsletters into my inbox and ad-hoc sales or product launches directly via SMS.
And the best part is the very nature of this channel makes it perfect for testing – low investment in both time and money, with potentially very positive returns. If you’d like to find out how we can get your business using SMS as part of your marketing mix, please get in touch.
Prospect Knight helps businesses improve customer retention and loyalty through CRM and Online Advertising. If you want to find out more, let’s talk.
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