Reaching out to your target audience is the first step in establishing a connection with your prospects and future customers. Why? The simple answer is that people associate with businesses that reach out to the audience with the right kind of offers and promotions.

Yes, many businesses are carrying out the task of reaching out to the audience via social media channels, emails, chats and even inviting the prospects to seminars organized by them.

However, SMS marketing comes in handy for reaching out to the audience that has not yet adopted smartphones with touchscreens and the on-the-go lifestyle.

You will agree to the fact that people avoid calls, generally, yet read messages and respond rather quickly to it. The reasons are infinite for not answering the calls; we will leave it to your imagination to cook up the cause.

This article today is being written to point out various SMS marketing tips that a small business can use for increasing their sale!

Some interesting SMS statistics

Users redeem SMS coupons 8% more than email coupons ( CMO Council )

Recipients open 98% of SMS messages against the 20 percent of emails ( VentureBeat )

Recipients read and respond to 99% of text messages within 90 seconds of receiving them ( DigitalMarketingMagazine )

SMS engagement rate is 6-8 times higher than email marketing ( 60secondmarketer )

Brands using SMS marketing successfully reach out to 95% of smartphone and non-smartphone users. ( GoMoNews.com )

90% of SMS loyalty program users feel value gained from it.

Reasons small businesses must use SMS marketing

Small businesses today use multiple strategies for boosting their sales funnel with budding deals, and SMS marketing becomes an integral part of their multiple-channel strategy to pool in the prospects.

Some advanced sales CRM software offer text messaging services to their users for a seamless SMS experience.

Send SMS, right from your CRM Connect with prospects using Salesmate. Try Salesmate for Free

SMS marketing is also great for lead generation. Curating a message based on the customer’s previous interactions with your company’s solutions comes in handy for drafting messages that can attract new prospects.

1. Instant message delivery

SMS serves as a direct communication tool between brands and their customers. The same fact applies when small businesses are sending out promotional and seasonal messages to their prospects.

For stimulating immediate purchases, brands can quickly send out SMS to multiple numbers that have been collected by their marketing team.

The key to making their first purchase is how soon your message gets to them, of course, the body of content also helps in pushing the prospect to try out your solution.

SMS messages also allow your brand to create a long-lasting relationship with your consumers.

2. Quicker customer feedbacks

A research done by Deloitte revealed that 31 percent of consumers respond to a survey via smartphone. Small business owners need to know what their consumers and prospects think about the products and services they are providing, that too without losing much time.

With an average response time of fewer than six minutes, SMS messages become the most rever survey tool for small business owners for curating their offerings to suit the market demand.

With an average response time of fewer than six minutes, SMS messages become the most rever survey tool for small business owners for curating their offerings to suit the market demand.

3. High open rate

As shared in the statistics above, SMS messages have a higher open rate than any other communication tool. Just make sure that when you draft your messages, they have an attractive content and proper call to action that will drive the recipient toward the desired website page.

4. Better conversion rate

SMS messages have a higher conversion rate too. With a meaningful yet short message body and proper use of promotional links, SMS marketing becomes your greatest weapon for driving website sales.

Tips for successful SMS marketing

We have established the importance of SMS marketing for you till now, but you also will need some tips for a successful SMS campaign. So that your sales funnel keeps getting its share of lucrative deals, at a regular time interval.

1. Always be precise

While drafting the SMS messages for your sales, marketing or promotional campaigns, you have to deal with the “160 characters” criteria.

If we compare the email subject line, it comprises 70-80 characters. You do not have many characters to play around with the words, meaning, you must be to-the-point while creating the body of your SMS message.

This also means that you need to make the customer and prospect understand the reason behind sending the message in short.

If you keep the message simple and direct the recipients will easily and quickly understand:

the reason behind receiving the message

the benefits

the action needed to be taken by them for availing the benefits

the time limit of the benefits

So, while writing your promotional, sales or marketing messages, make sure that all these 4 points are being covered in your message.

2. Gain consent of sending messages

GDPR and other data protection policies allow users to stay on the DND list and avoid unnecessary messages from various brands.

When you establish communication with your prospects and customers, make sure you inform them about the procedure of “opting-in” for receiving your messages.

3. Don’t spam your customer list

Today, users do not want to get flooded with unwanted marketing or sales messages of any sort.

While messaging your customer list, make sure you do not end up sending plenty of messages to the same client as they may get irritated and opt-out of receiving messages from you.

To maintain a record of outbound messages, you can use a sales CRM that can update you with real-time notifications of messages sent out to your customers.

The most significant advantage of using a CRM for text messages is that it keeps reminding you at regular intervals for sending out SMS messages to your client and prospect list.

Note: The best practice is to limit your outbound messages to three or four per month.

4. Choice of opt-in and out

Respecting the privacy of customers and prospects means they know you are a trustable business, who will not fill up their SMS inbox with unnecessary promotional content.

There is no point in sending SMS or forcing your messages on recipients who do not want to receive any notification from your side.

5. CTA inclusion must be prioritized

The only reason you are sending out your SMS messages to your prospects is that you want them to visit your website for making a particular purchase or to view your promotional offers.

Hence, you must include proper and precise call-to-actions (CTAs) in your messages.

The millennial today use a smartphone that allows them to navigate to a browser once they have clicked on the link that was inside your SMS message.

You can easily track the actions that are being taken by the recipients using an intuitive CRM.

You can check which SMS template is getting the most click and can curate your future messages as per the results derived by the CRM software.

6. Personalize your SMS

If you are using a sales CRM that offers a text messaging facility, it becomes more comfortable for you to know the client and prospect preferences, based on past interactions.

The records that are stored inside your CRM allow you to personalize your message content body.

A personalized message interacts and successfully attracts customers and prospects.

Personalized messages produce a better level of engagement and allow you to convert more prospects into customers.

7. Use an SMS shortcode and share it too

Shortcode is a four to a six-digit number which any business can obtain and use in place of a telephone number. Marketers shortcode each product they have.

This enables them to allow people to opt into specific messages about one product and not get disturbed with promotional messages of other products produced by their company.

After procuring the shortcode, place it appropriately!

Placing it with the rest of the contact information on your website is a smart thing to do.

Place it on your social media profile pages so that your followers or interested parties can easily find it.

Place it in the marketing email footer.

8. Trigger-based SMS

With a smart sales CRM, you can send out automated messages to the responses your SMS messages get.

You can also do the same thing when similar behavior is shown on your website.

Example.

When users fill out your online form, some may fill the contact number too. Send out an opt-in message when they hit “done” for filling up your form.

This is the best way of sending out promotional discounts too.

You can attract the audience with attractive “first purchase offers” messages using trigger-based SMS messages.

Similarly, you can decide which kind of trigger sends out messages to your customer’s list.

9. Create a sense of urgency and make it exclusive

Including expiration on offers and promotions creates a sense of urgency in customers making them respond faster.

If you draft your messages in a manner that makes the reader feel it’s just for them, you are successfully using the SMS messaging and increasing your conversion rate.

Combining both scenarios, you can expect the customers to make the purchase as soon as they read it.

If you make the reader feel essential and exclusive, add a pinch of urgency, they will make it a point to make the purchase.

Bottom line

In the end, it is all about the bottom line, especially for small and midsize businesses that are working on a restricted budget. To make the most of the budget, you need to invest in a system that can automate your tasks.

Salesmate CRM is a sales software that has been developed to support the growing businesses in functioning with full efficiency. Salesmate provides features like CRM telephony and text messaging, allows your sales team to streamline their daily sales process and target the prospects.

Why don’t you take our 15-days free trial and check every feature out?