Online SMS has become a lot more popular over the past two or three years and one of the things that makes it such a great tool is the ease of use, it really is an easy piece of tech to get up and running.
It hasn’t changed at all since the 90’s you are still just typing in a message and clicking send, that is about it.
But with the rise of online SMS services like SMSpapa.com.au they have been able to get close to email marketing features but with the power of SMS.
Ecommerce businesses in particular have been making amazing gains in terms of conversions by integrating Online SMS messages at key moments inside the buying process.
While businesses are still using email marketing can should continue to do so, they should be seriously, and I mean seriously start thinking about the money they are leaving on the table by not having an Online SMS program in place.
In this article I’m going to give you the benefits of SMS and what you should be looking out for as well.
Before you trial an SMS service checklist
Make sure they have a responsive customer and tech service team
Like all technology there will be a point where you run into tech headaches and this will happen at the worst time just to let you know.
One thing I would recommend is getting the customer support team walk you through setting up your account, even if you think you know what you are doing this will give you an idea of how they handle you and your questions.
Are you able to get them on the phone without waiting for hours?
- Is the customer support team local?
- If you leave a message do they call you back?
- Are they helpful and are they able to clearly guide you through the setup?
Do you they have the following features:
Opt out / unsubscribe
You will need this to keep you out of legal issues. You should always be including an opt-out message to allow people to leave your list and it also makes you look like a professional.
Scheduling
You will need this to plan your SMS campaigns in advance to line up with your other promotions but you want to make sure that you can not schedule dates but also times and day of week as well and also recurring this gives you the best flexibility.
Auto-reply
When people opt-in you’ll need to send them a reply to let them know that you have received their request and not all SMS services offer this feature.
Sender ID
This allows you to use your brand name instead of a random mobile number. Do take care with this since people will not be able to reply back so if you are running polls or asking for meeting confirmations, etc. do not use this option.
There are plenty of other features that are used but these are the main ones you will want to have.
How to get the most from your Online SMS campaign
Segment
With any kind of list building strategy you need to make sure that you are grouping people together into relevant categories so that when you need to send out a campaign you know who exactly you should be sending it to.
These segments could be based on gender, goals, product, time in life cycle, etc.
Personalize
Personalization is a great way to increase conversions and is tough to impossible to achieve without segmentation which is why I listed segmentation first.
Personalization is more than just including the person name inside your text message, it is about connecting the right information or offer to the right person at the right time.
Can you see how tough this is to do if everyone is bundled inside one giant group?
For example, you would send the same offer to existing customers as you would to people who have never purchased from you yet, in most cases people who have not tried or experience your product or service would benefit from a free trial or perhaps a low front end offer so they can experience your product at low risk but you wouldn’t continue this strategy once they’ve purchased as you would go out of business and damage your brand so the strategy need to change as the customer evolves.
Personalization understands where the customer currently is and what product (or information) they need at that moment.
Exclusive content, offers and FOMO
It is a lot more challenging to get people to subscribe to a mobile marketing list than an email list since most people have a dummy email address but most people only have one mobile number.
And so because of this you want to let them know that they made a good decision by giving them content and offers that they could not get elsewhere.
Adding fear of missing out strategy makes it easier for people to see the value of being on your list and more reluctant to unsubscribing.
That said, you want to clean your subscriber list from time to time because unlike email you will be paying for each person on your list when you send your Online SMS campaign so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have 10,000 people and only 10 of them actually buy.
Conclusion
Online SMS is an incredibly powerful communication channel mainly for its insane 97% open rates, fast response times, epic delivery rates and ease of use.
The other major benefit to Online SMS is that since a lot of small businesses don’t use it the chances of meeting your direct competition inside the inbox is few to zero making it a lot easier to win conversions.
With mobile marketing exploding and with digital marketing channels being oversaturated businesses should be implementing Online SMS into their overall marketing mix.
