It’s believed that consumers are often bombarded with social alerts from family, friends, brands, and work. Due to such disruptions, many decide to disable notifications for email and other social media platforms. This makes it challenging for businesses to succeed with their social media or email marketing campaigns.
Fortunately, if you want to market in real time, the best solution is to send a text message and take advantage of text marketing. This is the reason why more and more companies have started using SMS gateway API services. These can be easily integrated with your existing business system, allowing you to combine your current communication applications with a bulk SMS service that enables you to reach thousands of customers at a time.
You also need to co-develop virtual marketing dashboards apart from other strategies that help accurately measure your KPIs, and how effective your marketing game plan was, in terms of driving results. This is how a company like “Marketing Reports” can come to your rescue, by building a smart analytical dashboard.
Text message marketing or short message service (SMS) marketing is a kind of digital marketing strategy that helps you improve your brand awareness on a more personal level. Consumers should opt into your messaging before you can start sending texts to them.
It’s also possible to send bulk messages to audience segments or groups of customers or customize the experience by sending individualized messages. This method enables you to bypass social media ads or marketing campaigns and go directly to your customers’ mobile devices.
However, to achieve results with your text marketing campaigns, they should be well-structured and legal. You may also need to work with a reliable service provider like Drop Cowboy which offers advanced text messaging software.
To get started, here are the ways to run a successful text marketing campaign:
Select A SMS Marketing Tool
The text campaign you’re going to launch will definitely need software packages and tools geared towards text marketing. These days, some text marketing platforms provide means that you can utilize to segment and manage your target audience, gather client information, and send messages in bulk.
Nonetheless, not all text marketing platforms are made equal. Often, each one has varying functionality pegged at varying price tags. Conduct your own research on each tool and choose depending on your company’s requirements.
If possible, it’s wise to invest in solutions like Call Cowboy Auto Dialer, which can turn your existing phone into a powerful and efficient business dialling platform. This will give the impression that you’re a big and reliable business. So, if you need a local presence or toll-free number for your business, the software may come in handy for your text marketing campaigns.
Define Your Goals
There are countless goals you can achieve with text marketing campaigns. These objectives may include:
- To increase event sign-ups;
- To boost overall exposure; and
- To promote a new contest or product lineup.
Regardless of what a business is trying to achieve with an SMS marketing and outreach campaign, the goal should be definable and measurable. For instance, if you want to urge your subscribers to take action online, the promo codes in your text marketing campaign must be unique, so they can be easily monitored and achieved.
Conduct Market Research
When you have a good grasp of your campaign’s goals, your next step is to perform market research to find the best path to meet your goals. It’s just as crucial as laying out your goals since the market will tell you whether or not you can achieve your goals. It’ll also provide you with a glimpse of who you’ll be marketing towards.
Even if there are some ways to do research about your potential customers, you might already have some of the work done. For instance, businesses with customer loyalty programs have already started the process of learning about their customers. If your brand has started a loyal program as well, consider reviewing what you’ve learned, and don’t hesitate to adopt changes and implement them in your next marketing campaign.
Get Down To Knowing About Your Target Audience
Gaining an understanding of whom you’re speaking with is recommended for doing text marketing campaigns. Brand interest can be acknowledged via an SMS advertising program.
It’s said that sending messages directly to mobile phones fosters a more personal connection compared to getting an email newsletter. For this reason, patrons are believed to be more critical when selecting which businesses to interact with through text messages. This may lead to your SMS marketing recipients list being more homogenous – containing buyers who boast better engagement rates.
Over time, text messages will let you compile data related to the phone number details in your list. You’ll be able to form ideas of what content type people tend to be more engaged with, what products they’re purchasing from you, for how much, and how often. Hence, it isn’t impossible for you to form audience groups and send out highly relevant information to interested clientele.
Get Prior Permission From Intended Recipients
Text marketing has evolved over the years. Back then, spamming people with texts was morally wrong, but most businesses did it anyway.
At present, it’s illegal unless you have obtained prior consent from the intended recipient. The days of buying a mass database of phone numbers and sending out text messages are long gone because doing so can be a violation of established laws that carry hefty penalties.
Only use text marketing if your potential customers or existing clients have opted in and supplied you with their phone number willingly. If you contact anyone unsolicited, you risk losing your credibility and may force them to unsubscribe to your text messages.
Ace Your Marketing Content
It’s believed that a text marketing campaign is an important long-term strategy. It revolves around promoting your company consistently, providing customer support, nurturing an audience, and the like: each one takes effort and time to nurture.
It’s advised that you plan your campaign and ensure that it’s appropriate to your current brand messaging. Auxiliary content is recommended as well.
It doesn’t only mean repeating the information you place on your website and emails either. Text messages should be short, specially written, value-packed, and come with snappy content. This permits for less hassle and others.
Tips to Write Message
If you don’t know where to get started, here are some of the tips to shape your message:
Identify Yourself
Your recipients must immediately know who you are. Or else, they won’t understand your message’s context. It’s the stuff of basic brand marketing.
Use Proper Grammar
Avoid using abbreviations and text slang since not everyone will understand them. Unnecessary abbreviations and improper capitalizations make your business look unprofessional.
State Your Offer Upfront
Since text messages are short, you should always be straightforward. This is particularly true when you’re using a text message blast service. You have to be efficient and prioritize what you only need to stay.
It’s highly recommended that you state your offer upfront and eliminate extra fluff. Your customers will appreciate a direct and simple approach and be more likely to respond. As a result, you’ll get a more engaged marketing list that can help boost your bottom line.
It doesn’t mean you can’t include your personality at the end of your text message. Just make sure to get the essential information out of the way first. This way, your subscribers won’t be forced to keep reading just to know what they should do next.
In addition, most subscribers will only read the first part of your message, so it’s critical to make it the most compelling.
Include A Clear Call-To-Action (CTA)
Call-to-action (CTAs) are basic instructions allowing your subscribers to know what next move to take. They provide direction and a push to get them going.
Including a CTA in your text marketing campaign can have a huge impact. Besides, telling people what they should do next will take away any indecision or question that could pop up and derail your message.
A good CTA leaves subscribers with a direct path to redeem your offer and takes away the guesswork that might be involved. If possible, be clear with your message and be prepared to deliver once they take the next step.
If you’re struggling to find the right words to use for CTA, here are some of your options:
- Buy Here;
- Click Here; and
- Purchase Now
Personalize Your Text Marketing Campaigns
A good text marketing tool will let you incorporate segmentation and target your contacts the same way marketers do with email.
To customize your text marketing campaigns, use the first name of your subscribers and send messages based on their location and purchase history. This will help you maintain or build relationships with your subscribers.
According to studies, personalization may also involve sending text messages at the right time for better results.
Most people have their text message notifications enabled. Send your messages during the hours that people are awake to prevent aggravating anyone. Keep in mind that delivering ill-timed or irrelevant messages may affect your campaign goals, result in higher opt-out rates, and tarnish your brand reputation.
Create A Sense Of Urgency
Your customers should be motivated to act now and as fast as possible. You may inspire action by including expirations on your offers.
Creating a sense of urgency provides your customers extra push that urges them to redeem your offer. So, consider offering a limited number of redemptions or specific expiration data for every text marketing campaign.
You can also use language to your advantage. Broadcast timeliness in your text marketing campaigns using words such as fast, quickly, and now. These words may get your customers on the move and complete their transactions with your business.
Keep The Right Timing In Mind
Timing is the key to running a successful text marketing campaign. There’s no use in putting all that effort into campaigns if nobody opens. The perfect time to send your text marketing campaigns may vary as it depends on what group of audience you’re targeting and what products or services you’re selling.
For instance, you can send during Saturday or Sunday between 10 am and 12 pm. This is when most people are relaxing and more likely to give you a response. Meanwhile, during weekdays, you can send text messages before lunchtime and after working hours.
Keep in mind to never send messages too late in the evening and too early in the morning if you don’t want to lose potential customers. It’s because sending too early in the day may interrupt your customers’ daily schedule for work, and during the evening, they might be too tired to check your message.
Limit Your Message Frequency
Aside from paying attention to the right timing of sending messages, customers might be easily turned off when bombarded with a message. For this reason, it’s crucial to limit your message frequency. The ideal frequency of messages is at least eight every month. By providing value and being consistent with your messages, customers can look forward to receiving them rather than dreading them.
Nevertheless, the frequency of messages doesn’t apply when the customers reach out to you proactively. Usually, text messages have CTAs that include a shortcode that customers text back to get more information. Since this kind of interaction is the reason for your campaigns, it must be encouraged and not limited.
Add Value
Regardless of what you communicate through your text marketing campaigns, ensure that it’s relevant and adds value to your customers. For example, sneak peeks, promotions, and coupons are crowd-pleasers that your subscribers must be happy to receive.
Providing helpful information aside from promotional offers will create a level of surprise and anticipation. Brands should see text marketing similar to how they look at joining conversations on social media sites. They should ask themselves how they can add value without causing disruption.
Measure, Analyze, And Repeat
As you launch your text marketing campaign, it’s best to measure the success of your marketing and analyze what might be done better. Mobile user engagement analytics and metrics may tell you about everything you should know, mainly if you have segmented your audience.
After that, once you know how your campaigns went, your next step is to repeat the whole process and improve what needs adjustments. Remember, a successful text marketing campaign doesn’t happen on your first try. Instead, it comes from perfecting your tactics and messages until you find the right balance. Even if it may seem like you’re pushing a boulder up a hill, your customers will surely appreciate your efforts to provide value as you continue to grow.
Conclusion
Text marketing campaigns can deliver real results for your business, above and beyond what traditional marketing strategies can provide. Just make sure to follow the above steps to run a text marketing campaign effectively and never hesitate to work with text marketing professionals to get better results in the future.
