SMS marketing aims to send SMS messages and campaigns for promotional or transactional purposes.
These messages can be used to send offers (such as sales or flash sales), invite contacts to an event, or alerts and notifications for transactional purposes (order tracking, appointment alerts, etc.).
When is it worth sending professional SMS messages?
There are many reasons why using SMS marketing can be useful but here are some examples of use we usually meet with our customers:
Sales or limited time promotions
If you want to generate traffic on your e-commerce site or attract more visitors to your store, promotions are a good way to do so and SMS is the perfect channel to let people know.
Because of the instantaneity of its reception and with an average opening time of 3 minutes after reception, you can be sure that your recipient will be aware of your promotion.
Transactional notifications
Transactional SMS is very useful to give information to your customers: order confirmations, delivery notifications. Thanks to connectors and especially the API, it is very easy to link your current tools to software for sending SMS marketing.
The organization of an event
You are organizing an event and you want to make sure that your guests have not forgotten and have the right address?
A last-minute change or cancellation?
Use SMS to pass on the message to your guests.
Even better, if you used a Textitute form to collect your guest's list, you will only need a few clicks to set up this SMS. To learn more about creating event invitation forms, watch our video tutorial.
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Appointment reminders
In order to optimize your teams' time and avoid unattended appointments, send reminder SMS messages so that your customers remember the appointment.
Don't hesitate to schedule an SMS the day before and 1 hour before the start of the appointment to minimize no-shows.
What do I need to know before sending SMS Marketing?
Certain rules imposed by the law and telephone operators must be followed when sending your SMS messages. Indeed, it is necessary to respect the days and the hours of sending, to integrate an "SMS Stop" to allow the unsubscription of the recipients, as well as the respect of the opt-in governed by the RGPD.
Respecting the days and hours of sending
Due to the instantaneity of the SMS channel, recipients consult them almost immediately. You can send a free sms in case you want to do some testing before sending your whole campaign. This represents many marketing advantages, but you must also take into account the experience of your customers and prospects by avoiding sending your SMS at inappropriate times. In order to protect the consumer, SMS marketing can only be sent between 8 pm and 8 am on weekdays as well as Sundays and holidays.
Respect the RGPD
As with any communication, the DPSP requires you to inform any person using your services of the use that will be made of their personal data.
Therefore, make sure that your clients and prospects are "opt-in", i.e. that they have given their consent for you to use their telephone contact information to contact them.
Indeed, SMS marketing is a powerful channel with an opening rate close to 95% but it can be perceived as intrusive by a recipient if he has not given his consent beforehand to receive it.
Unsubscribe and Stop SMS
In the same way that you must include an unsubscribe link in an email, you must include a STOP link in your SMS marketing.
Your contacts can then freely request to unsubscribe by sending an SMS to the short number that was generated for your campaign. Note that it is not mandatory on informative SMS.
Be clearly identified
In order to avoid being considered as an unwanted message, it is important that the sender of the SMS is clearly identifiable. To do this, you can personalize the sender by directly naming your company.
Is it useful to send SMS messages when we already send emails?
In order to reach your customers and prospects in the right place, at the right time, it is important to combine marketing channels to interact with them.
SMS and email are two means that are very complementary and have the advantage of being completely automated so that you can devote yourself to other marketing levers.
It is frequent and advisable to use email to include very detailed information and SMS for urgent and punctual information as a reminder of your emails already sent.
Why is SMS Marketing so effective?
The SMS channel is very effective due to the very intensive and growing use of smartphones: more than 2/3 of Americans have one.
SMS is, therefore, an excellent way to reach them directly with a very high engagement rate. Indeed, 90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes. The certainty that your information will be delivered to as many people as possible.
You now have a better vision of the usefulness of SMS marketing in a marketing strategy. In summary, the 2 main advantages are its instantaneity and its very high engagement rate.
If you already use email in your marketing, try to include SMS in your strategy. With Textitute, you can create a scenario of automatic campaigns by alternating email and SMS. Do not hesitate to register for our webinar to learn more. Looking for more options with the Digital services of Amazon.