10 Successful Ecommerce SMS Marketing Tactics & Examples

Do you take advantage of SMS marketing for ecommerce?

Although many small businesses and online shops are using social media platforms for their business, you should ignore the power of text message marketing.

SMS has some advantages over other channels and therefore, you have to include it in your marketing strategies. 

If you want to learn how to boost your ecommerce business using SMS tactics, you’d better read the following blog post.

You can also contact us if you want to get more info on integrating SMS marketing into your ecommerce website.

Does SMS Marketing Work for Ecommerce?

The short answer is: absolutely!

SMS marketing has some advantages over other marketing channels like email and social media. Here are some of these benefits:

Higher Open Rates

It’s estimated that more than 98% of people read their messages while many people don’t check their emails. This shows that SMS is best when it comes to open rates.

Higher Engagement Rates

Many people, especially the elderly don’t interact with emails and social media posts but the majority of people answer to the text messages. This will increase the engagement rates of SMS marketing campaigns.

Faster Response

More than 90% of people read their messages within 3 minutes. This means that if you want a quick response from your audience, SMS is your best chance. In fact, SMS marketing is the best channel for last-minute campaigns and time-sensitive events.

Simpler Notifications

Apart from advertisement, SMS is a great way to send order updates to your customers. You can’t use other channels like email or social media to send reminders, order status updates, and shipment notifications. So SMS is the best communication tool for ecommerce websites that want to provide their customers with instant updates.

SMS Marketing for Ecommerce: 10 Tactics & Examples

Now, let’s review some of the most effective ecommerce SMS marketing tactics with sample text messages.

1. Cart Abandonment SMS Alerts

You’ll often face shopping cart abandonment and your potential customers leave the shopping process before making the purchase.

This is so frustrating because you’ve done a lot of tasks to bring the customer to the funnel but at the final stages, they leave.

Of course, you can’t go after all of these customers one by one to make them return. That’s where SMS tactics come in. You can use automated reminders via SMS to nudge customers to complete their purchases.

Remember that you have to include something valuable in the text to encourage them to get back. Here is an example of a card abandonment SMS alert:

As you can see, it’s a personalized nudge with an enticing 10% off that can probably encourage the customer to finalize the purchase.

2. Exclusive SMS-Only Discounts

Offering discounts is always effective, and SMS-only discounts are no exception. Who doesn’t love a good deal?

When you offer exclusive SMS-only discounts, your audience feels like VIPs. This is a great method to increase your subscribers and convert them into loyal customers.

Here is an example of a discount SMS for subscribing:

When your customer receives such a text message immediately after subscribing, they’ll understand that they’re important to you. This way, you can increase the engagement rates and boost your sales.

3. Personalized Product Recommendations

Sending general text messages is sometimes a waste of time. You’re actually sending a single message to lots of people without segmenting them.

If you want to outperform your competitors, you’d better target your audience more exactly and send them personalized messages.

In fact, you must recognize what offer is suitable for each type of audience. So it’s recommended to segment your audience based on important factors like:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Previous searches on your website
• Past purchases

Fortunately, you can easily do this using simple ecommerce tools and SMS marketing platforms that offer segmenting features. For example, WP SMS is one of the best SMS marketing platforms for ecommerce that helps you send segmented text messages directly from your website’s dashboard.

When you use your customers’ data (with their consent) from your site and send personalized messages, they feel valued. This will lead to increasing the chances of conversion.

Here is a sample message to send personalized product recommendations to your audience:

By sending this message, you’re showing that you consider the preferences of your customers, which results in brand loyalty.

4. Post-Purchase Follow-up and Upselling

Another great SMS marketing idea for ecommerce is to send post-purchase follow-up messages.

In other words, you have to try to persuade your customers to buy more products from you. A post-purchase follow-up SMS has some advantages like:

• Increasing customer retention
• Improving customer lifetime value
• Increasing the chance of repeating purchases
• Reducing opt-out rates

Here is a good example of using post-purchasing text messages to increase upselling:

This sms marketing strategy helps you keep your customers updated and prevents them from searching through other ecommerce websites.

5. Flash Sale Alerts

Flash sales are among the best SMS marketing tips for ecommerce. Using SMS marketing for flash sales alerts has some advantages:

• Creating urgency
• Increasing space for inventory
• Increasing loyalty
• Attracting new customers
• Improving sales
• Increasing brand awareness

SMS is the best channel for flash sales alerts and you have to make the most of it. Text messages are usually opened within 3 minutes and this is a great opportunity for time-sensitive events like flash sales.

Now, take a look at the following flash sales alert example:

You can expect quick actions after sending flash sales SMS blasts because it has a sense of urgency and many people don’t like to lose such opportunities.

6. SMS Loyalty Programs

Increasing brand loyalty is one of the best sms marketing strategies for ecommerce. You need to pay special attention to your previous customers because many new customers consider their satisfaction.

So SMS loyalty programs are necessary to reward your customers for sticking around. Try to offer customers something like:

• Exclusive perks
• Discounts
• Early access to new products

Of course, you have to consider special offers for loyal customers to ensure they’re part of your brand story.

For example, you can send something like:

If you think of long-term benefits, loyalty text message programs can be one of your best tactics.

7. Event-Based SMS Campaigns

You have to take advantage of special occasions like:

• Black Friday
• Christmas
• Brand’s anniversary
• Customer’s Birthday

These are perfect times to send out SMS campaigns for your ecommerce business. Usually, people are in the best mood for shopping so it’s your best chance to reach out to them.

For example, you can send the following message on Holidays:

It’s also beneficial to combine event-based campaigns with your data analytics from your customers’ behaviors on similar occasions.

In other words, you have to look for products that your customers have liked, bought, and searched previously on your ecommerce website.

Then, you can send offers for those products on these occasions. This smart approach can help you optimize your SMS strategy and boost your sales.

8. SMS for Customer Feedback and Reviews

SMS is a fast and cheap way to get customer feedback to improve your ecommerce website and product offerings.

Using SMS, you can easily ask for reviews or opinions after a customer receives their purchase. You have to do that when still the purchasing experience is fresh:

For example, you can ask their opinions about the purchasing process:

You can then recognize your weaknesses and strengths to improve your customer experience. You can also showcase positive experiences on your website to draw the attention of visitors.

9. WooCommerce Order Notifications

Another important SMS marketing tactic for your ecommerce business is to send updates to your customers on their orders.

If you send the status changes of their order from initial processing to delivery, you can gain their trust. In fact, they see you’re constantly working on their purchase so this brings peace of mind to them. 

This is a great way to improve customer experience and prevent complaints about delays, damages, etc.

For example, you can send this message when you ship a product:

10. Back-in-Stock Notifications

This one is really necessary because it changes the thoughts of customers about you. If you can send notifications about a product that they look for and don’t find, they’ll be so happy and probably won’t forget your shop. Back-in-stock alerts are a great way to recapture customers’ attention to your shop. 

Here is an example of back-in-stock notifications:

Final Thoughts

SMS can greatly help ecommerce businesses advertise their products and also communicate with their audience. 

You have to make the most of SMS tactics for your ecommerce business. In fact, SMS can help you from the first stage of your sales funnel to the post-purchase marketing step. 

Of course, the competition in ecommerce SMS marketing is so fierce that you can’t expect success by throwing some texts. 

We mentioned 10 effective SMS ideas for ecommerce to help you build a strong marketing strategy. 

WP SMS can be of great use to integrate this SMS marketing strategy into your ecommerce website. In fact, you can manage your text message marketing directly from your website’s dashboard.

FAQs