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Why use SMS marketing ?
Why use SMS Marketing?
IGNORE the rise of SMS marketing at your peril. No marketer in any business, no matter what size, can afford any longer to rely on the well-worn, safe and comfortably familiar marketing channels.
Your customers are devoting more time than ever to mobile use so keeping up with the voracious appetite for mobile media and targeting your customers through their favoured channel is a must. And the good news is, it’s an easy, cost-effective way of reaching your target audience with a personal message.
Being agile in response to the wants and needs of your customers means the difference between success and failure for your marketing campaigns in this age when technology moves at lightning speed.
The time is now to make the most of the phenomenal rise in smartphone ownership and the engagement of mobile users. Statistics launched by Ofcom1 state that 93% of UK adults own and/or use a mobile phone and 61% have a smartphone. The number of mobile subscriptions tops 83 million. Those stats confirm that mobile is here and it’s here to stay.
Benefits of Mobile Marketing
SMS marketing has many benefits. Here we take a closer look at eight of the best.
Cost-effective marketing channel
Sending SMS marketing messages is a relatively cheap option, but don’t think for a minute the response you’ll get is low value! Text campaigns can be sent starting from 4.5p per text; costs vary depending on your volume. With a message open rate of 98%, you won’t get higher than that from other marketing channels.
Mobile ownership is high and engagement is too
In 2000, half of UK adults said they had a mobile phone; this has risen to 93% in 2014. Research by Ofcom shows the proportion of mobile users who accessed websites, used email services, downloaded apps and used instant messaging as their communication method all increase in 2014. The key driver behind this is the sustained increase in smartphone ownership.
Send as many or as few messages as you like
If you have an extensive database of opted-in numbers you can reach them all in one SMS shot. Unlimited SMS messages may be sent so you can manage your large campaigns easily. However, if you are handling very large data sets you may wish to stagger or schedule your activity to suit your supporting resources, such as a call centre, to avoid overload.
But don’t let that put you off if you have much smaller client lists. SMS marketing is not just for the big boys. It also suits smaller or localised campaigns so even if you are a small business you can reach who you want, when you want with your SMS calls to action.
Texts are quick to send and immediately opened
SMS marketing campaigns may be designed, personalised and executed very quickly from either a web-based interface or via email. You can set up templates that can be used time and time again or try new formats to see what works best for your customers.
On the receiving end, your customers will see a tailored text message immediately on their mobile device, which we know is never far out of their reach, 24 hours a day. Opening text messages seems irresistible and a message is usually read within a few seconds of its arrival.
Brand-specific originators
Your SMS can originate from either a word or a number, which means you can brand your message with your business name, making an instant impact on the recipient. It is transparent and the message’s recipient can make an instant decision to open it rather than having to take another step to see what is on offer from whom, which may put them off.
Your trusted brand or opted-in product is therefore on instant display and your customer knows it is of relevance as he or she has chosen to opt in to it originally.
Tailor your text message to each recipient
Personalisation is of course the key to better response rates in any channel, and SMS marketing is no exception. The beauty is that it is simple to tailor your messages to individuals, according to the data you have set up in your customer lists (phonebooks). There is no limit to how far you can tailor each text message.
Track your campaigns and response rates
Tracking is an essential element of any marketing campaign and this is easily done with SMS campaigns. Delivery reports may be generated for each message to enable you to keep track. If a marketing communication’s effectiveness isn’t measureable then it is almost pointless carrying out the marketing activity in the first place.
You can use a shortened URL in your message to direct recipients to any webpage, while freeing up valuable space for more characters. A single message is limited to 160 characters; anything above this will incur a higher cost. These shortened URLs can also be tracked to individual recipients. Mobile landing pages may be created with some SMS services, which means you can track which of your customers are following your links, and there is no character limit on these pages.
Excellent read rates for SMS
Mobile users only sign up to receive marketing text messages if they are interested in that specific product or service or if they trust your brand. Therefore, stay true to your customers’ original preferences and your text messages will be relevant, useful and, thus, your call to action or offer is most likely to be acted on.
Figures quoted by Ofcom suggest there is a 98% open rate for text messages and 32% of recipients respond positively2. This is way higher than response rates seen through other more traditional promotional activity, such as email marketing.
To find out more about how your business can benefit from SMS marketing, why not give GlobalMessaging a call? Our team is always on hand to answer your queries or advise on suitable packages or services to suit any size or type of business.