One of the challenges with selling online is finding a reliable delivery mechanism that can consistently gain the attention of your customer so that they can actually read your marketing message.
According to Dane Stephens from 160.com.au “more eyeballs equals more conversions; which is why businesses are now turning to bulk SMS online.”
Typically, marketers will use email marketing as that delivery mechanism, but the downside (and it’s a BIG downside) to email is that 80% of your campaign will never be read by the people who have subscribed to hear from you.
This is due to email reputation scores, SPAM algorithms, and fierce inbox competition; all of these factors have a devastating impact on every campaign that goes out.
Combine this with the fact that on average only 4% of people will click on a link inside that email.
We’re talking very low numbers here which is why to counter this we send high-volume emails out to make up for the deficit.
But is there an alternative delivery mechanism that could help us generate those pre-qualified leads while also allowing us to reach virtually every single person on our list for maximum conversions?
What is it? The humble text message, more specifically, Bulk SMS.
While a lot of people who are ignorant to SMS will link it to SPAM (we’ve all had unsolicited text messages before) but when used like an email lead generation strategy it provides impressive results.
1. 98% Open Rates
One of the most important metrics marketers pay attention to is the open rate i.e. “how many people seen my message?”
The reason why this metric is important is that the fewer people who see the message the fewer conversions there are.
Unfortunately, email most marketing channels (PPC, Social, Email, etc.) you are working with incredibly low open and click rates which is why there is so much time spent on optimization which is a constant focus on improving numbers.
Why bulk SMS?
Without any optimization, you can achieve anywhere from 90-98% open rates right out of the box.
You don’t need to be an SMS specialist or have years of experience inside marketing it just works.
2. 19% Click-Through Rates
Click-through rates are the next important metric to track and optimize.
Smart insights revealed their findings on click-through rates between email and SMS and discovered that the average click-through rate for an email hovers around the 4% mark while the average click-through for an SMS sits at 19% a massive 475% difference!
When you combine that with an 80%+ open rate you’re starting to get a lot of eyeballs on your offer.
3. It’s Easy
Depending on your business it can take a long to put together an email campaign and sometimes it can take a few different specialists to build out an email campaign which may include a copywriter, graphic design person, an HTML coder, etc.).
With text message marketing there is no coding, and you only have a few words to play with so you’re forced to cut to the chase and give the recipient the offer.
This makes creating the campaign superfast, and it also makes consuming your offer easy.
A lot of what erodes the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign is the time commitment a person thinks they need to set aside, this triggers the “I’ll come back to this later when I have more time” response which never happens and your email keeps getting pushed to the bottom as new emails flood their inbox.
4. 100% Deliverability
As I mentioned earlier, one of the main reasons why most emails never get read is because they never make it to the primary inbox.
Reputation scores can block emails from even going out, and SPAM algorithms are scanning your inbound message for specific trigger terms (did you know there are over 400 of them?) that may get your email flagged and thrown into the SPAM folder.
SMS has no algorithm policing it and is why it enjoys a 100% deliverability rate; imagine having all of your marketing messages make it to the primary inbox every, single, time?
5. Low Competition
The inbox is a bloody battlefield.
The reason why you need sales copywriters to write your email marketing messages is that they are trained on how to capture the attention of the recipient by writing out countless subject lines, working different angles and hooks, fine-tuning the offer, etc.
Even with a good copywriter, you’re only going to achieve a few extra percentage points on your email at best bumping it up from 20 to 30% – still not great.
With bulk SMS there is virtually no competition apart from the recipient discussing what they’re going to have for dinner or arranging lunch with friends over the weekend.
It’s a fairly quiet place in terms of actual competition which flings the door wide open for you to gain maximum attention from the recipient.
6. Bulk SMS Marketing Is Not An Online Advertising Channel
Unlike email or even mobile marketing SMS doesn’t require the recipient to be connected to the internet.
This means that you can reach people on smartphones as well as people on mobile phones that can’t access the internet on-demand.
Conclusion
Should you burn your email program and use bulk SMS marketing instead?
No. Although SMS is a powerful marketing channel, it is better used for those once per week campaigns that you want to knock out of the park. Email can be used daily, which means you can drive revenue with frequency, bulk SMS is not a high-frequency channel, it needs a week or two before you can send a campaign to those recipients again or you’ll get mass unsubscribes and complaints.
Instead, use text message marketing once per week or once every two weeks to get the most from it.
