Are you doing SMS marketing correctly? – What's Working in Marketing?

Welcome back to another week of What's Working in Marketing, a weekly newsletter where we share what's working outside your own four walls across the digital marketing landscape so you can be more effective. If you enjoy reading this,?follow me on LinkedIn?or create a?FREE Insight Library account, our team is publishing tons of free research that you won't want to miss.

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Let's get into it... This week we're breaking down:

This week we're breaking down:

• The Highlights: Unpacking trends in SMS marketing from an analysis of 50K campaigns
• Time to Get Listening: Unwrapping why demographic and generational profiles are overrated with David Allison of The Valuegraphics Project
• The Watercooler: Is it the end of an era when it comes to our assumptions of a generation's habits and patterns?
• #MarketingTwitter: Diving into three Tweets about an underrated marketing strategy, the most popular platforms for teens right now and how Snapchat is leaning into participatory content

TO SMS OR NOT TO SMS?

Last month, Klayvio analyzed 50K SMS campaigns to determine the key elements and patterns that marketers are experiencing in this developing segment.?

Here are my key takeaways:

• More than 50% of businesses are reporting click-through rates of less than 10%.
• CTR is higher for messages with fewer than 50 characters.
• CTR is slightly higher when brands?don't use emojis in their messages (11.21% CTR without emojis as opposed to 10.40% CTR with emojis).
• Start off a message with content before asking users to click through. Messages that included links at the end saw an 11.05% CTR compared to 8.75% when links are placed at the beginning of the message.

Beyond this data, it's important to think about what relationship you want your audience to have with your SMS communications. Don't be afraid to invite customers to respond and ask questions as a direct and open line of communication to your brand.

On this episode, David helps call out a missing link in the typical marketing research process that calls for psychographic and demographic data. Join us as he explains why values can be an absolute game-changer for brands with real-life examples.?

IS IT THE END OF AN ERA?

Agree/Disagree? Marketers place too much emphasis on demographics when it comes to building or refining strategy. ??

My mum and I were having a conversation and something came up that she wanted to make sure that she had correct before she communicated it to me. So she says, "hold on, let me Google that" and she walks over to the iPad sitting on the kitchen counter and opens the YouTube app.

Now, me being the marketing research nerd that I am, I'm sitting there watching her like a hawk. Once she's typed in her query and is about to click on a video I say, "Mum, stop! What are you doing? You're on YouTube, not Google."

She responds with, "I know that Charlie, I don't want to read, I'd rather watch."

Her response fascinated me – here's my mum, a woman over sixty telling me that she would rather watch a video that gives her the information instead of reading an article or blog post because she's lazy.

This got me thinking about how most marketers would likely associate this type of behaviour with a younger generation that is typically impatient but that's clearly not the case.

After reading this article from?The New Yorker?I couldn't help but wonder how many incorrect assumptions marketers are likely making by over-focusing their approach on demographics as opposed to understanding the behaviours of their target audiences.

Here are three Tweets you should check out this week:

1. Ross Simmonds' underrated marketing tip

2. Teens' current favourite platform

3. Snapchat leaning into participatory content

?? Thank You! ??

That's all for this week, I hope that you enjoyed it. If you found this valuable, I'd really appreciate it if you tagged someone who should read this in the comments.

I'll catch you next week. ???

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