SMS has been around since 1992, but since mobile usage has skyrocketed, SMS Marketing has evolved and become the go-to advertising channel of choice for savvy business owners who want to reach highly engaged and active customers.
Here the 6 biggest reasons businesses are quietly moving over to online SMS marketing services:
A. Easier To Convert Into Sales
Generally speaking, the higher the commitment level of a sales lead the closer they are to making a purchase decision.
Email marketing is the number one sales tool because it is cheap and easy to implement.
Since it’s easy for people to give out an email address the commitment tends to be lower.
For this reason email leads are incredibly difficult to convert into a sale right away which is why email marketers need to design a lead nurturing funnel.
SMS leads are a completely different story.
People are careful about who they hand out their mobile to, in fact for a person to give a business their mobile number means that they are highly interested and likely very close to making a buying decision.
This is the definition of a sales good lead.
Because of this one difference, there’s no nurturing process required and this lead can be passed off to a sales person right away to be converted into a sale.
This higher level of commitment means you won’t get as many leads per week as email but your ability to convert will be much higher.
B. 98% Of People Will Open Your Marketing Message
If you stack two identical promotions side-by-side and one of them gets opened by twice as many customers as the other, then you could expect that it will generate more sales, possibly up to twice as many.
This is why marketers agonize over how to get more people to open their emails and see their ads.
In fact, an entire industry was created out of this exact need called Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).
While email typically provides a 20.1% open rate (i.e. 80% of people don’t open the emails) and display ads even worse at around 2% (CTR) there’s a LOT of opportunity left to exploit.
SMS has a 98% open rate.
Businesses know that everyone reads their text messages and according to Smart Insights 97 of those people will read their SMS within the first 4 minutes of receiving their text.
While speaking to the Brand Manager of a well-known wine retailer in Australia she revealed that their SMS campaigns consistently outperformed their email campaigns by as much as 300% creating a staggering boost in sales.
C. High Delivery And Response Rates
Email is one of the top marketing tools used in business and can generate a good ROI.
The problem is that roughly 80% of the emails that are sent out are not seen by the recipient, this is due to:
- Failed/blocked delivery (caused by your reputation score.)
- Not getting opened (caused by high competition inside the inbox.)
- Blocked emails (caused by the SPAM filter.)
Did you know that there are over 400 trigger words that if used in any combination could get your email message tossed into the junk folder?
As consumers we’re lucky to have this in place because it blocks a lot of unwanted emails getting through however as legitimate business owners it also reduces our sales potential.
SMS on the other hand has no SPAM algorithm to block SMS messages meaning business owners are able to get all of their SMS promotions to their recipients.
D. The Business OWN’s The Platform
Everyone is heavily invested in online marketing channels and because of this, anyone who wants to advertise online has to deal with the rules laid out by the companies who control the platform.
Email marketing is not really your platform but is controlled by the email service provider who watches how many people do not open your emails which affects your reputation score which affects how many emails they block.
Organic search marketing is controlled by Google who with one algorithm update can wipe your traffic and income out literally overnight.
Facebook has incredibly tight advertising restrictions and they can ban your ad account without having to give you a detailed reason – very few people are able to recover from a banned account.
Websites that you want to advertise on will also have their own ad policies that you must adhere to.
SMS is one of the ONLY platforms where you have 100% control without any regulations (you MUST however have expressed consent to send SMS’s to people on your list.)
When you own the platform you are free to generate as many sales and leads as you want.
E. SMS Can Boost The Performance Of Other Channels
One of the secondary reasons why businesses use SMS marketing is because they can increase the performance of their other marketing activities.
For example, if you have an important email newsletter going out send your list an SMS asking them if they had opened the last newsletter and watch the open rates skyrocket.
It’s also used to improve other areas like:
- Webinars
- Trade shows
- Product launches
- Special events
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Confirm sales appointments
It’s likely that your customers will have a mobile phone so by using text you’re guaranteed to get their attention and convert that into increased marketing performance.
F. SMS Is Incredibly Low Cost
Pay-per-click advertising is a valuable marketing tool but over the years has become incredibly expensive especially if you don’t understand how quality scores work, it’s not uncommon to pay $20-$50 per click in some industries.
The cost per send for SMS is not reliant on what other people are paying, it is a set price of between 2-8 cents per text depending on your package.
Summary
Online SMS is still being used by a large percentage of businesses making this a great opportunity for those who want to steal a big piece of market share away by capturing mobile leads and sending promotions before their competitors even get the chance to market to them.