Text messaging is something that most of us couldn’t imagine a world without these days.
However, it offers much more than simply being a convenient way to keep in touch with your family and friends. It is also a very powerful mobile marketing tool that can be utilised by small businesses to improve their reach and get better results.
Text message marketing has many benefits, including allowing customers to opt-in or out easily. With the vast majority of people in the UK owning a mobile phone or smartphone, you can easily use text message marketing to cast a wide net in a fast, affordable, interactive, and engaging way. More importantly, mobile and smartphone users are often more engaged with SMS than they are with other types of mobile marketing, such as social media or email. Most phone users have their devices set up to alert them whenever a new text message arrives immediately, and the majority of text messages will be read within a few minutes of them being delivered.
What are the Main Benefits of Text Message Marketing?
Some small business owners are reluctant to adopt text messages as a promotional tool, as they believe the platform is ineffective. However, the reality could not be any further away from this, with the best text message marketing services providing an affordable option that is easy to set up and use while delivering much value. Some of the main benefits to consider that make text message marketing a worthwhile option for today’s small businesses include the following:
1 – Customers Can Easily Opt In
Many traditional advertising methods rely on large numbers to succeed. When you blast your marketing message to the largest audience possible, you have a better chance of reaching genuinely interested people, with a good chance of them becoming paying customers. However, this type of marketing requires you to invest your money into marketing messages that many consumers will ignore or forget about very quickly.
On the other hand, SMS marketing is a type of advertising that requires an opt-in from your customers. As a result, your target audience will need to sign up to receive messages about any promotions, deals, and offers you’re informing them about before receiving them. And any kind of opt-in marketing can be hugely beneficial for businesses as you can be assured that anybody receiving your marketing messages wants to get them.
2 – Customers Can Opt Out of Text Marketing
Competition among small businesses is often immense, and the customers will be affected by this in some way. Chances are that your business is not the only one that is regularly contacting customers with promotions, ads, and other content. While customers can’t do much to escape the endless advertising cycle they face today, they do have some control, including opting out of text message marketing. While you might be wondering how the ability for customers to choose not to receive messages from your business any longer might be a benefit, the fact is that having this freedom to choose will prevent customers from becoming annoyed with receiving messages that they no longer want and ultimately deciding not to buy from your company as a result. Without an opt-out feature, customers might delete your text messages and rarely recover these messages in the future. Therefore, it’s essential to always offer an opt-out option so you only send messages to interested prospects.
3 – Quick Delivery
SMS marketing is short and to the point, and one of its biggest benefits for marketers and customers. Unlike lengthy marketing email promotions, text messages tend to be just a couple of sentences long and may sometimes include a link to a website or landing page where customers can get some more information if they wish. Customers are more likely to read the entire message simply because it is easy for them to do so. As SMS messages are easy to store on a device without being intrusive, they can also be read at the customers’ convenience, which means that the information is more likely to be noticed and taken in.
4 – Improve Customer Engagement
If you are like most people, you probably read a text message as soon as or shortly after it arrives in your inbox. Most text messages are read within just a few minutes of being delivered.
Today’s consumers have gotten used to their email inboxes being flooded with marketing messages and spam. Many consumers don’t check their email inboxes for new messages as often as they might have once. Many consumers will often use a separate email to receive advertising messages, making them even harder to reach.
On the other hand, SMS messages are immediate and often get read straight away. This has many benefits for business owners, especially when you consider that SMS marketing recipients have opted in and are willing participants. They’re almost guaranteed to be read as soon as they are sent. While SMS marketing is unlikely to get your message in front of as many customers as other advertising types, it does have the significant advantage of generating more customer engagement by quickly getting your message directly to interested recipients.
5 – It’s Affordable
One of the most appealing benefits of text message marketing for business owners on a budget is that it is an affordable way to get the word out. Small business owners, in particular, can often benefit in a big way from SMS marketing because it is inexpensive. Sending a text message is much cheaper than creating a TV ad or a billboard to place in front of potential customers, for example. While the prices can vary depending on the type and number of text messages that you want to send, there are various platforms that you can use to send text messages to your customers for pennies each. Many also provide bulk packages that you can access for a relatively low flat rate, enabling you to send hundreds or even thousands of messages per week or month, depending on your needs.
6 – Reach a Wide Audience
Pretty much, everybody these days has a mobile phone. And even if somebody is not using a smartphone, they will still usually be able to receive a text message, which allows you to cast a very wide net with this type of marketing. It works similarly to email marketing, as almost everybody now has an email address, but the difference is that texts often feel more urgent than emails. A text that comes in directly to your phone and notifies you immediately will often feel more urgent than an email, which can keep your business and whatever you promote at the forefront of your customers’ minds. Also, since promotional content is less common in texts than emails, it can also help you stand out to get even better results.
7 – Promote More Interaction
An interactive text message promotion is an ideal way to make your marketing messages more engaging and fun, and there are many different ways to achieve this. For example, you can send your text messages in the form of a survey or poll to encourage your audience to read the messages more carefully and participate actively. Another option you can consider is offering them the option to reply for free, which gives users more of a chance to engage with your brand by asking questions, for example. You can also use links in your marketing text messages to entertaining images or videos, informative blog posts, or landing pages where users can interact further and learn more.
8 – Improve Customer Loyalty
These days, customers have gotten used to marketing messages piling up in their email inboxes, so choosing to send them via text can help you build a stronger bond with your customers. Most smartphones today don’t have the same categories or tabs that you’ll often find in email inboxes to divide emails into different categories, which is why when you send a personalised text message offering a promotion or a loyalty reward to your customers, you can be pretty much guaranteed that it’s going to be read. Studies have found that customers who receive marketing SMS will open them a massive 98% of the time, which is more than the average marketing email open rate.
9 – Easily Integrate With Other Channels
Finally, SMS marketing can be seamlessly integrated with various other marketing channels and software, giving you a better chance of getting the most from your other marketing strategies. For example, you can send abandoned cart text messages rather than emails using a marketing automation platform, which can more effectively remind the customer to finish the purchase than sending an email.
When it comes to marketing, small business owners need to be creative. Text message marketing provides a viable way to do this that is affordable, effective, and engaging.
