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Personalised SMS marketing: examples of messages your customers will want to receive
SMS marketing is a great and nowadays unnecessarily wasted marketing opportunity. Personalised and targeted to the right customer segment, text message campaigns make the customer experience exceedingly superior.
Today’s emphasis on digital marketing, coupled with the explosion of marketing technology tools, make it easy to fall into the trap of shiny object syndrome and overlook the tried-and-true golden oldies. One such trusted classic is SMS marketing. High engagement and conversion rates should make its place in the marketing strategy toolkit a no-brainer. It also works well with data.
The world has been mobile first for a long time now
Ever since 2G mobile data services were rolled out in Finland and the first person-to-person text was sent in late 1994, texting slowly started to trend between friends. At the turn of the 21st century, a Finnish news provider decided to offer free news headlines via SMS - with the help of advertising. By 2002, SMS was a mass media.
What was true about text message marketing then is just as true today:
- SMS in an unobtrusive, non-aggressive, even humble means of advertising.
- Concise messaging and location-based benefits make it an increasingly effective channel.
- SMS providers guarantee reliable delivery - your customers will definitely get your offerings.
In fact, the success of SMS marketing was so unbeatable that it influenced the development of smartphones, not vice versa. The smartphone's usefulness to capture your customer’s attention has not diminished. If anything, smartphones have gotten smarter at captivating it! Have you?
Push the boundaries, create new SMS marketing trends
With the adoption of mobile, the advertising market and its revenues have grown to staggering heights. Smartphones are entwined in everything we do. The make-or-break question is how to smash through the clutter and gain conversions. Here are our answers: transactional and marketing SMS messages.
Transactional SMS for effective communications
Transactional SMSes are communicative, one-to-one text messages that inform customers about their purchases, processes and any other valuable information they might need. They are ideal for notifications about shipment, delivery and order status. They also function well as appointment confirmations, appointment reminders, and other customer service matters.
Automated transactional text messages reduce the need of resources, both human and monetary, while they deliver a high level of customer service. Clients who opt out of marketing SMSes want their welcome texts, notifications and booking reminders.
The benefits of transactional messages via SMS include speed, convenience and low cost. They are streamlined (no spam filters!) and have open rates up to 98%. And what’s best, they are fully integrated into the Custobar Customer Data Platform (CDP).
Improve sales and customer experience with marketing SMS
Marketing SMS or text message marketing increases revenue and builds customer loyalty. They are great at increasing brand awareness, boosting engagement and generating sales. Instant delivery, quick response from the recipient, open rates in the high end of 90 percent… What more is there to hope for? Marketing SMS can lead to ROI that is the envy of your competitors.
Here are some of our examples of viable and effective SMS marketing campaigns:
- Send your incentive to join your customer loyalty program via SMS.
- Don’t stop there! Text message marketing is an excellent tool to tell your customers about discounts and announce sales. Since most customers become members of loyalty programs to get notified about their interests and the best discounts, this is an excellent channel for creating and maintaining customer loyalty. Rewarding the customer yields its rewards to you, too.
- Activate customers that you haven’t heard from for a while. Use the RFM matrix to learn who they are and hit them home with an SMS campaign. Remember to give your customers the option to directly opt-out.
- Be interactive with two-way SMS marketing. This can take the form of a customer satisfaction survey, a question to a customer with a bounced email, or a poll to enrich your customer data. Multiple questions are a-okay.
Customer first, on the basis of data
Personalising content is the key to business success these days. With the real-time, omnichannel customer data available at the 360-degree customer view provided by the Custobar CDP, personalising SMS goes way beyond adding the recipient’s name to the text message.
SMS marketing may be a mass media, but it should not be bulk advertising. Instead of sending out the same texts to all your customers, stay relevant and interesting with customised messages. To take this even further, you can automate birthday wishes with personal discount codes.
Remember not to get creepy, though. There is such a thing as too personal.
SMS still plays a vital role in the success of any company. Don’t miss out! Start getting your remarkable results with SMS marketing today.