Using a bulk SMS marketing app opens up new possibilities to grow your marketing strategy, design on-brand messaging templates, and improve customer and follower engagement.
While marketing is just one application for bulk messages, it is among the most popular, particularly for businesses in competitive sectors who simply aren’t seeing the returns they expect from email marketing campaigns. If you’re new to bulk SMS and need to figure out how this might fit into your marketing activities, the advice below will help you get started!
Which Sectors Use Bulk SMS Marketing?
E-commerce and the broader retail sector are undoubtedly the biggest users of SMS marketing. The cost-efficiency of bulk SMS pricing means that companies can segment their messages to each audience group, using personalisation to customise the correspondence to the recipient.
Some examples and use cases include:
- Sending promotional emails about discounts, offers, events and new product launches
- Reminding customers they have an item sitting in an abandoned basket
- Prompting users who haven’t made a purchase in a while to look at new offerings
- Circulating discount codes for repeat customers or to tempt them back
Bulk SMS marketing can be further tailored to the customer based on the products they have viewed or purchased and adjusted to the categories they have expressed interest in. SMS marketing is also used in healthcare communications to share education, advice, appointment reminders, and other fields such as events management. An organiser might, for instance, notify attendees of sign-up dates or ticketing arrangements.
The great aspect of SMS marketing is that it is significantly faster than any alternative. If an event manager has one ticket left or a retailer is almost sold out of a high-demand item, they can notify their engaged audience quickly and generate a prompt response.
How Can Businesses New to Bulk SMS Marketing Get Started?
The first step is to think about the types of communications and correspondence that would work best for your company–and invite your customers to opt in to receive SMS messages. Many use their existing consumer databases and add an incentive, such as providing an exclusive discount or access to a service or sale by adding SMS marketing permissions to their account, usually ticking a box to confirm consent.
Using a bulk SMS messaging app with powerful built-in features makes the set-up effortless. However, it’s best to have an established contact list to begin with or to use a smaller volume of SMS credits to test the outcomes of sending SMS promotions to a select group.
Next, you can consider the characteristics you’ll use to segment your audience based on their interests, location, previous interactions with the company, or any other element that will dictate the right messages to send that will be relevant and interesting to each group.
Tips on Creating Great SMS Marketing Messages
SMS messages should be concise and engaging, using compelling language to encourage recipients to respond or take the desired action. It’s important to include a call to action, or ‘CTA,’ as you would on a website landing page or email campaign, so it is clear what you’d like the customer to do and why this benefits them.
It’s also a great idea to review your tone of voice and ensure your bulk SMS messages are consistent with your branding, whether you use a chatty, informal style or tend to send more corporate messages to enterprise-level clients. From there, you can test alternative message formats and CTAs, sample different segmented groups and finesse your approach until you find the perfect messaging technique that produces the best results.