Looking for a way to engage with customers more effectively and increase your business’s success? SMS marketing is the solution you’ve been searching for.
Whether you’re a small business owner looking to boost sales, or a large enterprise seeking to improve customer retention, SMS marketing helps you achieve those goals and more by increasing your customer engagement.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss some tips to get started driving engagement through SMS marketing and explore a few real-life SMS campaign examples.
SMS Marketing Effectiveness
Before we get into the steps of driving engagement, you should know why text marketing works so well. SMS marketing offers a 98% open rate for messages. This almost guarantees that your messages get seen by your customers.
Texts also have a high response rate. Around 45% of people respond to a text message within the first hour of receiving it! This makes SMS marketing a highly effective way to engage with your customers and encourage them to actually take action.
Now, let’s look at six tips for driving customer engagement through text marketing.
Know Your Audience
Understand who your customers are, what they want, and how they prefer to be contacted. This helps you create messages specific to your customers’ needs and interests.
Gather this information through surveys, analytics, or customer feedback. This data helps you understand your customers’ preferences, pain points, and behaviors, enabling you to create SMS campaigns that actually resonate with them. In turn, this increases engagement, customer satisfaction, and loyalty, ultimately driving long-term growth for your business.
Always Offer Value
Every text you send should provide value to the recipient. You can’t just send generalized mass texts and expect people to engage with that message. Provide your customers with information, offers, and deals relevant to their needs and interests.
For instance, if you run a beauty salon, offer your clients a discount on their next appointment or inform them of new services or products you offer. If you have a client that you know needs a touch-up or color service, over a discount for that. Similarly, with summer approaching, offer a discount for an anti-frizz product or other applicable products for the summer heat.
Provide value in this way to encourage your customers to actually engage with your SMS campaigns and keep them coming back.
Keep Messages Short and Sweet
When it comes to SMS marketing, less is more. With limited characters to work with, keep your messages short and sweet.
Text messages are also very different from emails. Keep messages short to improve their readability and to increase the chances of customers reading them.
To make it easier for your customers to read and understand your messages, keep your messages focused and deliver the most important information clearly and concisely. Long and complicated texts get confusing and discourage customers from responding or engaging.
Use a Call-to-Action
The best way to get customers to engage with your message? Ask them to do something. A clear call-to-action (CTA) encourages your customers to take a specific action, such as making a purchase, booking a demo, or visiting your website. Include a single CTA in your texts to increase conversations and conversions.
Examples of CTAs include:
- Visit this link to learn more about a (specific product or service)
- Follow us on Instagram for more pictures of our new (specific product) launch @(social media handle).
- Reply YES to confirm your appointment with us tomorrow at (appointment time). We look forward to seeing you!
- Hurry, only a few spots left for our upcoming event (Event Name)! Reply EVENT to reserve your spot now.
- Don’t forget to leave us a review! Click the link to share your feedback and receive (percentage off) your next purchase.
- Last chance to take advantage of our BOGO deal! Buy one, get one free ends tonight. Shop now! (link to shop)
Personalize Your Messages
Personalization drives customer engagement, but it is more than simply addressing customers by their first name. It’s about creating messages that speak directly to their interests and needs.
Customers feel valued and appreciated when they receive a text that is tailored specifically to them. This sense of individual attention drives customer engagement and makes them more likely to take action.
Sending personalized offers based on customers’ past purchases, feedback, interests, etc., shows that you understand their preferences and cater to their specific needs. This builds stronger, more genuine relationships with your customers. They feel like you truly know them and care about their satisfaction.
Customers engage with a brands that sends texts that resonate with their interests. They are more likely to open the message, actually read it, and take the desired action, whether it’s making a purchase, providing feedback, or spreading the word about your business.
Send Messages at the Right Time
Timing is everything when it comes to SMS marketing. Send your messages at the right time to maximize engagement. Refer to your customer data and analytics to find the best time to send your messages.
If you run a retail store, message your customers in the morning to remind them of a sale that’s happening that day. Or, if you run a fitness studio, send a message to your clients in the morning to remind them about their daily workout goals.
Make sure you don’t overwhelm your customers by sending too many messages. You don’t want to ruin customer relationships by bombarding them with marketing messages. Only send texts daily if it is for a specific reason. Generally, don’t send more than 2-3 automated texts in a day.
In the beginning, when you set up automated messages, start with longer delays between messages. That way, you start to see what messages are getting higher engagement and causing people to act. Then you can adjust messages accordingly.
Now that we’ve covered some tips for creating engaging SMS campaigns, let’s look at some real-life examples of successful SMS campaigns.
Real Examples of SMS Campaigns That Drive Engagement
Burn Kickboxing: The Burn Kickboxing team used Skipio in a reactivation text campaign. As part of the celebration of opening a second location, they created a group of members who hadn’t been around in a few months and built a two-message drip campaign. In the first message, they teased a deal that the first 30 people who replied to tomorrow’s text would get a six-month membership for more than 50% off the regular price. The official promotion text went out the following morning and included a sign-up link. That promotion earned the gym $19,000 in reactivated memberships.
Domino’s: Domino’s uses SMS marketing to allow customers to place orders via text message. Customers text a pizza emoji to Domino’s, and their favorite order will be delivered to their doorstep. Customers are also able to track the progress of their order and receive updates via SMS, making the ordering process more convenient and engaging.
Nordstrom: Nordstrom uses SMS marketing to let customers ask questions about products and request size or color availability. They also have a program where customers can receive personalized styling advice from fashion experts and get outfit ideas texted directly to them.
T-Mobile: Not only does T-Mobile use SMS marketing to send customers special promotions and alerts, but they also allow customers to manage their accounts and receive customer support via text message. Customers text T-Mobile a certain word or sequence of numbers to check their account usage and balance.
Create Long-Term Growth With SMS Marketing
With the right approach, SMS marketing engages your customers to create deeper relationships and drive long-term growth for your business. Ready to start growing your business by engaging your customers? Skipio, a text messaging platform, helps you engage and keep customers longer with automated, two-way texting. Take a tour of Skipio to see how you can get started.
