A constant struggle for eCommerce store owners is customer acquisition. Finding new customers and making them fall in love with your brand can be hard work, and eCommerce retailers are always looking for new marketing channels to do that. One of the best channels for that is SMS.
SMS marketing is something your business should consider, as text message marketing campaigns have an average open rate of 98%. It can have a significant role in eCommerce customer acquisition as long as you know how to properly utilize it.
Let’s take a closer look at SMS marketing and why it’s a great business opportunity.
It’s an effective way to run promotions
Promoting your business via SMS messages is a great way to increase brand visibility and catch your target customer’s attention. When you use this method of communication to reach out to potential customers, you show that your brand is easily accessible at all times and follows innovation.
When you run promotional campaigns via SMS, you need to focus on showing your brand’s value, building brand awareness, and incentivizing people to engage with your business. When you invite participation via SMS, you will find it much easier to manage customer relationships.
The best way to use SMS marketing for promotion is to provide your leads with a simple call to action (CTA). It’s important to get them to act on this CTA as quickly as possible and without too much second-guessing.
While it may be tempting to send multiple text messages to leads to try to boost customer engagement, too many text messages will be annoying and overwhelming. It’s important to find the right frequency of SMS messages that won’t cause customers to forget about your brand but also won’t annoy them.
Most brands that utilize SMS marketing text their customers between two and four times a month, but it would be best to survey your customers and see how often they want to hear from you.
Why you need to give SMS marketing a try
Many eCommerce businesses that have already tried SMS marketing realized just how good of a customer acquisition tool it is. Here are just some of the reasons why you need to implement SMS marketing:
– Mobile usage is constantly increasing. With over 5 billion smartphone users in the world, almost everyone carries a cellphone at all times. Since mobile usage is constantly increasing, one of the easiest ways to reach anyone these days is via mobile phone.
– You can reach all cellphone users. While most people nowadays use smartphones, there are still some people who prefer old-fashioned cell phones. With an SMS marketing campaign, you can ensure you’ll be able to reach anyone with a cell phone, regardless of whether they have an internet connection or not.
– Great open rates. As we already stated, SMS marketing campaigns have great open rates, much higher than open rates for other marketing channels such as email.
– Enhancing customer experience. Customer experience is of much bigger importance now than it was just a few years ago. People want to have easy and convenient communication with brands, and there’s nothing more convenient than simply clicking a CTA button on your cell phone.
– You will have a competitive advantage. Even though SMS marketing offers a lot of great customer acquisition opportunities, many eCommerce businesses are still hesitant to give this marketing channel a try. If you do this now, you will have a great competitive advantage over many of your competitors.
Tools you can use for SMS marketing
If you decide to give SMS marketing a try, you will need to have a great tool that will help you automate sending messages to a large number of customers.
Sonar is a good SMS tool used by businesses that has an easy-to-install Ping Widget that requires you to copy and paste code into your header tags.
While Sonar is a great tool, it’s not ideal if you’re using a hosted editor such as Wix to run your website as there might be some issues that won’t allow the tool to function properly. Before you decide on a tool, you should check with your host to see if it will be compatible with your website.
A tool that does work well on Wix is Bontact, which can be installed on your website with just a couple of clicks. This tool has great SMS functionality as well as other features such as click-to-call, live chat, and a “Leave us a message” feature.
However, if you are using a hosted editor for your website, you’re most likely using WordPress, which is currently powering more than 41% of the web. If that’s the case, then you need to learn how to send SMS from WordPress.
When you enable automated WordPress SMS messaging, you will be able to send important updates to your customers with ease. This includes sending order notifications, cancelation notifications, shipment delivery status, and much more.
How to properly execute an SMS marketing campaign
One of the first things you need to learn about SMS marketing campaigns is the importance of bulk SMS messages. Once you set up a bulk texting account, you will be able to connect with the customers who are already in your database and thus work on customer retention.
On the other hand, to acquire new customers with SMS marketing, you will need to offer them an incentive that will make them want to opt in to your SMS marketing service.
This is usually done by sending a special offer to which your potential customers can only respond via SMS by texting a keyword in return for a special offer or a discount. Once they respond to your SMS and redeem their coupon, you have a new customer and a new number for your marketing campaign.
It’s important that the keywords you use, which are also known as shortcodes, are simple and memorable. And for this premise to work, it’s best to advertise your keyword in as many places as possible.
Some extra tips
When you decide to run this type of marketing campaign, you need to carefully think about the keyword you want to use.
Things to remember when choosing keywords or shortcodes:
– Don’t leave room for confusion. As we already mentioned, the keywords you use in your campaign have to be simple and shouldn’t confuse your audience. The best strategy is to only use the 26 letters of the alphabet and never include words that sound the same but have different spelling.
– Be careful with vanity shortcodes. Vanity shortcodes are numeric sequences that spell out the name of your business. While this may seem appealing and interesting, remember that these sequences may have different meanings and spell out things that are completely unrelated to your business.
– Test out different codes. It’s important to keep an eye on your responses carefully so you could notice a spike or drop in your engagement rates. Test out a few different shortcodes to see which ones have the best response rates and which need to be altered or abandoned altogether.
Final thoughts
Every marketer knows the most popular marketing channels for customer acquisition such as email, social media, and paid advertisements. However, the power of SMS marketing is still ignored by many eCommerce businesses, which is a big shame considering the role it plays in customer acquisition.
Don’t make the same mistake as them. Give SMS marketing a try. As long as you remember everything you just read about in this article, you can ensure that your customer acquisition rates will go through the roof and you will have a great competitive advantage.
