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Could your business benefit from SMS marketing in 2016?

18th January 2016 Print

The new year is a good time to take a fresh look at your marketing strategy and see if there are any improvements that can be made. If your business operates in a highly-competitive marketplace, there is always scope for trying new approaches that can provide an edge over the competition. Many companies are now paying close attention to SMS marketing as a way to boost engagement with their customer base. Here’s why you should consider it also.

Cost-Effectiveness

Compared to most other forms of marketing, SMS marketing give a very good return on investment (ROI). When you send a message to someone through a specialist provider such as www.globalmessaging.co.uk, it’s because they have deliberately agreed to receiving your marketing, so this approach will yield far better results than a local radio or billboard campaign which costs far more. Open rates for SMS marketing consistently hover around the 90% rate, and since almost everyone now has at least one mobile phone (in fact there are now reckoned to be more mobiles in the UK than people), the scope for growth is spectacular. And the more text messages you send, the lower the cost goes. 

Ease of Use

Building up your database for SMS marketing is not difficult, beyond recording mobile phone numbers at every opportunity. And for the customer, opting-in is a breeze, so your subscriber list, provided it’s well-maintained and you don’t abuse it, should stay healthy. 

It’s also worth remembering that many people feel a bit uncomfortable handing over a lot of personal details to a company, especially with computer hacking never out of the news for long. With SMS marketing, they need to provide their name and phone number and that’s it, so they can have a reasonable level of confidence. 

Speed

Faster than a speeding bullet - your customers will receive your marketing message within seconds of you hitting 'Send'. Only email marketing has such a lightning-fast impact, but open rates for that channel tend to be far lower. This means that SMS marketing is ideal for companies in the services and retail industries, where rapid communication is vital for sales.

Visibility

Another benefit that SMS marketing holds over email is that there are no tricky spam filters to contend with - a phone only has one inbox for messages, so they can’t be ignored or, worse, overlooked. That means if you need to remind someone about an upcoming delivery, there’s no chance it will be missed or blocked.

Integration

SMS marketing is easily integrated into other elements of your marketing strategy, so you can send a message to customers reminding them about a social media competition you’re running, or to inform them about a new in-store promotion. 

Analytics

Advances in analytic software mean that you can track meaningful data such as delivery and open rates, and customer engagement. So if SMS marketing doesn’t seem to be working for one segment of your market, you can switch to a different tactic. You can ascertain what types of content and messages are best received, or when the best time of day or week to text is, and adjust your strategy accordingly. SMS marketing is also increasingly used as a means of sourcing customer data through surveys, which can then feed into future plans.

Precision

With a 160-character maximum to an SMS message, it forces your marketing team to produce clear and concise messages, and cut out the waffle. Many customers prefer simple marketing anyway: “Hey, you, do you want this? Call this number then and you can have it.” Easy! 

When it comes to marketing, diversity is often key to success. If your company does not currently use SMS marketing, it may be missing out.