Ready to win customers and fuel your next stage of growth with SMS marketing? SMS marketing is an effective advertising strategy to communicate with customers via text messages. The global SMS market is projected to hit $84 million by 2027, and studies show an SMS message has a 97% chance of being opened within 3 minutes. Compared to email’s average open rate of 20% – 30%, SMS marketing has an incredibly high chance of being seen and read by your target audience. In this article, we’ll explain an effective, 4-step process that B2C startups can use to drive sales & fuel business growth with SMS marketing.
1. Build your SMS list.
To kickstart your SMS strategy, you need an audience list. This could include existing customers, potential buyers, or people casually interested in your product or service. To get people subscribed and opted- into your SMS list, offer incentives like deals, coupons, or early access to new products. For example, many B2C businesses offer a 10% discount code on their website if you sign up for SMS messaging.
You can also add SMS sign-up forms on your emails, website, or in-store if you’re a physical retailer. You can also kickstart your list growth by converting your email subscribers into SMS subscribers. Place your SMS sign-up form in as many places as possible to encourage people to sign up, and even with a small SMS list to start, you can start communicating effectively with your audience at scale.
2. Create a promotional campaign.
One of the best things about SMS marketing is you can use it for many different types of campaigns. This includes a welcome campaign, re-engagement campaign, post-purchase campaign, and more. Holidays are one of the best times to run SMS campaigns as well, offering subscribers special deals or discounts on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Labor Day.
Set up continuously ongoing campaigns that run all the time, or craft limited-time offers around the holidays or other key events. You might want to announce new products or when popular best-selling items are back in stock.
3. Personalize your content.
Reach your audience at the right time with SMS marketing by encouraging them to revisit your website, add something to their cart, or complete a purchase. If you’ve noticed a drop in sales, run a quick SMS campaign to drive people back to your website. Create personalized campaigns and segmented user journeys to bring people in throughout the entire sales funnel, including the awareness stage, consideration, and purchase. Plus, once you have a loyal customer, you can build on that loyalty and advocacy by asking them to set up a subscription or refer a friend.
SMS marketing also helps you build up a database of first-party data, including first name, last name, shipping address, email address, shopping preferences, gender, age, buying habits, and more. First-party data is highly valuable in that it allows you to personalize your content and understand your target audience. For example, you gain valuable insights about whether your customers like purchasing through an app or on your website and how much their average order value tends to be.
4. Measure your success.
Once you’ve started sending SMS messages, it’s helpful to analyze your results. What are your open rates and click-through rates? What messages got the most engagement and which ones got the least? What messages drove the most website visits and purchases? Analyze the trends and metrics behind your SMS strategy to learn more about your audience and how they like to shop.
Use SMS Marketing to Grow Your Business
These four elements are mission-critical for a successful SMS strategy in the B2C industry, ensuring you’re reaching customers where they’re at – on their phones! As SMS is often a highly effective and profitable marketing strategy, take the time to build your subscriber list and start creating promotional campaigns. Personalize your content with first-party data to better connect with your audience’s purchasing habits and behaviors. Measure your success once you’ve started sending out a few campaigns, and analyze metrics like open rates, deliverability, clicks, purchases, and more. Worldwide, marketers spend $327 billion on mobile advertising, and SMS marketing is cost-effective, easy to implement, and simple to scale.
Featured image provided by JÉSHOOTS; Pexels; Thanks!
