SMS Marketing is a marketing technique that involves sending promotional messages or transactional messages for marketing purposes using text messages. The messages are mostly meant to communicate time-sensitive offers, updates, and alerts to people who have consented to receive messages from your businesses.
As one of the prized marketing tools amongst various businesses, SMS Marketing has practices that ensure that it is used most effectively and provides the desired results. As part of our mission to provide communication apps for better engagement, Arkesel’s SMS Marketing service enables businesses to send timely and compelling text messages on products and services offers.
The Things That Must Be Done
For starters, an SMS Marketing Practitioner is to integrate social media with their marketing strategy. Social Media has become the regular way of putting out content for your target market’s attention. Aside from just the sending of text messages to customers, a more modern approach is to put your business’s phone number and a keyword in its multiple social media profiles, and invite your followers to subscribe and stay notified to be the first to know when your posts are live.
Keeping messages brief is also something to consider. The standard SMS text message is up to 160 characters and should be kept as such. Keep your messages short and clearly state your motives. Leads and customers are easily turned off by wordy or ambiguous messages. As with any marketing medium, you’re not going to get far without linking to your sales page. But here’s the problem with adding links to your messages: raw links added to your messages make them lengthy. To remedy such issues with your message, use URL shorteners like Goo.gl or Bit.ly to save space when you include a link.
Now, you may think: Why not style up your message with some catchy text abbreviations such as ( WTFs, LMAOs, or OMGs). While doing so does shorten your message, it can have a negative impact on your business’s reputation. Use abbreviations sparingly and only when needed. As a business, you have an image of professionalism to maintain. Odds are unless it totally screams your brand, not everyone you’re marketing to “gets” or tolerates text abbreviations. You must also personalize messages. When sending promotional messages to your customers, you must personalize them so they feel special and appreciated. SMS marketing is permission-based. You’re not allowed to contact people without their permission.So, the audience that permitted you to market to them expects to receive valuable information from you. Reward their loyalty by making them feel like a part of an exclusive VIP club. Offer them irresistible deals, value, special offers, exclusive discounts, and other things that aren’t available elsewhere.
Timing is also something to note. SMS messages are very personal as they land directly into customers’ hands so you must consider the times of day when it is most appropriate to send your marketing messages. It is crucial to choose the right time. Simply try walking in your customers’ shoes, would you like to receive promotional messages late at night or very early in the morning? No, you would not like to receive promotional messages late at night hence the need to pace your messages and send them during working hours.
You must also give customers an opt-out. Customers may have given consent to receive marketing communications before, but sometimes they change their minds. Act responsibly and give them an option to opt out at the end of the text. Keep your mobile list warm and you’ll see better results.
The Things That Must Be Dropped
Just as the SMS Marketing service guides your marketing endeavors, there are certain aspects to which Arkesel urges its users to avoid if possible.
For instance, the bulk of focus should not be on advertising. Don’t just focus on the marketing messages meant for brand promotion. Instead, make a goal of adding value to your clients by providing good quality services. This can be done by sending free gifts coupons, useful tips, and texting only relevant and beneficial information. Adopt the approach of treating your clients like your family and send texts that serve their best interests.
Messages to customers must not be plentiful. Timing is crucial, but the frequency is equally important. You must never send messages just to send something. If you don’t have anything useful to say or offer, simply stay silent. Your SMS marketing messages must deliver value and a real-time benefit to those who opted in for your SMS communication. Otherwise, you’ll just annoy people and eventually start losing subscribers. You must always remember that in this line of marketing, less is more.
Conversations must not be kept one-sided. You must encourage your subscribers to respond to your messages with actions such as providing incentives such as special offers as previously mentioned or kindly prompting them to respond to your messages. This helps in establishing good relationships with each of your customers and helps them see you are more than a mere service advertiser.
Forgetting to introduce yourself is also something that must not be done. As a promoter, you cannot just send messages without addressing some big questions like: “Who are you?” and “What are you all about?”. Given the extremely low attention span of readers, it is important to highlight your business, product, or service name as early as possible. Ensure you identify your company clearly in the text message. This is important to ensure brand recall and that your marketing message is as clear as possible by using your company’s name as the sender ID. Remember, a sender ID cannot be more than 11 characters. This can be
Long URL Links in messages should not be sent to customers. If you want to include a link to an article, your YouTube channel or your website, don’t forget to shorten it. A longer link not only uses up valuable characters, but it looks extremely unprofessional and could be mistaken for spam by the receiver.
Arkesel’s SMS Marketing Service is a cost-effective marketing service that is easy to use and capable of allowing you to easily reach your customers. Get better informed about this great and effective service by checking out https://arkesel.com/bulk-sms for more details.
