If your business is using Text Message Marketing as part of your overall strategy, then you’re already familiar with SMS. With open rates as high as 98%, SMS marketing is turning in some huge results for corporate marketers and small businesses alike.
SMS stands for Short Message Service. SMS is the standard text message form: text only and 160 characters or less. As much as we love SMS, you may be selling yourself short- no pun intended- by neglecting to use MMS in your text message marketing, as well.
MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service. With MMS, you can include GIFs, videos, pictures and voice messages along with your text. Used in tandem with SMS, MMS can greatly improve the overall results of your text message marketing strategy.
In this article, we will explore the reasons why you should be using MMS in your text message marketing, as well as some things to keep in mind when using this message type vs SMS.
MMS: Take Your Text Message Marketing to the Next Level
Major Benefits
Increased variety of message types
The first, and most obvious, reason why you should incorporate MMS into your text message marketing strategy is that you will gain some variety in the types of text messages your business sends.
Not only will you be sending multimedia messages in addition to text-only, but the types of media available within MMS are diverse. As it was mentioned earlier, MMS gives you the ability to send pictures, audio, GIFs and video content. That gives your business tons of opportunities to figure out what works best with your audience.
A word of warning- don’t bite off more than you can chew. Although the variety of MMS is exciting, it can also require more content creation on the part of your marketing team. It may be best to try out test runs of different types of media, figure out what converts best with your audience and stick with it.
Branded Messaging
MMS also gives your business the opportunity to convey your brand more clearly through your text message marketing. With SMS, the only aspect of your brand that you can really convey is “tone of voice,” and while that’s important, it’s certainly not the whole picture.
Be sure to keep your brand in mind during any content creation, including MMS content. Include your brand colors, fonts, logo, etc. with any pictures or videos. Think of another well-known brand, like Nike. Whenever you see that check mark or hear the phrase “Just Do It,” what do you think of? Nike, of course! This is an example of great branding.
If you want your business to achieve that same level of recognition, branding needs to be a central part of your marketing efforts, and MMS gives you the ability to do just that in your text message marketing.
Visual Content=Better Results
It’s really that simple. In 2017 Wibbitz, an AI-powered video creation platform, released a study on this topic, and the results were astounding!
According to this study, visual content makes a significant impact on every major business goal, including website traffic (85%), brand awareness (84%), social media engagement (81%), and lead generation and sales (71%).
While you’re probably already incorporating visual content into the other aspects of your marketing strategy, SMS messages are limited to text-only. However, with MMS, you can start seeing even better results with your text message marketing!
Considerations
While you’re creating text message marketing campaigns with MMS, there are a few things you will want to keep in mind.
MMS messages can be more expensive to send.
In terms of sending out text message marketing, the price of MMS messages versus SMS really depends on how your business texting service structures its packages.
Some business texting services use “credits” to charge for each message. In other words, depending on your subscription, you’ll be limited to a set number of credits per month. For example, SMS messages may be 1 credit, whereas each MMS message is worth 3 credits. In this example, MMS is a bit more expensive as it eats up your monthly credits faster.
However, with Text My Main Number, all messages are counted equally. While the more expensive subscriptions allow users to send more messages overall, SMS and MMS are “worth” the same. For instance, in our Small Business subscription, you would get 5,000 total messages; that includes outbound SMS, inbound MMS and outbound MMS.
So, while the price to send MMS messages can be higher than that of SMS messages, it really depends on your business texting service.
Message purpose
While we definitely want to encourage the use of MMS in your text message marketing strategy, it should never completely replace SMS. The decision to use SMS or MMS really depends on the goal of your message.
For instance, SMS is great for messages that can be short and sweet. These are usually informative messages, like appointment reminders, survey requests, payment reminders, and alerts, to name a few.
MMS, on the other hand, is perfect for promotional messages. Coupons and deals make great MMS messages, for example. Branded pictures or videos will grab customers’ attention and encourage them to convert more than a simple text message.
Message size restrictions.
SMS messages are restricted to 160 characters or less. Anything more than that, and your message may get split up and sent out of order. This can make writing effective texts a bit of a challenge.
MMS messages have no character restrictions, but they do have a size limit. In general, the maximum message size (including attachments) is 300KB. It’s also important to consider that some wireless carriers have their own size restrictions. And, even though 81% of Americans now own smartphones, screen sizes and phone types can vary greatly.
For these reasons, among others, you will want to test out your MMS messages on different devices before blasting them out to your list, especially if you’ve just started incorporating them into your text message marketing strategy. Running tests will ensure that your carefully planned campaign is represented well on a variety of phone types.
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Through the use of MMS, branded and varied message types will undoubtedly convert with your audience and contribute positively to your marketing goals. Keep these benefits and considerations in mind when creating your next campaign and find out for yourself how MMS can take your text message marketing to the next level!
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