SMS marketing, commonly known as text marketing, let’s you take advantage of the platform in your customer’s pocket and purse: their smartphone. Over 95% of texts are read. Can you claim that for your other marketing channels? (SMS means “Short Message Service”.)
Of course the very first thing you need is permission from people to text them. Don’t buy lists or use opt-out for SMS; you legally need to get people to opt-in to SMS messages before sending them.
SMS may be especially effective for retail stores and other practitioners of consumer marketing. Timely messages such as “Show this message to get 20% off today on…
- A pizza on your way home from work
- Snow shovels before the storm hits
- Fall fashions that have just arrived.
can be very effective.
You also can use SMS to improve your customer’s experience and bind them closer to you. For example, you can use SMS to let customers know the status of their order.
For B2B companies, text marketing may be especially effective around events such as conferences: “At 6pm night the drinks are on us at our company’s reception…” or “Show this message at our booth to take advantage of our conference discount.”
Use common sense, of course. Don’t send texts in the middle of the night (be especially careful about this if the people you’re texting aren’t all local). Too many of us sleep with our phone near our bed and don’t want to get woken at 3am with a commercial message.
If you’re new to text messaging, it may seem uncomfortable or intrusive when you first do it. But if your customers have given you permission, go for it.
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