When it comes to SMS marketing, there are two things that set it apart from other methods: reach and engagement. These two factors make text-based marketing extremely powerful. However, many people don’t understand how to maximize these factors to get better conversions and a bigger ROI overall. Let’s go over some of the methods you can use to increase the reach and engagement of your SMS marketing campaigns.
1. Using an SMS Platform
An online SMS service, also known as an SMS platform, is a collection of tools that help you to improve your SMS campaigns in a variety of ways. Most notably, they make it easy to send out text broadcasts that will reach a large number of people all at once. This is helpful because it can give you a significant boost in your total number of conversions through sheer volume alone. If you’re struggling for revenue, this can be a great way to fund your marketing campaigns while you work on optimizing them and your sales funnel.
In regards to engagement, SMS platforms allow you to send messages on the spur of the moment or plan out entire text message campaigns that can last for weeks or even months. The great thing about this feature is it allows you to send your messages when you are likely to get the highest rate of engagement. For example, let’s say that you run a candy shop and you know that sales pick up around certain holidays such as Valentine’s Day and Easter. You can create text campaigns that will run automatically during those time frames allowing you to increase engagement and make more money.
2. Segmenting Your Audience for Higher Engagement
Another strategy that you can use to turbo-charge your engagement is to segment your subscriber list. This will ensure that your subs are receiving text promotions that are more personalized and targeted to their needs. An example of this will be segmenting your audience between Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, and PC if you sell video games. This way your subs will get offers for the system they use to play their games on and won’t be bombarded with offers that are irrelevant to them.
Achieving higher engagement through segmentation also has another benefit: improving your relationship with your subs. This is because texts that are more personalized will increase the trust and credibility of your brand. In fact, this is one of the best ways to build your brand through digital marketing that you’ll find anywhere. Just remember to find that sweet spot when it comes to frequency. If you message them too often, they could get annoyed and unsub. But, if you message them too infrequently, they may lose interest and stop checking your texts.
3. Surprise Offers and Deals
Speaking of keeping your audience’s interest, you’ll want to hit them with surprise deals and offers that give them something for nothing. This could be a small discount, a buy-one-get-one-free promotion, or something of that nature. The purpose of this isn’t just to drive sales and push people further into your sales funnel but also to make them realize that if they aren’t checking your texts, they could miss out on something amazing. This fear of loss tactic is as old as the human race itself and is a very powerful psychological motivator in the world of marketing.
Once again, these deals should be used in moderation. If you overdo it, then it loses the surprise effect. However, if you don’t do these kinds of surprises often enough, people will give up and begin ignoring your texts. That said, SMS platforms allow you to track data, so finding the correct frequency for your target audience should be easy as long as you’re keeping track of what they respond to and when.
Getting Started with SMS Marketing
As you can see, increasing your reach and engagement is much easier when you’re using an SMS platform that is built to do exactly that. These services are easy-to-use, cost-effective, and tie your entire SMS marking campaign together on one easy-to-use platform. If you’re looking to make a smart investment into your business, then using an SMS platform is one of the best ideas you’ll find.