Are you aware that the average person would check their phone 160 times a day? This is one of the reasons why SMS marketing no longer sucks. 46% of people acknowledge of checking their phones before even getting out of their bed. So what is the point here? People will always keep their phones handy and are ready to use them in finding information or checking on social media latest updates. Again, it has been established that open rates for texts have surpassed email -98 percent compared to 20 percent for email. Mobile advertising is considered effective, but it can only happen if your messages reach the consumer’s inbox, and the ad has been mobile-optimized. This is the best way of steering clear of noise and getting a positive returns on investment. In fact, majority of online marketers laugh off the idea of marketing since they think it’s regulate more compared to email marketing. However, this is just a myth. Mobile-targeting tactics and watered-down tactics cost you clients, conversions, and revenue. In the meantime, SMS marketing continues to lurk in the background awaiting you to capitalize on it.
Reasons why you should consider text message marketing as part of your customer communications
More brands are today targeting customers who are on the move with SMS becoming an important part of an effective multi-channel marketing. However, not many agencies of digital marketing feature SMS as one of their core offering and their clients have been missing out of communications with their customers and a chance to increase their ROI.
Most organisations have mistakenly believed mobile marketing is about heavily investing in apps and may not allow for a personalised and targeted communication. Further, they believe it does not have a strong analysis that supports ROI. However, accessing mobile communication is a lot easier and getting access to the mobile consumers e.g. smartphone and non-smartphone is as simple as sending a targeted, personalised text messages. For this reason, instigating a two-way SMS messaging between a particular company and its mobile users is necessary if you have to build a household brand but ensuring the protection of consumer privacy using legal requirements that ensure opt-in.
This post summarises key findings drawn from our latest research. It is discussing reasons why SMS are important in communications mix and looks at its use as part of a multi-channel strategy in engagement with customers in an entire customer lifecycle.
- It’s a direct, immediate channel
SMS is an immediate available channel whose read rate is 97% within 15 minutes of after delivery. You are reassured that most of your critical messages will reach the targeted audience and be read instantly. Approximately 45% of SMS campaigns will always generate a successful ROI, that will reach more than 50% in situations where they are combined with some other popular channels like social media and email.
- You can use shortcodes to simplify response and build your database
Ensure your customers are the one move first through an addition of a shortcode or a keyword to advertisements, print collateral, advertising boards and social media. Though this strategy, customers familiarize with brand’s code and keyword and there is more likelihood of interacting and responding.
- It can support and integrate with other channels
All channels including the SMS should work together in the marketing mix. SMS remains a great standalone channel that can enhance and offer support to other mediums of marketing such as email and social media.
SMS is great and functions in enhancing and supporting other popular mediums like email and social media.
For example, SMS remind customers that there is an email they should read which was sent by a certain brand sometime back. Just a simple SMS that asks “have you read our email?” helps increase the open rates for email by at least 20%-30%.
- You can learn more about your customers
SMS is one of the greatest channels of getting feedback from customers through surveys. Available studies show 31% of all consumers respond to surveys through SMS and the average response time for most users is about 5 minutes. This implies it’s possible to record impressive results on a short time.
- You can increase customer engagement
It is important if you thought of SMS as a platform of enhancing how the brand engage with your customers in the entire lifecycle of a customer. Businesses must remember the need to vary their content sent out. While most customers might value news and updates about some of the forthcoming developments in a brand, such information would better be delivered through email where more creative messaging would be more appropriate.
However, marketers might have a feeling that SMS’s are invasive but most consumers are today familiar with text from the use of local services such as garages, dentists, hairdressers and public services such as NHS.
The above is a good example of NHS engagement with audience and in one of high-engagement occasions.
Moreover, brands may use texts for immediate or expected sales and related offers like promotions, discounts, vouchers and birthday messages.
- Response data enables you to monitor, track and improve
To track meaningful ROI, identify those customers who engage via text message and monitor delivery rates have been made possible through SMS which further reveals realities to a misconception that SMS is untrackable channel that brings it to align with what has proved possible with emails for years.
Though these analytics, businesses are able to create more targeted campaigns to continuously build better knowledge of their mobile databases. Hence, SMS’s save money and improves ROI but segmenting and profiling numbers unlikely to respond. SMS allow companies to target customers through email or any other channel.
How then can I send bulk sms from my phone?
Kindly follow below steps to add your Android phone in the system.
- Register your account here for free. You will receive login credentials in the email you registered with.
- Using your PHONE, download the latest version of Android app from here. (In case you are reading this from your PC, pick your Android phone and come to this page to access the file from your phone.
- When the file from the link above finishes downloading, open the file and install it on your phone (In case of any challenge, here is a guide to install apps not in Play Store)
- Open the app after the installation, you will be asked to give bunch of permissions. Just click Allow or Yes on ALL prompts you receive and you will be presented with login window.
- Touch the “SIGN IN USING QR CODE” button to scan, the login to your PC, on the menu, go to devices and click the add devices. You will see a pop-up with QR code, scan it with your phone.
- CONGRATULATIONS. You successfully added your Android phone in to the system. Now just, navigate through the simple to use system and start sending messages online using your phone credit.
(If you face any challenge write to a/chat with us/watch their demo)