SMS (otherwise known as text) messaging has been around for decades. Who remembers when the cost per message depended on how long your text message was? Even though they’ve been around for a long time, very few businesses, particularly small businesses, make use of this channel with their marketing. If you’re thinking about your current marketing mix at the moment, here’s why you should consider SMS messaging…
Everyone has a phone
98% of the adult population has a mobile phone; some have two. There aren’t many people you cannot reach by SMS. With no spam filters to avoid, you know they are going to be delivered.
Great open rates
When was the last time you deleted a text message without reading it? That seems to be the trend everywhere because 98% of SMS messages are opened. Even if recipients don’t engage any further, they have seen your brand one more time (let’s hope you’re not sending too many, creating a negative brand opinion).
With 90% of messages opened within three minutes, you also get an immediate reaction to your SMS marketing campaigns.
Click rates
The stats on this vary massively. The highest figure seems to be 36%, with many sources giving an average of 6.6%. It varies considerably across industries too. However, all the figures are 2-3 times the average for email marketing campaigns.
Personalisation
In the same way that you can personalise email marketing campaigns using the data you have about someone, you can personalise SMS campaigns too.
Targeting
SMS campaigns can be focused in on contacts that meet certain criteria in the same way as email campaigns. Use the data about where people are, what they’ve bought, their birthday and many more criteria, to ensure you’re not spamming people and annoying them.
Cost effective
As a Mailchimp Partner, SME Needs is going to promote the new SMS service that is available from them. They run a credits system, with each SMS sent costing 5 credits. The cost of credits varies depending on how many you expect to use each month. At the minimum level (1000 credits), each SMS costs 7.5p to send. If you subscribe to 2500 credits per month (500 text messages), the cost reduces to just 3.9p per SMS and drops even further, to just 2.5p each, if you’re subscribing to 50,000 credits per month. You can find out more information about their service here.
Combining email and SMS can produce a real step change in your marketing performance.
But
Risk of spamming
Nearly half of consumers are annoyed by constant SMS marketing! Because of the high open rates that SMS delivers, there is a real temptation to have high frequency marketing campaigns. NO!
If you do that, you simply upset people. They unsubscribe and they probably tell their friends, losing you more subscribers/customers.
Limited room
Both a blessing and a curse, the limited space makes it harder to put everything you want to into the message (link shorteners really help here). What they do is force you to be succinct; something that email doesn’t.
Possible uses of SMS marketing
Here’s a ways you can use SMS marketing…
1. Get customer feedback through surveys
2. Delivery time confirmations
3. Increasing event attendance, particularly webinars
4. Special offer/flash sale notifications
5. Appointment reminders
6. Annual subscription/membership reminders
If you want to look at an alternative marketing channel, to add to your current mix, why not look in more detail at SMS marketing. Give me a call (020 8634 5911) and we can talk more
