Text messages are personal, immediate, and always read–it’s why SMS marketing is the perfect way to diversify your E-commerce marketing channels.
As the battle for customer attention intensifies, texting allows you to connect directly with customers in a way that requires little effort to manage and maintain.
This article covers everything you need to know about e-commerce SMS marketing strategy.
Let dive in
What is an SMS marketing strategy?
For those unfamiliar with SMS marketing, let’s break it down:
What is SMS marketing?
Short message service(SMS) marketing is the process of sending short promotional campaigns or transactional messages for marketing purposes using simple text messages.
These messages are mostly meant to communicate time-sensitive offers, updates, and alerts to people who have signed up to receive these messages from you.
While strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.
Therefore, the SMS marketing strategy is the process of sending out a short promotional campaign for marketing purposes using SMS. These messages are meant to communicate your offer to your subscribers.
Now that you know what SMS marketing strategy is let’s answer the big question: Does SMS marketing work for E-commerce businesses?
Does SMS Marketing Work for E-commerce Business?
Online marketing channels are on the rise, and choosing the most profitable channel to use to promote your business has become more difficult.
Traditional platforms such as TV and print remain highly expensive and make it hard for small businesses to use.
SMS marketing has become one of the most effective marketing channels for businesses due to its high open rates, high conversion and its ability to boost other marketing channels.
The number of mobile phone users has tripled over the past decade, with over 5 billion people using a mobile phone.
With mobile devices in hand, the effectiveness of SMS marketing is on the rise every day.
In today’s world, consumers spend twice as much time on their phones as they think they are.
Ask yourself, how many times have you checked your mobile phone today? You can’t count, right?
Now that you know that SMS marketing works, let us look at different types of SMS marketing
What are the types of SMS marketing?
There are different types of SMS marketing, but in this article, we will look at the most common ones.
1 Promotional deal and Discounts
These are messages you send directly to your customers on deals, discounts, clearances, and special sales on products and/or services.
In most instances, these promotions create a high-level sense of urgency since they are time-sensitive.
This is one of the most commonly used SMS marketing techniques in today’s world.
2 SMS Coupons
These are messages that are often sent in Multimedia Messaging Service or “MMS”, for short. SMS Coupons are quite similar to promotional deals and discount messages.
They include a discount on either a product or a service that is offered by the business that they signed up to receive SMS marketing messages.
3 Text-to-Win Competitions
This is a type of SMS campaign where customers have the capability of entering a contest – simply by responding to a text message your business sends. Once the contest deadline occurs, a winner is then selected by a random generator.
4 Flash Sales
This is the type of SMS marketing you use when having a limited quantity of a service or a product that is offered by your business. This type of SMS marketing holds its activity for only a short amount of time.
5 Loyalty Programs
These programs are designed to encourage your customers to make a purchase or to engage in recommending referrals for the purpose and intent of obtaining free products or an assortment of discounts when certain “milestones” are reached.
What are the benefits of SMS Marketing for E-commerce?
1 It is Affordable
If just started your E-commerce business or you already own one but you can’t afford to spend a lot on marketing right now, SMS is perfect for you.
E-commerce SMS marketing is cheaper than most other types of marketing, including printed flyers or ads.
2 You help you reach more people.
For people to receive an SMS, they just need a phone, not even a smartphone, and not one that has internet access.
This makes it easier for you to widen the reach of your marketing efforts.
If you limit yourself to, let’s say, email marketing, you won’t be reaching as many people as you could with an effective text message marketing strategy.
That’s because email marketing is dependent on circumstances like internet access, relatively new devices, a data plan on mobile phones, etc.
3 Results are available instantly.
Over 90% of text message marketing texts are read in the first 3 minutes of being sent. Let’s say you send an offer with a 20% discount code to your online menu and a link that people can click to place an order. Someone might open it and place an order in less than 10 minutes.
- It increases customer loyalty.
Craft attractive messages featuring exclusive deals regularly and send them as SMS. They will tempt people to visit your E-commerce over and over again to redeem the offers. It’s as simple as that!
- It’s versatile
One of the advantages of text message marketing is its flexibility. When devising an SMS marketing strategy, pick and choose what you want to communicate: a discount, a promo code, or even news about your business.
SMS Marketing Strategy for E-commerce
Below is an SMS marketing strategy use can start using for your e-commerce business:
1 Add value to your customers
When you reach out to your customers, make sure you have something valuable to valuable to offer like:
A unique or special offer
Time-sensitive deals
Information that’s necessary to customers who might want to participate in an event
Introduction of new products or services, especially if you’re giving your SMS list a discount.
- Only Send out Messages When You Have Something Important
No one wants to get notifications from brands more often than they get texts from their friends.
Avoid the temptation of bombarding your customers with text messages, because that is an instant turn-off for them.
For messages that aren’t time-sensitive or are longer, use email instead and save SMS for more “urgent” matters like a “one-time” offer.
- Get the Permission of your Customers Before Sending Them Text Messages.
This point can’t be overemphasized, please don’t send customers promotional messages if they haven’t opted-in to receive them.
Moreover, pay close attention to how you phrase the kind of messages they will receive.
- Always keep your messages short.
When you sit down to write a promotional text message, don’t go over the 160 characters per SMS limit.
Even if newer phones can support longer messages, your customers are not looking to read a story when receiving an SMS from a brand.
Always keep it simple, sweet, and straight to the point. Your message will convert more when you keep it short.
- Personalize your messages.
Just because it’s bulk SMS marketing, it doesn’t mean you can’t add a bit of customization.
Adding a bit of customization can go a long way to making your customers feel special.
Even something as simple as addressing them by their first name would do.
- Give Your Subscribers The Option to Opt-out
This may not sound well to your ears, because no business wants to lose customers.
But doing this will make the customers feel that you are not desperate, and needy.
Wherever you place your opt-in CTA, you also need to include an opt-out option with clear instructions on how to do it. Additionally, when people receive their first text from you after opting in, also include an opt-out link.
Conclusion
SMS marketing is a simple, affordable, and highly effective way of surprising your customers with unique offers and discounts which will turn them into regular and paying customers.
If you pay attention to the above SMS marketing strategy for E-commerce and don’t overwhelm subscribers with daily messages, your sales and brand recognition will increase.
You Can Also Read: How To Make More Sales Using Email Marketing.
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