7 Reasons Your Business Can’t Afford To Ignore Text Messaging
By Alexa Lemzy, Content Editor, TextMagic – An expert on SMS and mobile marketing.
Text messaging has been around for decades, but even today far too many businesses are failing to make use of one of the most powerful communication tools at our disposal. The increasing use of mobile devices to shop and do business is not set to slow down any time soon, so organizations not focusing on mobile-friendly marketing tactics risk getting left behind.
With 7 out of 10 retailers not taking advantage of SMS to communicate with customers, creating a text messaging campaign is a simple and easy way to put your marketing game ahead of the curve.
Here are 7 more reasons your business can’t afford to ignore text messaging:
1. High open rates
How many unread emails are in your inbox right now?
And how many unread text messages do you have?
If you are anything like the vast majority of consumers, your answers to those questions will be ‘hundreds’ and ‘almost none.’
With more than 82% of text messages read within minutes of sending, no other form of marketing messaging can compete with SMS open rates.
2. High response rates
We are exposed to so much advertising in our daily lives and online that a lot of the marketing we see is simply lost in the noise.
Marketing campaigns run via social media, email and Youtube can all be highly effective, but it often takes significant time and resources to create a campaign that stands out from the mass of content and marketing competing for your audience’s attention. Ad blockers and spam filters further reduce the chance your message even makes it onto the customer’s screen to be ignored.
Conversely thanks to effective regulations on spam such as GDPR and few retailers taking advantage of SMS to contact customers, you could be one of the few or only businesses messaging your customer.
Customers are 6-8 times more likely to actually respond to marketing when it is not one of the many messages cluttering their inbox or social media feed.
3. Low cost per message
SMS marketing costs only a few pennies per text, meaning you can potentially contact thousands of customers without breaking the bank.
Paired with text messaging’s high open and response rates, this can lead to an excellent return on investment.
4. Universal reach
Just about every potential customer has a mobile phone.
As long as that phone has signal, they will receive your message almost immediately. Not only will your recipients usually get your message when you want them to, but it also will be received in isolation.
Compare this to an Internet-based marketing message such as email, where your audience may have no connection for half the day, then receive half a dozen emails all at once when they get online, reducing the chances your message gets opened.
5. Immediacy
More than 80% of text messages are opened less than 5 minutes after being sent.
This allows you to use tactics not possible with slower forms of marketing, such as reacting to daily news and events with relevant promotions or matching a competitor’s deal within minutes of discovering it.
The immediacy of SMS makes it one of the most flexible and reactive communication tools available to you.
6. Easy to track
SMS is one of the easiest forms of marketing to track and quantify the success of each message.
Delivery reports not only help keep your mailing list clear of dead numbers, but also tells you when a message got opened, letting you optimise your campaign for messages that always get opened immediately.
Image Source: https://www.textmagic.com/track-text-messages/
Click-throughs and promotions uptake are just as easy to measure, enabling you to calculate the overall response to and effectiveness of your campaign.
7. Fast to setup and change
While you should make sure to go with a bulk SMS provider that allows you to bypass the 160 character limit of text messages, you will still only be sending relatively short messages to customers compared to other forms of marketing.
SMS marketing also requires no image or video creation. This means you can create new messages cheaply and easily, and send out texts to entire mailing lists within minutes of composing, allowing you to react quickly to news and events with relevant marketing.
Easy-to-use web apps let you easily maintain mailing lists, and compose and schedule messages, without eating into your work day.
Image Source: https://www.textmagic.com/text-online/
Text messaging isn’t just one of the most effective ways to communicate with customers – it’s also one of the easiest. With so many advantages and so little setup time and cost, there is simply no good excuse not to be making use of SMS in your business.
Comments (1-3)
Very well thought out article.
For some demographics, text messaging is a great idea. For others, a great way to turn people off instantly.
Great research will help any business decide which media is best for their campaign in their country, with their ideal clients, their knowledge of marketing, and their budget.
There is no magic in a media and texting is just another media. Is it a fit for you? Only research will tell you. Without the research, you are just guessing.
Mark
Want more marketing answers? Go to www.TabletMarketingAcademy.com , a completely free, no credit card required, site. Or follow me on www.Quora.com.
Very informative article!
Great article! I've been touting the merits of SMS text message marketing for years but apparently not long or loud enough because businesses that are not corporate giants just aren't getting it. Maybe they don't see how they can virtually tap and drain away their competitors customers and add meaningful numbers to their bottom line. Maybe they don't believe that they can fill up their customer pipeline with sales that would have normally slipped away through the increasingly less effective outbound marketing methods they continue to rely on. Maybe they don't see that they are basically getting 100 x times less reach for 100 x more money with traditional marketing methods. Maybe they believe (falsely) that they have to completely understand technology to use it. Maybe they don't believe that practically EVERY customers that darkens thier doors is carrying with them and looks at daily, the very device that they should be reaching their customers on. I don't know what is keeping them from using a technology that can literally transform their businesses. I guess it's truth what they say that you don't know, what you don't know!