As more brands seek to reach customers on the go, SMS is becoming an increasingly important part of effective omnichannel marketing. Despite several digital marketing agencies offering SMS as their primary service, their clients still fear the risk of losing customer communications and increasing ROI.
Organizations mistakenly believe that mobile marketing requires significant investment in applications rather than personalized, targeted communication, and lacks effective analytics to support ROI. The reality is that accessing mobile communications is a lot easier than it seems, and reaching mobile consumers (mobile phones and beyond) can be as easy as sending personalized, targeted text and two-way SMS exchanges between them.
In this article, we summarize and explain the benefits of using SMS in the marketing mix, why SMS should be used in the communication mix, and how it can be used as part of a multi-channel customer retention strategy throughout its lifecycle.
Benefits of SMS Marketing; Reasons for Adopting SMS Marketing It’s a Direct and Instant Channel
SMS is one of the most direct channels available with a read span rate of 97% in 15 minutes. This will for sure make you assured that your urgent messages will be read almost immediately. 45% of SMS campaigns generate over 50% ROI when used and integrated with other popular channels like email marketing and social media marketing.
Shortcuts Simplify Your Messages
Let your customers take the first step to come up with a shortcut, abbreviation, or keyword to print documents, advertisements, billboards, and social media. This strategy means customers quickly become familiar with your brand code and keyword, making them more likely to interact and respond to you.
It Supports and Integrates with Other Channels
All channels must work well together and merge as part of your marketing mix and SMS is no exception indeed. SMS is a great channel on its own but it can also enhance and support other marketing channels such as social media and email.
For example, they can remind customers to read an email sent from a brand a few hours or even days ago. A simple text message asking “Did you read our email?” can help you increase your email open rate by 20-30%. People nowadays incorporate their mobile devices and cell phones in everything they do so catching them directly through text message marketing makes it 10x better.
It Makes Understanding Your Current and Potential Customers Easier
SMS is a great way to get customer feedback through surveys. The study shows that on average 31% of consumers will respond to the survey via SMS and the average user response time is just over 5 minutes. This means you can get great results in no time.
Increases Customer Retention
Think of text messaging as a way to improve how your brand interacts with customers throughout their lifecycle. Businesses should consider changing the type of content they send: while customers will appreciate updates on upcoming brand events, it’s best to provide this information via email, as longer and more creative is more appropriate.
Although marketers find SMS invasive and pushy, many consumers have become accustomed to it when going to local services such as dentists, car repair shops or hairdressers, or public services. In addition, brands can receive faster commercial offers such as coupons, discounts, promotions, and even birthday messages via SMS.
Monitoring, Tracking, and Improvement are Easier
Tracking meaningful ROI, identifying customers you interact with via text messaging, and monitoring delivery rates are all possible via SMS messages. This exposes the reality of the misconception that SMS is an untraceable channel and is more consistent with what was possible with email.
Using these analytics, businesses can have more freedom to create more targeted campaigns and continuously improve their understanding of their mobile database. Not only does this mean saving money (cost-effective) and improving ROI, but by profiling and segmenting the numbers least likely to respond, businesses can reach out and communicate with customers via email or other channels.
A Recap
Using SMS for business communication showed many advantages and benefits for businesses. Businesses now have the chance to improve communication between their company, customers, and employees. This is due to the high open rate that tops emails and the easy integration with CRM tools and other business applications.
To better know about our SMS services, contact us at info@tecomsa.me or visit our Telecommunication page for some insights.
Written by: Tecomsa
