Your phone vibrates. You got a text message. It’s from your chiropractor confirming your appointment tomorrow at 4 p.m. You click the link in the text to confirm your appointment and receive a thank you text back. You put your phone away and go back to your day.
This seemingly simple interaction can actually have huge implications for that chiropractor’s customer acquisition strategy. Through this one simple, automated system, they are eliminating the need for a receptionist to look through tomorrow’s appointments and manually call (and usually leave a less-than-enthusiastic voicemail) to confirm appointments. They reduce cancellations and no-show appointments. They reach their customer directly and efficiently without worrying about open rates or ad budgets. And they didn’t have to lift a finger.
That’s the power of SMS marketing. It’s a tool that allows you to streamline customer communication and increase conversions without manual effort. Sound too good to be true? We can assure you it’s not. Let’s dive in and discover how you can use SMS marketing to improve your customer acquisition.
In this blog, we’ll look at the following:
- What is SMS Marketing?
- How to Manage an SMS Marketing Campaign
- Tips for a Successful SMS Marketing Campaign
What is SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing involves the use of text messaging services to send promotional or transactional messages to interested prospects and customers.
Text message campaigns are particularly useful for quick and easy customer communication that can be automated. You might be asking your customer to confirm an appointment, sharing a limited-time offer, or sending a follow-up after their service with a chance for them to leave feedback. The ability to meet people right where they are is a powerful marketing strategy. If done correctly, the approach can also be very personal and a way for you to set yourself apart from the competition.
Benefits of SMS Marketing for Customer Acquisition
There are plenty of benefits to incorporating SMS marketing in your marketing and outreach plan, including:
- Receiving customer feedback. Marketing research also shows that around 31% of consumers are willing to respond to a survey sent via text. Text messaging could be an effective way to receive feedback from your audience to help improve your business processes.
- Helpful tracking and analytics. Depending on the service provider you choose, SMS marketing can reveal useful analytics. This data is often available in real-time, which allows you to test and improve messaging strategies.
- Integration to other tools. Text messages can include links that drive website traffic or have customers update their profiles. This is an easy way to ask customers to take a specific action to help convert or re-engage them within the sales process.
How to Manage an SMS Marketing Campaign
Now that you’ve seen all the benefits of SMS marketing, let’s get started with your first campaign. There are a few steps to take to get everything set up from scratch, then you can easily create and automate SMS marketing campaigns based on your overall business goals.
Conduct product and audience research
Effective SMS marketing starts with an understanding of who your customers are and how they want you to communicate with them. You can use a CRM system to look at your current customer data, like purchase history, how they’ve previously communicated with your company, and understand how they engage with the content you produce.
You should also have a rich understanding of your own product or service and match up the target audience with the right product or service. If you send out mass messages about a great offer to customers who have no historical interest, you could be missing the mark. For example, you wouldn’t want to send dog owners a great offer on cat food. The more research you conduct, the more you can differentiate your efforts from spam messages and create highly targeted (and highly effective) SMS campaigns.
Find a reliable marketing service provider
There are several reputable and innovative SMS marketing providers that your team can leverage. You should opt for a company that has excellent customer service, detailed analytics, and a simple user interface. All of these factors are important in ensuring that your marketing budget is used most effectively.
Salesmsg is a provider that offers two-way texting and other high-level services to businesses looking to expand. With Salesmsg, you can easily set up SMS campaigns from a computer and integrate them into other powerful apps and services. This offers a great user experience for your team members and more visibility for you to track success.
Make opt-in and opt-out offers extremely clear
As data privacy laws become stricter, it’s important that your SMS messaging campaign respects consumers’ privacy. You can do so by making sure it’s very clear how to opt in and opt out of any messaging customers no longer wish to receive.
Determine the best timing and frequency of messaging
To truly manage a well-rounded SMS marketing campaign, you can’t ignore the timing. When do your customers want to hear from you in the sales process? What times of day are people most likely to pick up their phones to check messages?
Sending messages while customers are just starting to get familiar with your brand might feel too intimate and turn them off from your company altogether. In the same vein, sending text messages too early or too late in the day can turn customers away rather than attract them to your offer. Aim for messages at times when you know your customers are ready to engage and might be more willing to act on impulse or “last minute” messaging.
Tips for a Successful SMS Marketing Campaign
Once you’ve established the foundation of your marketing campaign, stick to these best practices to make your efforts count. Here are several tried and true tips for successfully launching a new campaign.
Know who your best customers are
One of the ways that you can make SMS marketing outreach work for you is by focusing on a core group of customers. These individuals are excited about your product or service, and they want to be included in exclusive deals and offers. Through SMS campaigns, you can deliver the VIP treatment to these customers directly and quickly.
Collaborate with your teams
New processes and tools work better the more you collaborate, share, and innovate. It’s hard to accomplish any of these things without joining forces with other members of your team. Work alongside the marketing pros to gain a better understanding of things like budget considerations, customer profiles, engagement metrics, and more.
Partner with the sales team to see when they think a well-timed text could help really convert a prospect. Check in with customer service to explore sending out surveys to customers who have purchased. Involving multiple departments can help your SMS campaigns be the most effective across a variety of business processes.
Provide value in short form
When it comes to SMS messaging, you’ve got to make a big impact with a tiny amount of space. In usually 160 characters or less, you have to communicate what action you want them to take and why they should act now. If you need to, work alongside an expert copywriter who can pack a punch in fewer words.
Overall, you have to make sure you are providing value to your customers. A text can feel very disruptive and spammy if it’s a message they don’t want to receive. On the other hand, if the message is personalized and helpful, it feels like receiving a message from a friend who is looking out for your best interest.
Use effective CTA buttons
Calls to action can encourage your audience to move forward or do the next thing that you’d like to see them do. They can also link to more information or provide an outlet for further engagement. Both virtual and brick-and-mortar businesses can use this strategy to connect with customers.
How We Can Help You Grow with Marketing Outreach
The benefits of SMS marketing are apparent. You can improve customer acquisition by delivering highly impactful and effective text messages to customers exactly when they want to receive them.
If you’re looking for an experienced partner to help you fine-tune your strategy, Striventa can help. Our Business Growth program employs a range of marketing tactics with one single goal in mind – customer acquisition.
