WHAT IS SMS MARKETING?
Before covering SMS Marketing, we need to know what is short messages service. SMS (SHORT MESSAGE SERVICE) is a messaging tool to send and receive text messages on mobile phones. These messages are mostly meant to communicate time-sensitive offers, updates, and alerts to people, who are connected with you or you are connected with them, in any way. One SMS has a 160 characters limit and if you go over this limit your message is sent in 2 parts. So it’s best that SMS marketers make their message short and understandable.
Nowadays the biggest problem in businesses is communication. SMS marketing is a powerful tool that can move your business to success. This service involves sending promotional materials and transactional messages through SMS. This can be in the form of sales deals, promotional offers, loyalty rewards. It can also be an appointment reminder or an invitation. On the other hand, they have the same goal of marketing your business across but these SMS messages are sent to those customers, who have given permission to you to receive SMS from your company.
WHAT ARE THE RULES FOR SMS MARKETING?
Following are the three main rules of SMS Marketing.
- MAKE SURE YOUR CUSTOMERS ALLOWS YOU TO SEND MESSAGES: Text messaging is a very powerful and direct way of communication with customers. But, there are many rules that you should consider when you decide your marketing strategy. The first, and the most important of these are receiving permission from your customers to send them SMS messages. Hence, SMS has an extremely high open rate, but this will not help you if you are sending messages to people, who don’t want them.
- BE MINDFUL OF THE TIMINGS OF YOUR MESSAGES: People open text messages almost immediately as compared to email marketing. This is great for urgent messages, but please don’t take the wrong advantage of this power by disturbing customers at odd hours in the day. Some countries have even laws about when you can send marketing text messages (e.g. France does not allow SMS marketing on Sundays, holidays, or any time after 10 PM).
- INCLUDE YOUR COMPANY NAME IN YOUR MESSAGES: The SMS is always sent with a brand name, thereby increasing the trust of people in the received information. Updating your customers with information about your brand is probably the best way to promote your business.
IS IT BETTER THAN EMAIL MARKETING?
Companies send content to their current and respected customers through SMS and Email technologies. With email marketing, you can send information without any limitation of characters. Plus you can attach images, videos, and GIFs, in promotional content.
SMS marketing and email marketing each have their own sets of benefits and downsides. For example, a customer is more likely to read an appointment reminder sent via SMS than an email reminder. However, some customers will love to read technical information that can only be sent through email. So there is no comparison between SMS Marketing and email marketing because it works best for companies to judge their goals, budgets, and results to make a sound decision.