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7 creative ideas for SMS text message marketing campaigns

How creative are your SMS text message marketing campaigns? Are you seizing every opportunity to engage with your subscribers and ultimately boost sales with your ideas?

SMS, otherwise known as Short Message Service, is really just texting. And more than 560 billion texts are sent every month worldwide, and about 81 percent of Americans text regularly. In fact, Americans text twice as much as they call, on average.

Simply put, text message marketing is a type of digital marketing that communicates promotions, sales, coupons, confirmations, news and other updates to your potential and existing customers (who’ve opted in) through text messages on their mobile devices.

Check out these seven benefits of SMS text message marketing for small businesses.

Beyond using SMS for reminders or order confirmations, the following are seven creative ideas to help you leverage your SMS text message marketing to grow your reach, increase your conversion rates and build trusting relationships with customers.

Welcoming subscribers

When consumers first sign up for SMS notifications from your brand, this is an opportunity to send them a welcome message that should include some sort of call-to-action.

You’ll want to briefly explain why the customers should continue subscribing to your notifications and what they can expect. Those reasons depend on your SMS marketing strategy, but they could include receiving exclusive discounts, sales alerts and other updates. (Don’t forget to include how often they should expect to hear from you.) And, of course, you can include a special discount with your welcome message to encourage a purchase.

Just remember that your welcome text message is only the beginning of your texting relationship. Keep your message concise. You’ll always have the ability to build on what you say in your welcome text with future texts.

Subscriber-only flash sales

Exclusivity is important in your SMS text message marketing strategy. Sending exclusive deals to your SMS subscribers is an effective way to make a purchase happen.

Depending on the nature of your business, you could include a link with your offer or require the recipient to show the text in the store when checking out.

Just make sure that you limit the time available to act on the sale so that you’re compelling your subscribers to act sooner rather than later. The idea of a flash sale is that it’s only around for a limited time. Learn more about FOMO and how it can boost your digital marketing efforts.

In addition, you’ll want to offer exclusive flash sales regularly so that SMS subscribers have a reason to stay subscribed but also not so frequent that they begin to get ignored.

Blog (or other content) promotion

Have popular blogs, guides, tips or other resources that would educate your SMS subscribers? Sharing that content shows that your brand is an industry thought leader that can be trusted. It also breaks up your more sales-related messages.

Weekly or monthly tips in particular are a simple way to regularly share your expertise.

By cross-promoting your valuable content through SMS text messages, you can boost your website traffic and click-through rates. This is a great opportunity to repurpose evergreen content that can benefit your audience at any time.

Learn more about evergreen content and how important it can be for your digital marketing efforts.

Running giveaways

Giveaways (which include sweepstakes and contests, depending on how you set them up and manage them) can help boost engagement and grow your SMS subscriber database.

To promote, consider directing contacts to a landing page or replying with a keyword through text. You also could announce the giveaway on your social media channels or website that aims to collect mobile phone numbers to enter.

Again, the setup entirely depends on your goals for your giveaway. Just make sure that whatever giveaway you’re launching is legally sound.

After your giveaway, it’s a best practice to follow up with those who didn’t win. Perhaps there’s some sort of consolation prize (such as a discount) that you can offer so that no one walks aways empty-handed.

Event promotion

Got an event coming up? Whether the event is a conference or product launch, another idea is to use your SMS text messaging to build up an audience or even count down the days until your event.

Text messages can share key details about your event. Just make sure that every piece of information you share is valuable to recipients. If you’re texting too much about details that they don’t care about, you risk losing subscribers.

Check out our eight tips to make your event marketing better.

Capturing abandoned carts

It’s very common for online shoppers to abandon their shopping carts before completing their order due to a vast array of distractions. In fact, the average cart abandonment rate is about 70 percent.

So, one idea is to leverage SMS text messages to capture these abandoned carts and encourage more completed orders.

If you’re set up for customers to browse your website while being logged in, you can track their behavior and have a text message sent to remind them to complete their order. If you can, include a link to their shopping cart so that the process is that much easier.

Offering more than a thank you

It’s one thing to send a thank-you text message after a customer purchases from you. It’s even better if you can sweeten the message with a discount or another offer that he or she can use next time.

You also can add a feedback survey link (or an online review link) with your thank-you message. Check out our eight tips to create a successful customer survey for your business.

In conclusion

When it comes to getting creative with your SMS text message marketing, the sky’s the limit for your ideas.

Think through your business operations and the customer journey. Would SMS subscribers want to be alerted to restocked products? Is there an opportunity to upsell your customers through text messaging? Can they pre-order a product at a discount? How personal or even interactive can you make your texts? What news beyond sales can you share with your SMS subscribers?

Check out our eight tips to maximize your SMS marketing strategy, as well as the nine do’s and don’ts of SMS text message marketing.

While you’re evaluating your SMS strategy and how creative you can get with your campaigns, think about your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, audience segmentation and more, as well as text message marketing and email marketing. Schedule your free demo with us today.

9 do’s and don’ts of SMS text message marketing

It’s tough to beat SMS text message marketing when it comes to digital marketing tactics. Text messaging is fast, direct, efficient and relatively inexpensive when compared to other advertising tactics (such as Google Ads).

Short message service (SMS) marketing is a form of marketing that businesses use to send promotions to customers by text messages. About 75 percent of clients want to receive offers via SMS, so it’s definitely something to consider layering into your digital marketing.

But before you do, the following are nine do’s and don’ts of SMS text message marketing that you should be aware of.

The do’s of SMS marketing

Keep it brief

SMS text messages are short, just 160 characters, so you have limited space to not only get your message across but also to be engaging enough for your text recipient to act on it.

Keep it as short and simple as possible while including the basics: the who, the what, the where and the when. You might go through a few drafts, but that’s okay. Keep drafting and see where you can tighten up your language.

Check out our eight tips to write an effective marketing text message.

Include a call-to-action

With such little space to work with, it’s critical to focus on getting your call-to-action (CTA) into your text message.

This is where you want to think about the “how” or “why” behind your message. For instance, a “why” could be getting a discount, and the “how” could be replying with a keyword or clicking a link. What do you want the text recipient to do upon opening your message?

Make your text recipients feel important

Remember that your text message subscribers have all opted in to receiving texts from you (or should have, legally speaking). They deserve to feel special, and you can make that happen by delivering value and offering exclusive discounts that they can’t find anywhere else.

Pay attention to timing

Because SMS text messages are so personal and direct, you want to be extra mindful of timing. Think about it: Would you want to receive a late-night text from a company? Put yourself in their shoes as far as best possible times to text and monitor your overall performance to get a sense of what works best for your audience.

If you’re a national or even an international, then time zones are critical to consider here as well.

Keep it legal

There are several requirements of all promotional text messages. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) regulates SMS marketing in the U.S. Violating the rules can cost you heavy fines on top of getting flagged by wireless carriers (such as AT&T, Verizon and so on).

Some requirements include:

Obtaining a clear opt-in from text subscribers.
Identifying yourself and/or your company in every text message.
Including an easy way to opt-out (such as “Reply STOP to unsubscribe”).

Learn more about carrier violations and how to avoid them when texting.

The don’ts of SMS marketing

Bombarding your recipients

Frequency matters, especially with text messages. Never text just to say you’re sending something or anything else that’s not incredibly useful.

Your SMS marketing messages must always deliver value, as well as a real-time benefit to those who opted in for your SMS communications. If they don’t (and texts are being sent too often on top of that), you’ll annoy your text recipients and increase your opt-out rate with every text.

Less is definitely more in SMS marketing.

Using text slang and abbreviations

Because you only have 160 characters to work with, the temptation to heavily abbreviate is very real.

But not everyone will understand all abbreviations and other types of text slang, and that can cause confusion. It even can risk the appearance of being unprofessional. You don’t want to hurt the image of your brand just to save a few characters.

Always selling

This is actually a typical piece of advice for most digital marketing tactics. If you’re always selling in your messaging, then you lose the opportunity to share what your brand is about and why people should care. You also miss out on delivering value in different (and possibly unexpected) ways.

Consumers are already exposed to thousands of marketing messages a day, and you’ll do better to cut through that noise by inserting non-selling messages into the mix (particularly in SMS marketing).

Take a personal and human approach and aim to help solve the problems of your text subscribers first. The selling can always sprinkle in later.

Forgetting to use segmentation

Segmenting your contact list is a powerful tool to make sure that you’re getting the right message to the right people.

For example, you would like say and offer something different to loyal, recurring customers than you would someone who’s never purchased from you before.

Make sure to segment based on demographics and behaviors that matter to your marketing messaging, and personalize where you can (like adding in the recipient’s first name). (DailyStory can help with both.) That way, you’re optimizing your SMS marketing.

In conclusion

Your SMS marketing is only as powerful as the strategy behind it. Take the time to determine your goals and how you’ll measure success.

Check out our six things to know before starting your first texting campaign to help you get started.

While you’re evaluating your SMS strategy, think about your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, audience segmentation and more, as well as text message marketing and email marketing. Schedule your free demo with us today.

7 benefits of SMS text message marketing for small businesses

SMS text message marketing is a powerful tool in your digital marketing toolkit with many benefits, but it can feel a little intimidating for small businesses to dive into.

If you’re on the fence about incorporating text messaging into your digital marketing efforts, the following are seven text message marketing benefits.

Strong open rate

SMS text messages boast about a 98 percent open rate, which is higher than most other marketing channels, including email.

It’s simply a very direct form of communication that is hard to ignore, while emails can get overlooked or not seen at all (if lost in a spam folder).

So, by using text messages, you’re more likely to reach your potential and existing customers with your marketing messages.

High conversion rate

Another text message marketing benefit: Text messages enjoy a relatively high conversion rate, which means that mobile users respond to calls-to-action in texts more than any other marketing channel.

In fact, the average conversion rate for brands using SMS text message marketing is about 45 percent, while the average email conversion rate is about 15 percent.

Because texts are short with few links and images, the call-to-action is clear and concise (and more effective).

Cost-effective method

While texting is not free, it is relatively cost-effective when compared to some other marketing channels (such as Facebook ads).

And, unlike other marketing, text message marketing is conversational and 2-way. This enables you to create engaging conversations with your customers for generally less.

DailyStory offers the ability to use SMS text message marketing and can break down the cost for you at a level that serves your small business best.

But just considering the return on investment alone, text messaging is a cost-effective digital marketing tool.

Mobile-friendly option

As small businesses aim to be more mobile-friendly for consumers who are using their mobile devices more and more, texting is a great show of mobile-friendliness.

According to Statista, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 51.53 percent of global website traffic as of 2020, consistently hovering around the 50 percent mark since the beginning of 2017.

And mobile internet usage is only growing. Gone are the days when we can assume that most website visitors are viewing your website on a full browser.

Mobile optimization is about making sure that visitors who access your website through mobile devices have an outstanding experience that’s customized to their device. The most successful mobile optimization should feel seamless for the mobile user. And that’s where text messages enter.

Check out our six reasons why mobile optimization matters, as well as 14 expert tips to improve your mobile marketing specifically.

Complements other types of marketing

SMS text message marketing doesn’t have to stand alone. It’s a tool that can actually be paired up with all the other ways you market your business.

Some ideas include:

Generating interest in your social media channels
Offering a quick discount for anyone who buys through your website for a limited time
Following up on a promotional email that was sent out (with different messaging based on whether they’ve opened that email or not)

Consider the digital marketing campaigns that you’re already doing. Where can SMS fit into those? And how can it make those campaigns more successful?

Check out these eight surprising ways you can use text message marketing.

Strengthening customer engagement

Text message marketing isn’t just a broadcasting medium. Similar to social media, it gives an opportunity for consumers to engage with you. This is another text message marketing benefit.

This makes your business more accessible for them, which can help it become more of a part of their lives as you continue to build stronger relationships.

To better prompt that engagement, check out our eight tips to write an effective marketing text message.

Flexible and customizable

Another text message marketing benefit: Text messages are extremely versatile. Depending on how you segment your audience and what goals you have for different groups of contacts in your database, you can easily send different messages to different consumers.

It could be a “miss you” message to customers who haven’t purchased from you in a while, a “don’t forget” message to those who’ve abandoned their shopping cart on your website and/or an exclusive discount offer. The sky’s the limit.

In addition, you can personalize these text messages with something as simple as the recipient’s first name. That alone can make your messaging that much more impactful.

Learn more about personalization, as well as our eight benefits of personalization in your digital marketing.

In conclusion

When incorporating SMS text message marketing into your larger digital marketing strategy, take a moment to consider your overall goals and where text messages can support those goals.

If you’ve never texted on behalf of your brand before, check out our six things to know before starting your first texting campaign.

While you’re getting started on text message marketing, think about your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, audience segmentation and more that can boost your email and text message marketing. Schedule your free demo with us today.

How to measure the success of your SMS marketing campaign

It’s impossible to create and execute successful SMS marketing campaigns without measuring key metrics.

SMS marketing involves sending promotional campaigns or transactional messages for marketing purposes using text messages.

About 81 percent of Americans use text messaging. Text message open rates are as high as 98 percent, and about 45 percent of consumers reply to brand text messages they receive.

Clearly, SMS marketing offers you the opportunity to better connect with your potential and existing customers. So, your metrics matter.

The following are seven ways to measure the success of your SMS marketing campaign. These metrics will help you track progress toward your goals and maximize your efforts.

Interaction rate

The interaction rate for an SMS marketing campaign is the measurement of how many text recipients take action after receiving your message.

These actions include clicks, clicks-to-call, app opens and so on. And it’s expressed as a percentage: Total clicks (or another action) divided by delivered text messages times 100.

If your interaction rate is high, it means that your SMS marketing campaign is relevant to your users. If not, there’s room for improvement.

Conversion rate

The conversion rate of an SMS marketing campaign refers to the percentage of recipients who completed the desired action as a direct result of receiving your text message. This could include redeeming a specific coupon or recovering an abandoned online shopping cart.

You can calculate this by taking the number of conversions and dividing it by the total number of messages sent (and times that by 100).

Typically, you can expect higher conversion rates with SMS marketing than with email marketing. This is because SMS subscriber lists are usually highly engaged, considering that the act of providing your phone number to a business means that you’re interested in that business’s products or services.

The conversion rate is different from the interaction rate because you’re measuring actual conversions versus any interaction or engagement because of your text message.

Delivery rate

Your SMS text message delivery rate refers to the number of messages that reached subscribers’ phones divided by the total number of texts sent (times 100).

High deliverability rates indicate that your texts are successfully reaching their intended target. A low deliverability rate could mean a few different things, including:

Invalid phone numbers
Low SMS gateway network quality
Spam filters or other carrier violations

Learn more about carrier violations and how to avoid them in your SMS marketing campaigns.

Tracking your delivery rate gives you a better understanding of the quality of your database. This also could show whether your messages are getting flagged and blocked by carriers.

Unsubscribe rate

You’ll see the percentage of subscribers who unsubscribe during your SMS marketing campaign through your unsubscribe rate.

This is calculated with opt-outs during a campaign being divided by the number of subscribers at the beginning of the campaign period (times 100).

There are many possible reasons why subscribers would opt out of your SMS marketing contact list. It’s possible that you never properly opted them in or are sending too many text messages. Or, your subscribers don’t recognize your business phone number, feel that your texts are misleading or spammy or no longer find your text messages valuable.

If you’re seeing a high unsubscribe rate, it’s important to evaluate the possible reasons why and whether they’re within your control.

List growth rate

Your list growth rate is based on how much your subscriber list has increased during the duration of an SMS marketing campaign.

You can calculate this by subtracting unsubscribers from new subscribers. Then, divide that number by the total number of subscribers during the time of the campaign (times 100).

In general, you do want to continually grow an engaged list of subscribers to extend your reach and stay top of mind, especially since there will always be unsubscribers.

Customer acquisition costs

Your customer acquisition cost is the amount you spend to gain a new customer. You can calculate this by dividing the total cost of your campaign by the number of customers you acquire (times 100).

If you’re seeing high acquisition costs, you might be targeting the wrong audience, segmenting your lists incorrectly or not sending relevant messages to your text recipients.

Return on investment

You always want to measure the return on investment (ROI) in any marketing campaign, including for SMS marketing.

To calculate, you’ll want to subtract your total investment from total sales. Then, divide that number by your total investment (times 100). When calculating, you can select a regular interval for calculations during ongoing campaigns. This can be monthly or annually or at another interval.

Use this metric to compare against your campaigns on other marketing channels. This will help you to better understand where your budget should be spent.

In conclusion

Your SMS marketing campaigns can deliver results for your business. However, you must track these important metrics along the way to best optimize your campaigns and pivot when necessary.

Check out our eight tips to maximize your brand’s SMS marketing strategy.

As you’re enhancing your SMS marketing strategy with key metrics, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory and our 21-day free trial. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation, powerful SMS text message marketing and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

8 surprising ways to use text message marketing

Text message marketing is powerful, but you can get quite creative in the ways you can use it to connect with your potential customers.

In fact, text message marketing generates response rates as high as 45 percent. And about two-thirds of consumers have signed up to receive text messages from more brands in the past year.

Check out the six things to know before starting your first text message campaign.

Beyond the typical sales and discount alerts, the following are eight surprising ways you can use text message marketing to engage with your target audience.

Promote new content

If you’re publishing a blog as part of your content marketing, consider notifying your text subscribers about new posts.

This is a great way to promote the reach of your content to the consumers who are most likely to find value in it.

Check out our 19 tips to drive traffic to your new blog.

Announce new products or services

If you have a new product or service that you’re launching, text message marketing is a great way to get the word out.

To make the text stand out, you can include a photo or emojis. But if you want to make sure text subscribers feel special, you can offer exclusive pre-orders, for example.

Remind customers about abandoned carts

With the average shopping cart abandonment at about 70 percent, distraction is at an all-time high that often beats out initial desire to purchase.

In that sense, your text message marketing should include automation that texts a reminder for any abandoned shopping carts (where you have the consumer’s contact information). Remind them of what they are missing out on with a thoughtful message. You can even throw in a discount code to make it that much more compelling to complete the purchase.

Notify when products are back in stock

If you’re an ecommerce company, then you’re used to the idea of items being in stock and out of stock. Ideally, you should offer the ability for consumers to sign up for back-in-stock notifications not just through email or text messages.

Consumers do check their text messages more frequently than email, so by texting them that an item they’re interested in is back in stock, you are more efficiently reaching them. That way, they can act quicker on the purchase. Make it as easy as possible by including a link to the product in question.

Request customer feedback

Customer reviews offer social proof that helps your brand build credibility and trust, which is critical for any business. When you ask customers for feedback, you collect not just reviews but also valuable insight that can help improve your brand in a number of ways moving forward.

You can make it easier than ever for customers to give you feedback by making the request through text message. You can include a link as well and, if necessary, an incentive to give the customer even more of a reason to share their experience with you (for better or worse).

Check out our 11 tips to best respond to negative reviews.

Share online, in-person events

If your company hosts webinars, Instagram or Facebook Lives or in-person events, consider lettering your text message marketing subscribers know.

Depending on your CRM (customer relationship management) platform, you likely can get pretty granular with your text invites leading up to the event itself.

Check out our seven tips to plan a successful virtual event, as well as our eight tips to improve your event marketing.

Connect with customers who’ve gone MIA

Text message marketing is a great way to reconnect with customers who’ve purchased from you in the past but haven’t done so lately.

This could be an appointment reminder at a time that’s important for your customer to book again. (In fact, about 64 percent of consumers say that appointment reminders are the most valuable form of business text messaging.) It could be a “we miss you” message to customers who haven’t purchased in three months. The sky is the limit here, but think through who you want to reconnect with to decide the best approach with your text message marketing.

Just remember that these reconnections are a great way to encourage more purchases, especially when you’re catching the customer at a time when they’re about to run out of an item that they may need to buy again.

Thank your customers

You can never be too appreciative of your customers. Because texting can feel more personal than email, a “thank you” text after a purchase or appointment can build your customer relationships in a more meaningful way.

Of course, your “thank you” also can include a discount that can be used on the customer’s next purchase. It just depends on your goals.

In conclusion

There is no limit to the ways that you can leverage your text message marketing to engage with consumers and help grow your business. Consider who your target audience is, what they need and what your goals are. By experimenting with what’s possible, you’ll learn what works best along the way.

Check out our eight tips to maximize your SMS marketing strategy.

While you’re getting creative with the ways you can use text message marketing for your business, think about your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, audience segmentation, text message marketing, email marketing and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.