Every day, approximately 18.7 billion text messages are sent and received.

It’s very rare to find someone who doesn’t text on a regular basis, and many business owners have found that sending targeted texts to their customers is a great way to keep them interested and aware of new products and promotions.

Have you considered making use of opt-in text messaging to reach your customers?

Read on to learn about 10 of the greatest benefits that come from using this technique as part of your marketing strategy.

1. Higher Open Rates

Email marketing can be effective, but can also be quite challenging to get people to open the emails you send their way. Often, when people suspect that an email is marketing related, they ignore it or delete it without even reading it.

With text messages, though, there’s a much higher open rate. In fact, some reports show that text messages have up to a 98 percent open rate!

With such great odds that your message will be opened, you’re also much more likely to see conversions come from marketing text messages.

2. Low Cost

It costs very little money to send opt-in marketing text messages, too.

You can spend way less money on text messages than you would on Facebook or other social media ads and, in many cases, see a much better result.

This makes sending marketing texts a great option for those who are new businesses or those who are working with a very limited budget.

3. Meet People Where They Are

It’s rare to find someone who doesn’t have their phone on them at all times. In fact, it’s usually right there in their hand.

Marketing text messages have such a high open-rate because people are almost always on their phones and are almost always ready and willing to receive texts.

With opt-in text messaging, you can meet people where they are and get them interested in what you have to offer right away.

4. Reach a Wider Demographic

Not too long ago, marketing text messages would have seemed like something that only appealed to young people.

These days, though, people of all ages send and receive text messages every day. Even your grandma probably knows how to send and open them.

Because so many people use their phones to text each day, this gives you an opportunity to reach a wider audience and attract new customers to your business.

5. Fast Response

Most people open text messages shortly after they receive them. Their high open rate also comes with a high (and fast) response rate. In many cases, you’ll get responses to your marketing text messages right away.

In addition to coming with fast response times, it’s also easy to send marketing text messages quickly. They don’t require a lot of prep time, so you can send them out as soon as you come up with an idea that you think will be effective.

6. Increased Engagement

You’re often going to see much higher rates of engagement with marketing text messages, too.

If they can answer your questions or take advantage of a promotion that you’re offering right there while they’re already on their smartphone, they’re going to be much more inclined to do so.

The more engagement you can get, the more business growth you’re likely to see moving forward.

7. Customer Control

Another great thing about marketing text messages is the fact that the customer has a lot of control over what they receive, too.

For example, customers get to opt-in to marketing text messages.

If they choose to opt-in to these messages, there’s a good chance that they’re already somewhat interested in making a purchase in the near future. Being able to measure who opts in also gives you more information about the people most likely to buy products or services from you.

They get to opt-out, too. Knowing that they can stop receiving messages at any time is often very helpful. They won’t see the harm in signing up and will likely continue to receive your texts for a lot longer than they would have otherwise.

8. Flexibility

There’s a lot of flexibility that comes with marketing text messages, too. There are plenty of different approaches you can take and different types of messages you can send.

Some of the most common options include the following:

Exclusive deals

Insider information

Polls and surveys

You can also run contests via your marketing text messages. People are always excited about opportunities to win something, even if it’s just a simple prize like a free t-shirt.

9. Combine with Other Channels

You don’t have to limit yourself to text message ads alone.

As with most marketing techniques, opt-in marketing texts work best when they’re combined with other channels, such as email marketing or social media marketing.

Many marketing platforms even give you an option to integrate your text message marketing campaigns with your other campaigns.

This allows you to measure progress in a more effective way and see which approaches work best for your target audience.

10. Gather Important Information

Finally, opt-in text messaging also gives you an opportunity to gather valuable information about your current and potential customers.

Many people are much more inclined to respond to text messages than they are to emails. As a result, you can have a more in-depth conversation with a customer and get to know them in real-time (or almost real-time).

This helps you figure out exactly what your customers want and learn more about their behaviors. When you have this information available, it’s easier for you to make adjustments to your business to increase their satisfaction rates.

Start Using Opt-In Text Messaging Today

As you can see, there are a lot of reasons why you ought to make opt-in text messaging part of your marketing plan.

Are you ready to take the plunge and connect with your customers in a new way? Or, do you need a bit more information before you make a decision?

If you want to learn more about text messaging or other digital marketing techniques, we’ve got plenty of other resources available on our site.

Head to the Business section today to learn about what other professionals are doing to continue growing their companies in 2019.