12 Ways SMS Marketing Can Help Your Business Grow

Do you know the benefits of SMS marketing for your business?

With the rise of new communication channels like social media, many businesses think that the age of SMS has gone.

However, SMS still has many benefits that you can’t find on other channels. That’s why we’ve gathered 12 ways SMS marketing can help your business grow.

If you think you need more info to go for SMS marketing, you can use the WP SMS demo to make sure it’s useful for your business.

1. Reaching Higher Engagement Rates

One of the most important benefits of SMS marketing is the ability to achieve high engagement rates.

SMS has an open rate of 98%, which is way higher than email. This is the main reason why SMS marketing campaigns reach higher engagement rates.

In fact, people try to read all of their messages because they think one of their friends or relatives might have texted them.

It’s estimated that consumers check their phones around 96 times a day. So the likelihood of your SMS marketing messages being seen is high.

This is a great chance for your business to reach out to these consumers with promotional offers, important updates, or product information. So if you need an immediate response with a high rate, SMS marketing is your best chance.

2. Ability to Personalize Marketing

SMS marketing is a great channel for personalizing your communications with your customers effectively.

Personalization means you customize the message for each recipient or at least for a group of them. In the past, SMS personalization was limited to using the names of recipients.

Now, thanks to the advanced tools available on the market, you can easily take advantage of your customer data like previous purchases, location, gender, and age to send more personalized messages to them.

So you can include product recommendations, special discounts, and tailored content based on the user’s behavior and demographics.

This is a great chance for your business to reach higher engagement rates and boost your sales. When customers see you’re considering their specific requirements and interests, they’re more likely to respond positively to your messages.

Take a look at the following messages to see how personalization works:

Example 1: Product Recommendation

This following text message is personalized to the client’s hair type or color treatments. This adds relevance and value and increases the chance of engagement, especially when you combine it with a product recommendation and an exclusive discount.

Example 2: Tailored Seasonal Discount

In this example, you’re offering a discount for a product that’s suitable for the customer based on her previous purchases or abandoned purchase carts on your online store.

3. Best for Real-time Communication

None of the marketing channels can outperform SMS in terms of immediate response and real-time communication.

Emails can sit in inboxes for hours or days but SMS typically prompts an immediate response. Even instant messaging apps like WhatsApp have limitations like an internet connection or an account.

SMS, on the other hand, has no limitations and provides you with an instant and real-time channel for:

• Sharing last-minute offers
• Updates about events
• Immediate alerts

This is a great benefit for SMS marketing, especially for businesses in retail, hospitality, and event planning. The reason is that for such businesses, timely updates can enhance customer satisfaction.

For example, if you have a clinic and want to send an appointment rescheduling alert, SMS can be a useful tool:

4. Lead Capture with Web-to-Text

Another benefit of SMS marketing is its effectiveness in generating leads using a web-to-text feature.

To know what it works, take a look at the following sample message:

In this message, you incentivize potential clients to engage by offering something valuable, which is a free consultation. As you see, the message is short, clear, actionable, and targets what the client needs: free consultation.

This is also a great way to convert your site visitors into SMS subscribers. There are affordable sign-up widgets out there that help you capture leads in just a couple of clicks.

Here are some of the best web-to-text widgets suitable for lead capturing:

1. Leadferno
2. ClickFunnels
3. Justuno
4. ActiveCampaign
5. Wishpond

In fact, web-to-text lead capturing is about encouraging customers to text a keyword to a designated number. This way, you can trigger a series of messages or updates to guide your customers through the marketing funnel.

This method works best for new leads who are interested in learning more about your products or services.

Take a look at another SMS sample to understand how it works:

5. Suitable for Updates and Reminders

SMS marketing is perfect for timely reminders and updates because the majority of people read their messages within 3 minutes.

Therefore, it’s great to remind customers of upcoming appointments to reduce no-shows. Here are some businesses that can use this benefit of SMS marketing:

• Dental offices
• Salons 
• Fitness centers

Here is an example appointment reminder for a dental office:

Other businesses like retailers can also send last-minute reminders to inform customers of their offers. Here is an SMS template:

6. Better Customer Experience

SMS marketing provides a unique customer experience because it offers personalized, relevant, and timely information, updates, and reminders.

Customers appreciate receiving updates and reminders through a direct and simple communication channel. Moreover, they can easily opt-in or opt-out, which makes them feel like they are in control of their marketing efforts.

For example, if you have an e-commerce website, you can notify customers about shipping updates using SMS:

You can also use SMS to send follow-up appreciation to thank customers for choosing your brand:

7. Perfect for Feedback & Reviews

SMS is a perfect tool for gathering feedback to improve the quality of your products and services.

Using SMS marketing, you can easily ask customers for quick feedback. There are various types of SMS surveys to get feedback like ratings, short keyword surveys, and links to survey webpages.

Here is an example of a survey:

Studies show that surveys that are promoted using SMS marketing have higher response rates than those of email or other channels.

You can also ask customers to fill out Google reviews to boost your brand identity and increase your brand reputation.

8. Affordability

Although you have to pay SMS gateways for each SMS sent, SMS marketing is an affordable channel for small businesses.

With SMS marketing, you can quickly reach out to targeted customers and get a high engagement rate at an affordable cost. You can’t find any other channel with this capability.

You might think that running a page on social media is much more affordable because you don’t pay for each post. However, gaining a following on Instagram is not that easy. You can’t expect fast results from your social channels.

So if you have a small business with a limited marketing budget, you’d better include SMS marketing along with your strategy on social media and other channels.

9. Great Scalability 

Another benefit of bulk SMS marketing is the ease of scalability with your business plans. Imagine you have a small business and want to send a few dozen messages a day.

SMS marketing can easily fit your objectives because SMS gateway pricing and other features are all available for this size of SMS marketing.

On the other hand, if a large enterprise wants to reach out to thousands of people, SMS can still be used with minimal adjustment. In fact, you just need to change the pricing package of the SMS gateway. 

This scalability is valuable for your business if it expands. The reason is that SMS features don’t need complex technical setups or significant financial investment.

10. Easy Segmentation, Automation, and Scheduling

Previously businesses used to do all of the marketing efforts manually. Nowadays, you can’t hire a person for each task because the ROI of your campaigns will be lower than your competitors.

So what to do? Fortunately, there is a tool for everything out there, and SMS is no exception. SMS marketing platforms offer easy-to-use and affordable features for segmentation, automation, and scheduling. This way, you don’t need to have lots of employees to run bulk text message campaigns.

WP SMS is one of the best SMS tools that simplify SMS marketing tasks without having to learn coding. It supports over 300 marketing SMS gateways and offers lots of features and add-ons along with segmentation, scheduling, and automation.

11. Good for Local Marketing

SMS is a fantastic marketing tool for local businesses because it’s highly effective for reaching nearby customers.

SMS service providers let you send ads to phone numbers that are in the vicinity. This is what you can’t have with other marketing channels like social media or email.

So if you have a local business, SMS is a perfect channel for you to promote special events, flash sales, or new arrivals in their physical locations.

Geo-targeted SMS is useful for many businesses like restaurants, clinics, local shops, etc.

12. Flexibility to Integrate with other Marketing Channels

Another advantage of SMS marketing is its ability to integrate with other channels like social media and email.

You can easily promote your SMS marketing campaign using social media or remind your customers of your social media campaigns at the last minute. 

Take a look at the following sample campaigns:

Promoting a Social Media Campaign

Using the following SMS sample, you can drive traffic to your business’s Instagram campaign.

Reminding Customers of a Newsletter Special

Here is another SMS sample:

This message is for those customers who may not have seen or opened your email. This way, you’ll have a greater reach and a higher engagement rate.

Encouraging Social Media Follow-through with SMS

Last but not least, using the following SMS template, you can invite customers to engage further with your brand on social media:

Final Thoughts

You can take advantage of SMS marketing to reach out to potential customers, provide updates & reminders, and boost your business sales. 

We reviewed the benefits of SMS marketing to let you know the ways your business can use this channel. 

Of course, reaching success in SMS marketing is not as easy as sending some text messages. 

You have to prepare a strong marketing strategy including SMS marketing and integrate it with other channels to get maximum results. You also need to use the best tools that fit your business requirements and resources. 

WP SMS is here to help you with this. So why wait? Check our demo to see if WP SMS is good for your SMS marketing campaigns.

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