There are a few reasons why businesses have been experiencing incredible success with SMS marketing. The simplest answer to why SMS marketing is effective, however, is because people want to text businesses they care about.
In fact, 9 out of 10 people say that they want businesses to communicate with them via text for a multitude of purposes, such as special offers, coupons, appointment reminders, etc. If your business hasn’t begun formulating an SMS marketing campaign, now is the time to start because this strategy is only going to continue gaining popularity. In 2023, it is predicted that 3.5 trillion business texts will be sent; that’s 1 trillion more than in 2019.
If that alone isn’t enough to convince you of the effectiveness of SMS marketing, continue reading for more stats and tips on mastering this tool!
Is SMS Marketing Effective?
Cell phone ownership
96% of Americans own a cellphone of some kind, according to research conducted last year by Pew Research Center. Therefore, 96% of Americans have the ability to communicate via text. Further, more people own a cellphone than those who own a computer (about 75% of Americans) and those who own smartphones (81%).
See where I’m going with this? If your business has only been utilizing email or social media marketing, you could be missing out on 15% of the American population. That’s more than 49 million people! An SMS marketing strategy will give your business increased access to a whole segment of the population you may be missing.
Open rates
Text messages have an open rate of a whopping 98%, compared to just 20% of emails that get opened. The difference in this case is the amount of spam sent to the different channels. Only about 1% of texts are spam. On the other hand, spam emails make up about 49.7% of the total amount of emails that get sent.
People are so used to almost half of the emails in their inbox being spam that they don’t even bother to open the vast majority of messages! In fact, even if a particular customer wants to receive emails from your business, those emails may just end up automatically getting sent straight to the ‘Junk’ folder never to be seen again.
While email marketing is still a useful tool, your marketing strategy has the potential to be so much stronger with the addition of SMS.
Convenience
Have you ever hung up the phone after a long interaction with a company and thought, “that was a waste of time”?
It’s usually not even the conversation itself that ends up being a time-waster. A common scenario looks something like this: you call a business and sit on hold and then get transferred to the right department and then sit on hold there only to have your question answered in three minutes after it took half an hour to get through to the right person…
Sound familiar?
Consumers are over it. That’s why 80% of people use SMS for business communications- they find it unobtrusive and convenient. People aren’t just turning to SMS for customer service either; businesses are utilizing text to send offers, track loyalty programs, conduct surveys, send appointment reminders, engage with leads and more!
In order to ensure the effectiveness of SMS marketing, however, there are a couple ‘best practices’ that you should follow.
- Get permission.
Did you know that it is actually illegal to send customers unsolicited marketing texts? If that customer has not opted-in to receiving text communications from your business, you could very well be in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
To safeguard yourself from hefty fines, make sure you are always receiving permission to text customers. Better yet, require a double opt-in. For instance, maybe a customer signs up for text updates on your website. The first text they receive should ask them to confirm their subscription to your SMS campaign. Once they’ve confirmed, you’re good to go!
Don’t forget: your business must also give customers a clear and simple way to opt-out of SMS marketing if they so choose. After all, your goal is not to hold people hostage to your text messages. If they are no longer receiving value from your messages, they should be able to easily unsubscribe.
- Don’t be annoying.
This is actually considered part of the best practices of being a human, but it goes double for businesses that are utilizing SMS marketing. Although spam is less common in text inboxes than email, it is still very possible to spam your customers via SMS.
Consider the frequency with which you are sending texts. If your customers begin to feel inundated with unnecessary communication from your business, they will not hesitate to hit that ‘Unsubscribe’ button. Also, coming off as ‘spammy’ to customers will ultimately harm your business’ reputation.
Your business also needs to consider the time of day that each text gets sent. A good rule of thumb is to only send messages between 10 am and 6 pm. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but those are the hours that the majority of people are going about their day. Therefore, any texts sent at those times will not seem inappropriate. Super early morning texts and late night messages, however, will seem much more intrusive and will most likely not achieve your desired results.
- Keep texts short, sweet and to-the-point.
In general, you will want to keep all SMS marketing communications to 160 characters or less. Anything more than that and you’ll risk the message being chopped up and sent as separate messages. Sending more than one text at a time will put your business at risk for looking ‘spammy’ or pushy.
SMS stands for ‘short message service,’ after all. Leave the long, informative messages in your email campaign. SMS marketing campaigns should be used for short and sweet messages only, like special offers and coupons.
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Long story short, when asked “is SMS marketing effective?” our answer will always be a resounding “yes!” If your business is consistently providing value to subscribers and following the best practices outlined in this article, you will see results! Ready to get started with SMS marketing? Try it out for free!
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