The Power of Incorporating SMS/Text Into Your Marketing

‘Mobile Everything’ is one of the fastest-growing trends, with people on their phones for a plethora of reasons, day and night. Here are some eye-opening worldwide texting statistics:

• The number of monthly texts sent increased by more than 7,700 percent over the last decade.
• Over 560 billion texts are sent every month worldwide
• Some 18.7 billion texts are sent worldwide every day (not including app-to-app)
• WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger combined are responsible for more than 60 billion messages being sent daily
• More than 4.2 billion people text worldwide

Modern consumers are completely comfortable using SMS/text as a means of primary communication. Here’s a question: Are you using this valuable channel for your marketing efforts? More importantly, are you monitoring this channel for feedback?

Get Data from Texting

Direct text is a powerful communication tool, not only for promotion, when used judiciously and in a personal, targeted format, but also as a direct line to personal feedback and information. Premium call tracking solutions like ActiveDEMAND not only track and record incoming calls, they track SMS/text messages the same way.

Have a Conversation

Brands need to supply prospects with communication options that best fit them, such as texting, but too many businesses treat SMS as a one-way broadcast. With an automated platform, this personal direct channel not only becomes a source of valuable input, it saves a business time and money.

Here’s a perfect example of what we mean:

Imagine a prospect sends a text message that reads “Sorry, I have to reschedule” two hours before a scheduled appointment. Would the system you have in place route that information to your sales team in real-time? Or would they have been just sitting and waiting at the originally scheduled meeting time, annoyed the prospect did not show?

Connect With Your Prospects

SMS marketing (i.e. text marketing) is a powerful channel, and we want to be sure you’re making full use of its potential. For example, suppose you want to send out a message or a coupon to a current customer or prospective customer and you want to use the channel with the greatest possibility they will see it. How would you do that? Which channel offers the best opportunity to be seen?

Emails are opened between 10 and 20 percent of the time and direct mail is slightly lower than that. Television commercials, while once a very viable medium, are fast-forwarded through with DVRs. Automobile technology has lessened the number of radio ads that actually reach a consumer. The answer is to send the prospect a text, as texts typically have an open rate of close to 98 percent, the highest of any medium by far.

Incorporate Into a Marketing Plan

Incorporating text messages into your marketing plan is simple and inexpensive, and can yield outstanding results. Here are some tips on where to start:

• Invite customers to quickly sign up for your loyalty program via text
• Give them a strong incentive for joining. Incentives work better than discounts
• Stress the importance of getting sign-ups to your staff and ask them to verbally promote the text-to-join program
• Incorporate a professional automation platform solution like ActiveDEMAND

There are 271 million mobile subscribers in the U.S., and 82 percent of adults own and use cell phones daily, usually hourly. Turn this modern fact of life into a major profit-booster and growth strategy for your agency or business by investing in a mobile marketing integration tactic.