The Role of SMS in An Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Leverage the power of omnichannel SMS marketing to boost your sales.

If you’re using a single marketing channel, you can’t expect a high marketing ROI. In today’s competitive marketing atmosphere, you need to take advantage of all the available channels that your customers are active to get maximum exposure.

So you need to think of an omnichannel marketing strategy that includes all communication channels from in-store to social media.

SMS is the fastest, simplest, and most personal communication channel with great capabilities for an omnichannel strategy.

In this blog post, we’ll explain why you have to consider an SMS omnichannel marketing strategy and how you can do that using our plugin, WP SMS.

What Is an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy?

An omnichannel marketing strategy is the practice of integrating multiple communication channels, such as SMS, email, social media, in-store experiences, etc.

The main purpose of creating an omnichannel marketing strategy is to provide a unified and consistent customer experience.

Omnichannel marketing is a bit different from multichannel marketing. The main difference is the customer-centric approach using all available channels.

Omnichannel marketing offers several benefits like:

• Improves personalization
• Enhances customer service
• Offers convenience
• Builds customer loyalty
• Enables brand recognition
• Improves inventory management

An important point about omnichannel marketing is the unique and consistent style and tone of voice across all channels.

This way, you can improve your brand identity and make it more recognizable and memorable to customers.

The Benefits of SMS in Omnichannel Marketing

Many marketers might think SMS is an outdated communication channel and is no longer useful for marketing.

If you’re one of those marketers, you might lose a great opportunity to maximize your marketing ROI.

Here are the reasons why you need to include SMS in your omnichannel marketing strategy:

1. High Open Rates

SMS has an open rate of 98%, which is far higher than email. The majority of people read their messages while many of them don’t check their email inboxes or direct messages on social platforms.

So if you want to reach out to numerous people in your omnichannel strategy, you need to consider SMS.

2. Direct and Immediate Communication

When you post something on Instagram or share a story, it will get buried in the exploration, and many people, including your followers, might not watch it.

SMS, on the other hand, is a direct and immediate communication channel, ensuring timely updates. This is essential for time-sensitive campaigns and transactional messages that you need to send to all of your customers.

3. Higher Engagement and Conversion Rates

SMS has a response rate of 45% and ensures higher engagement than other channels like emails. So if your omnichannel marketing strategy needs clickable links, promo codes, surveys, and other action-oriented ads, you must use SMS. 

4. Personalization at Scale

In social media posts, you talk to all people without personalization. Although you can have personal conversations with each follower in their direct message, bulk personalization is still difficult.

On the contrary, SMS platforms like WP SMS allow you to customize your SMS templates automatically. In other words, you can include details like names, dates, customer behavior, location, and preferences without learning programming languages.

So when you use SMS in your omnichannel marketing campaign, you can send personalized offers, birthday discounts, and exclusive deals.

5. Complements Other Channels

Last but not least, SMS can easily be integrated with any other channel. This makes your omnichannel marketing campaigns really straightforward as you can manage them more easily.

For example, WP SMS will integrate with WordPress, WooCommerce, Bookly, FluentCRM, WhatsApp API, etc. This way, you can do many tasks using a single dashboard with higher efficiency.

How to Integrate SMS with Other Marketing Channels 

Now, let’s see how you can create an omnichannel marketing strategy that includes SMS:

1. SMS & Email Marketing

Email and SMS can complete their tasks and increase the efficiency of your marketing strategy.

The best approach to integrating SMS as an omnichannel marketing tool is to send follow-up text messages after unopened emails. This way, SMS re-engages customers who missed the email and increases conversion rates.

As an example, imagine that you have a retail brand and send emails with a 20% discount promo like the following:

Email Subject: “Don’t miss 20% off – ends soon!”
Email Body: “Hi Tom, we’re giving you 20% off your next order! Use code: SAVE20. The offer expires tonight! Shop now: bit.ly/off20”

If your target customers don’t open it, you can go for SMS follow-up to boost conversions.

2. SMS & Social Media Marketing

Social media is a powerful medium for marketing. However, you can’t be sure that all the potential customers watch your videos/pictures, especially if you have a small social account. Also, techniques like working with influencers can be costly for small-sized businesses and startups.

So you need to think of other methods to drive engagement for contests, giveaways, or live events on social media.

Using an omnichannel SMS marketing strategy is the best solution for this problem. Consider an example of an Instagram post about a giveaway by a beauty brand.

You can send an SMS like the one below to encourage participation:

SMS nudges social followers to take action, ensuring the giveaway gets more entries and engagement.

3. Integrating SMS with Push Notifications

If you want to send important notifications to your customers, you need to make sure that they open it. SMS is a great tool to ensure that push notifications aren’t missed.

For example, if you have a food delivery app, you probably need to inform customers of their food delivery status. Sometimes, people don’t check the app after they order the food and as a result, they might not be ready to get the food at the door.

Sending an SMS can help you reduce this problem and make a great user experience without much more cost.

Here is a sample SMS of this kind:

4. Add SMS to Your Customer Service

Customer service is one of the most sensitive parts of your tasks. Many times customers complain of delays when requesting a service or asking a question.

SMS is the best tool to integrate with your customer support or CRM system to provide real-time updates and improve customer experience.

Here is an example of integrating SMS with the customer service of a telecom provider:

5. Integrate SMS with E-commerce

If you have an ecommerce business, you don’t have face-to-face contact with your customers. Instead, you need a strong omnichannel communication strategy to keep in touch with your customers and resolve possible problems.

Apart from the tickets, chatbots, email, and social media support, you need to include SMS in your omnichannel strategy.

For example, SMS can reduce abandoned carts and drive more sales if you use it in the right way.

Look at the following SMS reminder that encourages the customer to complete the purchase:

6. SMS & In-Store Promotions

Although online sales are on the rise, many businesses still need foot traffic. SMS is a great tool to boost your in-store sales with personalized offers.

Imagine you have a coffee shop and want to increase your foot traffic and boost your sales. You can send a limited-time offer via SMS like a free drink for customers who visit the store today.

As SMS has an immediate nature, you’ll get the best result compared with other channels. Here is an example:

7. Use SMS to Help Events & Webinars

If you’re holding an event or webinar, you need to inform your registrants about any updates and give them instructions.

The best channel for this is SMS as it’s immediate and direct and many people check it. For example, if you want to reduce no-shows, you can remind attendees about the upcoming event.

Look at the following SMS reminder that notifies attendees 1 hour before a webinar:

If you use two-way messaging in such situations, you can create a better user experience and reach a high satisfaction rate.

8. Use SMS Marketing in Loyalty & Rewards Programs

Loyalty programs are essential parts of every omnichannel marketing strategy and SMS is a must-use channel in this strategy. SMS can encourage repeat visits and increase your brand’s customer loyalty.

For example, if you have a restaurant, you can offer a loyalty program and use SMS to remind customers of their points and the perks they can earn. In the following SMS sample, you’ll see how you can do that:

9. Integrate SMS with Referral Programs

Referral programs are an excellent way to generate new leads and convert them into loyal customers.

More than 50% of small businesses in the US think that referrals are truly useful for their business. The reason is that many people make their purchasing decisions based on their friends and family members’ recommendations.

So you need to include word-of-mouth marketing in your omnichannel strategy. SMS is one of the best channels to inform your customers of your referral programs and your incentives.

Here’s an example:

10. SMS for Surveys & Feedback

SMS is a great channel for sending surveys and feedback requests. For example, if you have a hotel, you can send a feedback request via SMS after a guest checks out:

Using such feedback requests, you can improve your services/products and also gain the trust of your customers. When you give them a say, they feel valued and will highly likely continue working with you.

Best Practices for Omnichannel SMS Marketing

Here are some tips that help you run a successful omnichannel SMS marketing campaign:

Set SMART Goals

First of all, you have to determine what exactly you want to reach in your omnichannel marketing campaign. A SMART goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. 

In other words, you have to define a goal you can reach in a limited period. Try to define metrics like conversion rate, ROI, and opt-out rate to be able to measure and track your performance.

Segment Your Audience

You need to customize your messages according to your audience demographics, behavior, and preferences. Segmentation allows you to send relevant and personalized SMS to reach higher engagement rates. 

Maintain Consistent Branding

You need to make sure that your SMS templates reflect your brand’s voice and style. Remember that consistency across all channels is key to building your brand identity.

Conduct A/B Tests

Try to find the best version of your text messages by A/B tests. You can consider items like CTAs, offers, personalization, tone, and also the timing of your messages. This way, you can see which version of your text messages gets the best result.

Respect Opt-In and Opt-Out Requests

You need to comply with communication regulations like GDPR and TCPA. For example, you have to get explicit consent from your recipients before sending promotion messages.

So it’s good to run an opt-in campaign and take advantage of other channels like social media, email, and websites to increase the number of your subscribers. Also, it’s essential to include an easy way to opt-out option in your text messages.

Monitor Performance

Last but not least, you need to constantly track the results of your SMS omnichannel marketing campaign. By tracking key metrics, you can find your strategy’s weaknesses and strengths and optimize your future campaigns.

Looking for an SMS Platform for Omnichannel Marketing?

Now that you know why you have to use an SMS omnichannel marketing strategy, it’s time to choose an SMS tool to run your campaigns.

You have to consider several factors when choosing your SMS platform:

• Cost
• Compatibility with your current tools
• Bulk messaging features like automation, segmentation, and scheduling
• User interface and set-up simplicity
• Compliance & security
• Customer support
• Scalability

So you have to choose the right SMS platform according to your resources and requirements. For example, if you’re running an ecommerce business and using WordPress, your best choice is WP SMS.

This SMS plugin supports 300+ SMS gateways and can integrate with many platforms like WooCommerce, WhatsApp API, FluentCRM, etc.

It offers lots of advanced features for automation and customization and lets you run bulk messaging campaigns without manual intervention.

Final Thoughts

Creating an omnichannel marketing strategy might be a bit difficult because you need to consider many factors. 

You must ensure all channels are integrated together without errors and bring a consistent journey through their sales funnel. 

So you have to use the right tools to create an efficient integration between various channels and reach a high marketing ROI. 

WP SMS is one of the best choices for running omnichannel SMS marketing for WordPress websites and ecommerce businesses. We’ll help you make the most out of SMS and reach a high marketing ROI.

FAQs