3+ Simple Ways to Kickstart The Ultimate Text Marketing Strategy
Ready to get started with SMS marketing? Here are 3 tips to set your strategy up for success.
Let’s face it - while text marketing is presumably one of the most straightforward promotion channels, getting started can, understandably, feel a bit overwhelming at times.
This is when you might acknowledge that text marketing is more of “a double-edged sword”.
You see, on one hand, SMS marketing feels extremely simple and is especially promising for new marketers. With texts recording an average open rate of 98%, you’re almost guaranteed to get your message across. What’s more, it takes recipients about 90 seconds to read and respond to the SMS messages. So, in a way, you could say that the chances of two-way engagement are pretty solid with text marketing.
On the flip side, though, it turns out that the things that make SMS marketing simple are the same ones that might complicate things for you.
For instance, while the limit of 160 characters might seem favorable at first, it could pose a major challenge when you try to compress your value proposition to fit into that one SMS.
Another issue is attending to the text replies - because, how do you keep up with recipients who consistently respond after just 90 seconds? What do you even text back to maintain fruitful engagements in such fast-paced back-and-forth conversations?
Well, fortunately for you, this guide provides answers to all these pertinent issues about SMS marketing. You get to discover more than three of the most critical aspects that you should keep in mind throughout the entire text marketing campaign.
3+ Proven Tactics to Optimize SMS Marketing For High-Level Engagement
#1. Don’t Rush It - Seek Consent First
Remember, you’re not texting your buddy about random stuff. As such, you need to keep things professional by practicing self-restraint, and proceeding only after you seek consent from your prospective recipients.
The SMS marketing opt-in procedure is pretty similar to mailing list signups. Just set up a web form that encourages your site visitors to register in order to stay updated on special offers, discounts, coupons, product news, events, etc.
This will not only boost your image as a professional, but also open up valuable engagement opportunities - considering that 75% of people don’t mind receiving SMS messages after opting in for the service.
#2. Gather Audience Intel
As you get busy with registration, don’t just stop at your recipient’s contact details. You might want to collect more in-depth information about each individual, and then use it to segment their profiles.
You can, for instance, gather some data via the signup forms, and possibly supplement it with demographical, behavioral, and interests insights from your site’s automated customer tracking system.
Ultimately, the more details you manage to compile about your audience, the finer you’ll be able to tune the SMS marketing campaigns based on their needs. For example, you could customize the text messages or offers to reflect their individual interests, activities, and location.
This level of personalization - according to a study conducted by HubSpot - outperforms static content by as much as 42%.
#3. Drop Manual Systems For Automated Drip Campaigns
Let’s be honest - even for a small business, it’s logistically impossible to manually keep up with all the customers’ SMS messages. Therefore, you ought to invest in automated SMS marketing that’s capable of building and sustaining drip campaigns.
Now, for the sake of clarity, drip campaigns refer to specially automated marketing systems that send scheduled messages in intervals based on pre-defined action triggers. The goal here is to gradually nurture leads with relevant follow-up messages as they continue to sail through different stages of the conversion funnel.
To implement such a system, you just need an SMS drip campaign builder that’s capable of intuitively creating automated message workflows - complete with text messages and relevant action triggers. You should also be able to dynamically personalize the content based on your lead segmentation, targeting parameters, campaign goals, and conversion funnels.
Overall, drip campaigns have been shown to generate 80% more sales conversions while, at the same time, reducing lead nurturing costs by up to 33%.
There’s More...
In addition to these three core pointers, you might want to keep in mind that:
- SMS marketing messages should be short and straight to the point.
- You ought to place a clear Call To Action within each text.
- Keep scheduling your messages to reach the audience at the appropriate times.
- Consider tapping into your recipient’s emotions with relatable stories. The reason is, emotional marketing content tends to rally audiences better than plain rational messages.
Most importantly, though, you’ll need an exceedingly robust text marketing solution to not only power your campaigns at the beginning, but also sustain the changing business needs over the long haul.
Thankfully, all these attributes and tools don’t have to cost you much. You can get started with Shoot’s automated text marketing and CRM for free, and then maybe later upgrade to its premium options for as low as $12 per month.
