Top Tip Tuesday - Text Messaging

??You see, there are more phones in the world than people…

…and every single one of them has SMS (text messaging service) enabled.

With a near to perfect open rate of 98% *TextLocal (the average email open rate is just 18%!) - and 97% of messages being read within 15 minutes of delivery, it's clear that SMS has the power to get your marketing messages in front of your audience.

Let's say you were targeting 1,000 people.

If you sent an email with the average open rate of 18%, only 180 people would even read your message. If you sent a text message, with an open rate of 98%, your message gets in front of 980 people. Assuming the conversion rate of your message is 10%, that means a text message would make 98 sales vs the emails 18.

???♂? So, why are so few businesses using it?

It’s mainly because it’s not thought of as a traditional marketing method. Most business owners default to emails, flyers or some Facebook posts. But if you add Text marketing on top your other marketing, it really rockets your conversion rates.

Text Marketing can be used for a range of campaigns – such as…

General Updates

Reminders

Flash Sales

Selling Event Tickets

Follow Up

...and lots more!

Text marketing campaigns are much more effective as support campaigns - so if you're selling a product through direct mail and emails - sending a text to your prospects on top of that is a great way to boost sales.

One of the best fields to target is your current customer database. Time and time again, businesses focus on new prospects, forgetting that they’ve got a database full of customers who have already bought from them! By contacting active customers who know you, trust you and are likely to buy from you again, you’re giving your text marketing efforts a much greater chance of success.

A trickier area to target is prospective customers. These are people who have willingly given you their phone number through either past activity or opt ins etc. You have to build your mobile list, but once you’ve got one going, you can create a text marketing campaign around that.

We would strongly advise against text marketing to cold prospects.

These are people who don't know you. They don't trust you. And a text from you is more likely to freak them out than it is to build a solid relationship where you can sell to them.

The truth is people don’t take kindly to receiving texts from businesses they’ve never heard of; who'd of thought!?

If you’ve not adopted text into your marketing mix – check out these two providers that can help.

It’s easier than you think to get started…

·      Textlocal.com

·      Textmarketer.co.uk

?? And if you’d like some help crafting the right message then give us a call on 01737 350 079 or email us via [email protected] . ??