SMS marketing is a marketing strategy that involves promoting a company’s goods and services via text messages. It is probably the most underrated form of digital marketing right now. SMS marketing is arguably the most efficient digital marketing strategy because it is as personal as it gets. It gets even better as text messages record as high as a 98% open rate.  

It might interest you to know that we check our mobile phones up to 85 times every day! More than 80% of consumers say that their phone is the first thing they check when they wake up in the morning.  It means that promoting your goods or services by using a sms marketing software is one of the most effective marketing strategies.

There are, however, so many ways to promote your brand on to your customers’ phones. Many companies adopt social media platforms as their chosen platforms. These social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat are quite popular today. Each of them boasts huge memberships, even totaling up to billions of users.  

Emails are another channel that brands frequently use to promote their goods and services. Email marketing is a lot cheaper than social media marketing. When deployed correctly, it can deliver fantastic results that social media marketing strategies may not achieve. For example, the Click Through Rate for Pay Per Click adverts is only 2%, and while 50% of emails are read within the first two days, 90% of all text messages are opened in the first 3 minutes! 

How to work on your SMS Marketing strategy

The first step to launching is to get your customers to opt into your text message marketing campaign. The most popular way for customers to opt-in is through text messages. The two fundamental components of opt-in messages are: The Keyword and the short code. 

The keyword is a word that is customers can use to identify your brand. Your brand name can be your keyword. You can also get creative with it if it is necessary. Just remember to keep it short and straightforward. 

The shortcode is the series of numbers that your customers will type into the recipient box.  To opt-in, the customer sends the keyword to the shortcode. It is that simple. Customers can also opt-in on your website by filling forms or submitting their phone numbers.

After the customer has sent the opt-in message, you may require them to confirm their subscription through another simple text message. For example, send ‘SEO TIPS’ to ‘33455’.

Once a customer confirms his/her subscription, you can start sending him/her promotional text messages. It would help if you also let your customers know how to unsubscribe to your messages. For example, a customer can text ‘STOP’ to ‘33455’ to stop receiving your promotional text messages. 

Now that you have customers on your SMS marketing list, you must know how you can leverage your text messages to increase sales and ultimately boost your ecommerce revenues.

9 SMS Marketing strategies to promote your ecommerce revenues: 

1. Personalize your messages
2. Start with your offer
3. Create a sense of exclusivity
4. Create a sense of urgency
5. Create a sense of scarcity
6. Use Call To Actions
7. Get the frequency right
8. Get the timing right
9. Use user data to improve

1. Personalize your messages 

Personalizing your sms messages is one of the most effective ways to boost sales through SMS marketing. The first step is to segment your customers based on relevant criteria such as purchase history, location, age-group, etc. Afterward, you will craft particular text messages that will connect with the customer based on these criteria.

Then you should include a reference that the customer can relate to. It could be the weather, a local celebrity, a trending topic. The fourth step is to include the customer’s name in the body of the message. Including the customer’s name is a sure way to make the customer feel special and give the message an informal impression.  

2. Start with your offer 

You should know that your customers don’t mind receiving your offers. They are looking forward to them. Text messages only allow 160 characters, and they don’t have headings/subject lines, so you must maximize the impact of your text messages. The best way to do this is to start with your offer.

You must dexterously include your offer in the first sentence of your text message such that your customer can see it from just a preview of the message. Starting with your offer is an effective strategy for SMS marketing because it helps the customer get the whole message’s gist. As a result, the customer makes his/her mind up very quickly. 

3. Create a sense of exclusivity 

Customers are more likely to buy if they feel like they are getting an exclusive offer. When you use new members only, VIP members only or you give a customer an offer as a reward for their loyalty. They will, in most cases, jump at the offer. This simple strategy can influence indecisive customers to make up their minds because they feel like they are enjoying an exclusive deal. 

4. Create a sense of urgency 

This strategy is predicated on customer psychology. When you create a sense of urgency, the customer is made to feel as though he/she will miss out on your offer if he/she does not take immediate action. 

5. Create a sense of scarcity 

This strategy is also based on the psychology of customer psychology. When you create a sense of scarcity in your message, the customer is made to believe that he/she will miss out if he/she does not take immediate action.  

6. Use Call To Actions 

A Call To Action (CTA) is an essential component that you must include in all your SMS marketing messages. As the name denotes, CTAs provoke the recipient to take immediate action. In other words, it motivates customers to make a purchase, make a booking, or any other action that is of benefit to your business.

It is important to remember that CTAs should be written clear and urgent language. Try to avoid common CTAs when preparing SMS marketing messages. The more unique you call to action, the better for you. CTAs must also be kept short and straightforward. 

7. Get the frequency right 

The frequency of your messages is a crucial part of SMS marketing. You need to figure out how many times a week or how many times a month, you will send your text messages. You must find the perfect frequency because too few times, and the customer will have already forgotten you exist and too many times, and you begin to piss the customer off. Depending on the kind of products or services you offer, sending text messages once or twice a week should suffice.  

8. Get the timing right 

You must work on sending your messages at the right time. Sending your messages at the right time will maximize the impact of your SMS marketing strategy. No customer wants you to wake him/her by 1 am to read about your latest product, so you must know the perfect time to send your messages to your customers.  

9. Use user data to improve 

Several SMS marketing tools will give you access to a wide variety of information regarding your customers and how they respond to your text messages. This platform is also commonly called SMS analytics, and it allows you to collect data based on customer demographics, text message responsiveness, and delivery reports, to name a few.

You can then analyze this data to ascertain which kinds of messages perform the best, which periods did customers tend to open your messages, and so on. You can use this knowledge to inform your future marketing strategies to make the best out of it.  SMS marketing campaigns will help you increase customer engagement. 

SMS Marketing Strategies for Customer Engagement

Text messages make engaging customers very easy. Text messages sent at strategic points in a customer’s journey will exponentially boost customer engagements. More customers are likely to respond to surveys via SMS. The average response time for SMS surveys is only 5 minutes.  

SMS marketing allows you to optimize your digital marketing strategies. Because SMS is a track-able marketing channel, you can use it to gather a wide array of data. It provides information such as delivery rates, identifying which customers opened your messages, who clicked what links, and who ended up buying from you. This information can, in turn, be used to optimize future marketing strategies to maximize Return On Investment.

SMS marketing fits in perfectly with other marketing channels. If you want to use SMS marketing alone to promote your goods and services, you will do amazingly fine. If, on the other hand, you decide to mix SMS marketing with your other marketing channels, SMS marketing is up to the task. It is effortless to integrate SMS marketing with your other marketing channels.

You can send your customers new product links, limited time offers, and additional related information through text messages. You can even use text messages to remind customers to check and email you sent or a new post on your social media page.  

SMS marketing is often overlooked as a useless and unrewarding marketing type, which is very far from the truth. It holds such immense potentials because of human habits. As human beings, we have become much attached to our phones that it is now the most effective way to influence our purchasing decisions.  

In particular, SMS is most effective because almost every text message is opened within the first three minutes, thus creating a fertile ground for businesses to promote their goods and services. Implementing the SMS marketing strategies discussed above will undoubtedly boost your ecommerce marketing-generated revenue.