What are text promotions?

Text messaging is a great way to connect with your clients directly and personally. SMS (Short Message Service) has been around since 1992, but in recent years has become an effective marketing modality that helps businesses advertise directly to their consumers.

In general, the goal of an SMS promotion is to spread awareness of your products or services to your targeted market. SMS coupons, access to exclusive content, or admittance to an invitation-only event are some of the most common SMS promotions.

SMS marketing is designed to move a potential customer through the sales funnel, ending with a conversion. A conversion could be a sale of a product or service, depending on your business, but the most typical type is a purchase.

Using SMS text messages for your business can help you:

• Increase customer retention
• Develop greater brand loyalty
• Provide immediate communication
• Attract new clients
• Increase total sales
• Provide a profitable ROI

Why use SMS promotions?

Incorporating text messaging into your marketing tool belt will provide you with many benefits, helping you outpace competitors and reach customers more personally.

Instant delivery
When it comes to delivery, SMS is the fastest and most efficient engagement modal on the market. Moreover, reaching a broad audience can be done in a matter of seconds with text messaging.

Quick results
You can instantly see who’s received your message, read it, and of course, who’s replied to your messages. Most SMS platforms, including Cloud Contact, offer an SMS inbox that provides you with the means to respond to users in real-time.

You should note that the average person spends 5.4 hours a day on their cellphone. What’s more, most people have their notifications turned on by default for text, unlike email, where notifications are often overlooked or even turned off.

Personal
Cell phones are very personal devices, so people often respond to text messages more promptly. To take it a step further, when you direct your message to the individual by mentioning their name, you can really grab their attention.

Potential customers are much more likely to give you an email address than their mobile phone number, so yes, you should also maintain an email list. However, once a customer has opted-in with SMS, you can tap into their personal social channel and start seeing better engagement.

Economical
Texting is cheap, mainly if you send messages in bulk. No other marketing method offers such affordable results, especially when compared to traditional marketing methods, such as television, radio, and printed media.

Many email providers require you to pay based on the number of contacts. For example, with SMS, you can upload unlimited contacts; you pay for the number of messages you send.

Straightforward
Because of its simplicity and scope, SMS has become a globally adopted communication channel. Everyone knows how to open, read, and send text messages. Also, thanks to the length limitation, texts are small, direct, concise, and straight to the point.

Unlike email, with SMS, you don’t need to add extravagant images to your messages to catch your audience’s eye; you can simply slap together some text and send it over to your customers.

Global market
Texting is designed to reach anyone that has a mobile phone number with texting capabilities. Somebody in the United States can text a person in France, and the message will be delivered in the blink of an eye.

It’s estimated that there are up to 7 billion mobile phones in use daily, making SMS one of the few universally adopted technologies. As a result, you can reach your customers no matter where they are with SMS.

Efficient
Pre-programming messages gives you more time to spend on other business areas or, indeed, managing most of the sales opportunities that will come from your SMS campaign.

You can send scheduled messages for various use cases, such as reminders, feedback, and follow-ups. In addition, most SMS services allow you to create templates so that you don’t have to rewrite each campaign.

Trackable and analytical
SMS messages are easily trackable. Most providers offer delivery reports that can be an excellent source for analyzing the outcome of each campaign and making adjustments based on the data received.

Additionally, you can embed a link into your campaign that contains UTM parameters that will enable you to track when a customer converts. Inside of Google Analytics, you can establish goals to see precisely where a customer from your campaign visits on your web page and whether or not they made a purchase.

Reliable
Mobile phones generally do not come with a spam filter, much less a spam mailbox, as SMS messages are typically more secure than email. In addition, emails hackers can embed malicious attachments that may contain malware that can hack into your device.

SMS is an exceptionally efficient form of communication, as it has a delivery rate of 99.9 percent. Furthermore, for nearly 90% of text messages, statistics show that recipients read them within three minutes.

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SMS vs. Email

Email is an excellent tool for sending more complex messages with attachments and images, which you can store for a future date.

SMS, on the contrary, is an excellent communication tool for delivering up-to-the-minute information and offering special discounts. Thus, combining email and SMS is a powerful approach that can enrich the customer experience when commenced precisely.

What kind of promotions can you send with text?

While promotional activities are some of the most effective means of increasing sales, enhancing customer experience, and boosting brand recognition, many companies dismiss sales promotions. However, no matter what industry you’re in or the size of your business, you can still use effective SMS promotion strategies to generate leads.

Free samples

Many people are skeptical about opting into SMS campaigns – they don’t want to be overwhelmed with marketing-related content. So, to break the ice a bit and leave a lasting customer impression, offer your subscribers a free sample when they first opt-in.

Everybody likes free stuff, and I guarantee they will be less annoyed when you send them texts in the future. They will always be looking out for the next complementary good or service.

Coupons by SMS

SMS provides a fast and direct way to offer your customers a virtual discount code. If you embed a link in your message, customers can purchase the spot. In addition, address your customer by their name when presenting the discount code to make the message feel more exclusive.

Contests via SMS

Running a contest via SMS is the best way to gather customer phone numbers. Customers like contests and free stuff so they will generally sign up without any question or concern.

To run a contest with text, follow the steps below:

1. Create a unique phone number that will be used for the contest
2. Advertise the event using existing communication and social channels
3. Filter all your customer data and run the giveaway

Loyalty programs

Loyalty programs through text messages are designed to make customers feel special and focus on rewarding loyal customers. When customers are happy with their experience, they’re more likely to talk about it with their friends, which also plays into organic word-of-mouth marketing.

When users sign up for your loyalty program, you can send them an automatic welcome message thanking them for joining. Additionally, these loyal customers can be stored together in a contact group and sent exclusive benefits and discounts.

Reminders and notices

Reminders and notices are used to inform customers about specific issues, such as an abandoned item in their cart or a discount that is soon expiring.

You can think of this kind of promotion as a follow-up message. In sales and life in general, consistency is key; therefore, don’t be afraid to send your customers a second or third message following up on your original sales message in hopes that they take action.

Keep in mind, there’s a key difference between consistency and spamming. Lay on the throttle and ensure that you’re not being overbearing.

What makes a good SMS promotion?

Text messaging is the most effective and direct way to interact with your clients. However, if you’re looking for the best results, you might consider a few of these best practices.

Be conscious when you send a campaign

Do all of your customers reside in the same area? Chances are, you have clients in other regions of the world that live in various time zones.

First off, sending a campaign after 9 PM in your client’s time violates regulations provisioned by the TCPA. Second, your users will likely not take action the following morning after a campaign has been received.

The key is to send a campaign when your customers are most alert and likely to take action. You might consider segmenting your lists based on the regions in which your customers are located.

Furthermore, when a customer responds, in your CRM, you can jot down the times they responded and the moments they didn’t. By narrowing down this window, you can identify key times when your customers are most likely to engage.

Include your company name in your message

When sending several SMS messages, most providers send them through a short number, which means that your contacts will not know where the message came from. Therefore, the first thing you should do is ensure your messages address your company.

If your customers are unsure where the message came from, they might be hesitant to take action. Uncertainty creates an unnecessary barrier that can be avoided by simply introducing yourself at the beginning or end of every message.

Goal-oriented

Without a pre-established goal list, how do you determine if your campaign was successful or not? Every successful marketing strategy has a clearly defined set of goals that they wish to hit.

Your first SMS promotion might have a goal of getting X amount of people to sign up because you’re unsure how your users will respond to text. After analyzing the results from your first campaign, you can create a concrete goal and strategy for the subsequent campaign.

Using Google Analytics Goals and UTM parameters, you can effectively track your results. To learn more about tracking your campaigns with Google Analytics, visit here.

SMS Promotion Templates

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How to Send a Text Promotion