Online SMS has been growing in popularity over the last few years directly in line with the explosion in mobile usage which has seen a near vertical climb in terms of overall growth.
This mobile boom has changed the way companies communicate with their customers and online SMS while initially considered a spamming tool has now become one of the most powerful marketing and communications tools available.
Gary Vaynerchuk who grew Wine Library from 3 million per year to 60 million per year using social media recently invested in two SMS companies stating that he was getting impossible open and engagement rates, we’ll get this shortly.
He’s not the only one. Ashton Kutcher uses SMS to connect with his fans too.
Online SMS advocate and 160.com.au marketing guru Tom Gladwell says that Online SMS ‘just works’ we see it everyday from our clients, in virtually every industry vertical you can imagine, businesses are using SMS technology to not just reach people instantly and engage customers but to stay front of mind and beat their competitors to the punch.
Online SMS is taking off in a big way and is definitely worth it for any business large or small.
In this article, I’ll share with you the top reasons why companies are not just integrating SMS into their marketing mix but sometimes pushing out other advertising channels and focusing on text messaging instead!
Open Rates Are Everything
This is a fairly bold statement and will meet a lot of disagreement inside marketing circles but the fact is if no one opens your marketing message your campaign stops right there.
No engagement, no conversions, it all ends there.
So while you can’t take open rates to the bank they are an essential first step to making the rest of the buying process possible.
Funnily enough the open rate is one of the toughest steps available and while average marketers may think that it’s not really that important they unknowingly are trying to improve this metric all of the time.
For example email marketers will agonize over ways to improve their open rates by testing things like best time of time of day to send specific campaigns and A/B testing multiple subject line angles.
Paid advertising specialists will test images, headlines, lead copy, audiences, copy angles, etc. why? So they can get a person to notice their ad and get the click in other words improving the paid ad version of their open rates.
All things being equal, the higher your open rates, the more conversions you make. It’s just plain old math.
Let me ask you something.
If you were able to achieve a 3-4x open rate on your marketing promotions do you think that your conversions would increase?
The answer is of course yes. Like I said, it’s just math at the end of the day.
Online SMS delivers open rates anywhere from 82-97% compared to that of email which is around 20%.
That is a 400%+ increase in the number of people seeing and reading your marketing promotion.
Can you see why smart business owners are adding online SMS to their marketing mix?
Boost Your Other Marketing Channels
Alright, so online SMS has a massive open rate of nearly 100% and that’s great for people running SMS campaigns, alerts, updates, etc. but curiously no one ever thinks about using online SMS to drive the success of their other campaigns.
Are you using email marketing? Then chances are you are getting an open rate of 20%, would you like to double that? Why not send out an SMS that says something like: “Hi Jack, we just sent you an email with some very important information that may be of use to you. Let me know if you have not received it – Jill.”
Do you think there is a benefit in having a person going to their email just to look for what you sent them? Do you think your open rates would increase?
Do you run trade events? What about hosting webinar events?
Attendance rates are always one of the top priorities for marketers because the more people who show up the more sales conversions take place.
Instead of sending emails, a better strategy would be to send a series of SMS messages leading up to the event – with nearly 100% of people reading your text messages you’re getting maximum exposure an maximum top of mind awareness leading up to your event – do you think that you would have a higher attendance rate?
What about product launches or hosting special closed-door openings?
Again, using SMS leading up to that event is a powerful way to make sure people don’t forget.
Whatever marketing channel you are using there is likely a way to boost its performance with the power of online SMS.
Online SMS Is Not Online Marketing Channel
It sounds strange but online SMS isn’t really an “online” marketing channel. Yes, it does use the internet help you manage your campaigns and get your message out but in reality that SMS message is using SMS mobile technology.
The fact that text messaging is an offline channel means that its performance is not hamstrung by things like: ad blockers, spam filters, reputation scores, quality scores, strict ad policies, algorithm updates any one of these can literally squash your traffic and conversions overnight.
These online barriers have ended businesses.
Online text messaging avoids all of these issues giving you direct access to your customer list.
Almost 100% Delivery Rates
In the previous point I mentioned all of the roadblocks that online campaigns need to content with and each of them can prevent the delivery of your ads and email messages, i.e. the delivery rate.
If your message is not delivered then they can’t open it, read it or act upon it.
Like open rates delivery rates are one of those deal-breaker metrics that online marketers are always dancing around trying to avoid blocked emails or account shutdowns.
Online SMS on the other hand will land inside the inbox of your customer almost 100% of the time.
The only time it won’t is if the recipient is out of mobile coverage, they’ve changed mobile numbers or their phone is switched off.
If you absolutely need to get your promotions in front of your audience then currently, there is not better media channel than online SMS.