You wake up one morning, excited about a new product you’ve found online and want to share this new found knowledge with your friends and family. But when you try to send them an email or text message about the product, you discover that your email provider (e.sp) either doesn’t support this format or, in some cases, will even block certain keywords (e.g. the word “sale” if you’re trying to promote an online store).
Ouch! So much for the fun new product you thought you’d have time to share with your friends this weekend. Now what?
In some cases, you could just ignore this issue and try to find a new email provider that does support these formats. But you could also look into using a tool like SMS Marketing to send and receive short message service (SMS) and email marketing messages via your app or website. Using this type of marketing tool can help you avoid a lot of the common pitfalls that make it difficult to effectively use email marketing and SMS messaging for marketing purposes.
Why should you use SMS Marketing? Let’s take a quick look at the benefits before we get into the nitty-gritty.
Equal Opportunity
One of the major benefits of using SMS Marketing is that you have both an SMS-optimized and an email marketing-optimized version of your website or app. So, whether someone goes through your email subscription process or opts to follow you on your mobile device via SMS, you’ll get the same great experience.
With email marketing, you’d need to manually create a separate email box for each of your subscribers. This can be a massive pain for anyone managing a lot of email campaigns or for anyone who wants to keep track of what they’ve sent to whom. Thankfully, SMS Marketing takes care of all that for you. Your service provider will create a special phone number (short code) that you can use to send messages to your subscribers. Any mobile device can then receive these messages at the other end.
This equal opportunity feature allows you to reach people on the go, which can be helpful if you want to grow your business. Nowadays, a large portion of the population is constantly connected to their phones. So, by creating a simple and accessible means for your customers to get in touch with you, you’re opening up a world of opportunity.
Performance Metrics
While we’re on the topic of benefits, let’s discuss a few key performance metrics that you can use to judge the effectiveness of your SMS Marketing campaign.
The first is open rate. The open rate is the percent of text messages (or emails) that were opened by recipients. So, if you’re testing a new marketing strategy and want to know how well it’s going, checking the open rate of your SMS campaign is the best place to start.
The next metric you might want to consider is click rate. The click rate is the percent of text messages (or emails) that were clicked on by recipients. Just like the open rate, the click rate is another place to measure the success of your SMS Marketing campaign.
You can, of course, optimize your messages for the best possible click rates so that you can grow your business effectively. You might also want to consider the conversion rate, which is the percent of text messages (or emails) that were opened by recipients and clicked on by them, resulting in a purchase or lead.
The last key performance metric you might want to look at is the engagement rate. The engagement rate is the percent of text messages (or emails) that were opened by recipients and then interacted with, e.g., added to a contact list, subscribed to a newsletter, or made a purchase. Checking the engagement rate of your SMS campaign can help you see how well you’re connecting with your customers and how much they’re engaging with your content.
Cost-Effective
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons why people prefer SMS Marketing over email marketing and vice versa is because of the cost-effectiveness. Remember, your mobile device company, email service provider, and short code service provider all have to profit from your efforts, so you want to be sure that you’re getting the best possible deal.
One of the primary ways in which email marketing is more cost-effective than SMS marketing is because there’s no need to pay for phone numbers. You can have multiple email aliases (e.g., john.doe@yourdomain.com, jane.doe@yourdomain.com, etc.) and can send separate messages to each one, resulting in significant cost savings.
Some carriers also offer a free phone number for those in need, and you can usually get a discount if you’re paying as a personal user rather than as part of a business plan. Finally, you can use a tool like Google Voice to send text messages for free (if you use the right number), which could save you a significant amount of money.
No Customer Data Theft
Another significant advantage of using SMS Marketing is that there’s no need to worry about your customers’ personal data being stolen. Even if your customers give you their phone numbers and email addresses, these are only used to send messages to them, which are then archived for billing purposes.
The advantage of this is that you and your customers can both benefit from a more secure environment. No more worrying about third parties stealing your customers’ information and using it for their own purposes.
Unlimited Campaigns
Speaking of security, the biggest advantage of using SMS Marketing is that you have total control over the number of campaigns you can run. Simply put, you can have as many campaigns as you want, when you want them. There’s no limit on how many campaigns you can run, so long as you follow the correct procedures.
This is particularly useful if you’ve decided to test different types of messages, or if you’ve decided that email marketing isn’t putting the clicks in your sales figures and want to try something new.
Scalability
You should also know that you don’t necessarily need to keep your existing customers in mind when you’re deciding which marketing method to use for your next campaign. After all, you can always go back and re-target past customers with an email or text message, whereas you’re limited to a certain number of SMS messages.
If you’re looking for a way to quickly and efficiently grow your business, then consider using SMS Marketing. Not only is it a comparatively cheap and accessible alternative to email marketing and other traditional methods of getting in touch with customers, but it’s also a format that can be automated, which can make your life that little bit easier when you’re trying to grow your business.