Text marketing has been around for years, but in 2020 it has skyrocketed. More than 48 million consumers will opt-in to receive business SMS messages this year. Also, despite SMS marketing statistics that prove SMS marketing is effective, 65% of brands still don’t have a formal strategy for bulk SMS messaging to take advantage of the amount of time we spend on our phones. Opportunities exist for your organization to be on the cutting edge and potentially be the first of your competitors to take advantage of this platform.
SMS Versus Email Statistics:
- On average, people respond to texts 60 times faster than emails.
- Texts have 6-8 times the response rates of emails.
- 98% of texts are read compared to 22% of emails
- 90% of subscribers open all text messages within 3 minutes. However, subscribers read emails within two and a half days.
Although email marketing is still the primary way brands communicate with clients, consumers face email marketing burnout. In 2019, the average email open rate decreased by 22%.
Ready to Consider SMS Marketing Campaigns?
The first step in moving forward with SMS Marketing is to brainstorm all the different ways your business or organization could utilize text message marketing. SMS platform capabilities vary greatly. Before you choose a platform, decide how you might want to use it.
SMS Marketing Ideas
- Coupons: Send your subscribers exclusive deals. They will want to join your list if they know it is the only way to save. Subscribers might even tell their friends if your offer is enticing enough!
- Drip Campaigns: Send a succession of text messages over days, weeks, or months encouraging specific actions and reminding subscribers about offers, special events, or promotions. Drip campaigns are a fantastic set it and forget it marketing option that will pay off indefinitely.
- Raise Money: If you run a nonprofit, text message campaigns are low cost, low effort method to ask for donations.
- Abandon Cart Reminders: If you run an eCommerce website, reading the headline alone should be enough to get you excited. Yes, a few minutes after a shopper leaves an item in their cart and closes his or her browser, you can send them a gentle reminder to go ahead and check out. Include an incentive, and you increase the chance of completing the sale.
- Drive Post Purchase Reviews: Do you have plenty of happy customers, but few of them take the time to leave reviews? By texting and asking for a quick review, your business is much more likely to receive a response.
- Create Simple Polls: It is challenging to get customers to fill out a survey. However, by asking your subscribers to vote easily via text message, you can quickly find out what they think about a new product or service.
- Real-Time Conversations: With text marketing, you can provide instant customer support. Conversations are a great way to handle issues quickly and prevent negative reviews.
- Enhance Customer Relationships: Consider sending automated birthday, anniversary, or holiday wishes to clients along with special offers.
- Event Reminders: If you’re holding a promotion or fundraiser, text message marketing is a great way to get timely reminders to your audience.
SMS Marketing is the Future
We predict email marketing will continue to be part of your marketing toolkit for years to come, but SMS Marketing is worth testing. Twilio provides an unlimited number of options to set up your SMS platform, but options like SimpleTexting better serve small businesses and nonprofits.
What is your favorite SMS platform?
