Do you feel like you've exhausted all your marketing ideas and aren't getting the responses and attention you were expecting? Guess what, you're not alone and almost every startup or small business has gone through it.
Short Message Service marketing, or SMS, has grown to be a proven and cost-effective method to help drive sales and conversions amongst small businesses. There are a multitude of text message marketing statistics that support this marketing method's effectiveness. More than 90% of text messages are opened within the first 3 minutes of receipt as opposed to an email. Investing in a text messaging marketing program with no doubt will turn out to be a worthy investment.
A number of small companies use text message marketing to encourage marketing engagement from prospects and existing customers. In fact, most small businesses use SMS marketing to generate customer acquisition, send promotions and notifications, maximize customer service, and increase internal productivity. Businesses who currently use SMS marketing range from real estate, retail shops, restaurants, and telecommunication companies.
Getting started with SMS marketing is quick and easy. Some businesses and marketers add click-to-join options to websites, emails, and social media channels in order to get people to subscribe. You can also create a keyword and a short code to encourage quick text message marketing opt-ins.
Your keyword should be unique and can include letters and numbers. This word will be used when someone wants to subscribe to your marketing texts. They can send the word JOIN or whichever keyword you choose and they'll be subscribed within seconds.
The short code is a 5 or 6 digit number that people can send in order to join the SMS service. An example of a code can be 101010.
Benefits of SMS Marketing
- Quickness: SMS messages are sent instantly to the recipient's phone. In today's fast-paced digitally advanced world, everyone is running around with their phone on hand. Your text will be received within seconds and delivered to your recipient's finger tips.
- Directness: Text messages are being checked at a very constant rate compared to emails. Not only do most people check their emails maybe only once or twice a day, but your texts wont get filtered out as spam or junk like emails would.
- Analytics: Most SMS marketing providers make it simple and easy to access data which includes texts delivered, contact count, and more. Analyzing this data can help you constantly improve your SMS marketing campaign.
Before you get started, keep in mind that text marketing is a permission-based activity. Make sure to read over this compliance guide in order to send SMS marketing texts the right way!