Brands and marketers are always looking for new ways to communicate with customers, and SMS marketing is growing rapidly.
Traditionally, in the online sense, brands were focused on Facebook, Instagram, Google and email marketing. These three forms of marketing gave brands a way of connecting with their customers throughout the journey.
An ad would attract attention on Facebook and get people onto a landing page where they can make a purchase. Email is for nurturing relationships, and is effective for getting people to repeat buy. It is not to say they aren’t used anymore (they are) but diversification is key. Today, brands need to be omnipresent on all marketing channels. Not only to succeed, but to ensure they don’t lose revenue.
SMS Marketing overview
SMS marketing is a relatively new form of marketing that many brands have adopted. It’s similar to email in that customers need to opt-in. However, as more people are comfortable with interacting with brands on their mobiles, SMS has grown.
A brand can be anything it wants on its SMS platform. It can focus on promos or use the channel to have conversations. They can run surveys or even share a “shower thought” of the day. What’s even better is that it has allowed the fun side of brands to shine through. Before, marketing could feel cold and impersonal, but over SMS there’s only so many characters you can text. This brings more creativity and personality into the game, which customers love.
Benefits of SMS
There are clearly many common sense benefits of SMS, but we’ll take you through a few anyway.
- Direct and immediate
- People are more likely to read and interact with a text
- Higher click through rate
- More human conversation between brands and customers
- Find out what your customers want
- Cheaper than other marketing channels
- Always mobile-friendly
- Highly personalised
Our own experience with SMS marketing
We have implemented SMS marketing for a number of our clients to quite a degree of success. SMS has the potential to exceed email with a smaller list and a more conversational tone.
The two main platforms we use are SMSBump and Postscript, however as we use Klaviyo for email we have clients who use it for SMS.
In terms of statistics, we have seen brands increase their overall revenue by between 20 and 30% just from SMS marketing.
What’s even better? ROI can be anywhere as high as 5,000% to over 20,000%, crucial for when you want to scale ads.
The ease of use makes it easy to integrate into the overall strategy without time spent on designing creative and writing copy. However, it’s always important to understand the “voice” the brand wants to use over SMS. And, occasionally, they’re surprised by how easygoing they can be.
If you’d like to speak to us more about SMS marketing then let us know and we’ll be happy to have a chat with you.
