A 1-2-3 SMS Marketing Guide

Marketing through SMS may seem a bit newfangled at first, and it can be hard to know where to start. It’s not as hard as it looks, though—we promise! To get you started with SMS advertising, we’ve put together a 3-step process to help you engage your clients through SMS marketing. 

While thinking through your campaign, remember this 3-step cycle: offer, build and deliver. The SMS marketing cycle involves inviting people to engage your business via SMS, having a system in place to record and organise the information volunteered by subscribers, and then delivering value via SMS to this qualified list of subscribers in order to build a relationship with them.

1) Offer a benefit that your best customers value in the product or service you are promoting. Make a big promise. Then work really hard to deliver even more value. Next, find a medium to publicise your offer. Big companies often use advertising, such as radio and billboards. No matter what your size, however, perhaps the best place to offer an SMS benefit is on signage within your store, often by the register. Also, flyers, Facebook ads, and other online marketing efforts can also be effective. 

So far, SMS marketing seems very familiar, but it is about to take a turn for the non-traditional. This is because SMS marketing is a form of “permission-based” direct marketing. Permission-based means you broadcast to people who have opted-in to receive the information. Direct marketing means you know the results of each of your messages. With SMS, you can run through this 3-step-cycle multiple times a day, while most other forms of marketing take weeks or months.

2) Build your list. This is the technical, behind-the-scenes part. Customers don’t see your list, but you do. The list is where your company realises most of its value from SMS marketing, which is why it is so important to do this right.  ReachTEL can help!

A campaign list is simply all the names of people who have opted in to your campaign. Your list is an ongoing asset that actually grows in value the more you use it (and not abuse it). Once you set up a broadcast system with us and integrate it with your CRM, list building becomes automatic. You simply keep promising and keep delivering, and your list grows.

The power of having this list is that existing customers are 10 times more likely to buy from you than those who have just heard of you. That makes sense when you realize that a list enables you to send messages only to people who actively requested that information.

This means time and money are better spent. Additionally, a qualified list (one you built on your own, vs. purchasing from another source) represents the people who are most willing to campaign FOR YOU, for FREE. A list, therefore, is a valuable asset that you can’t build with advertising alone.

3) Finally, deliver on your promise, and then some. Don’t forget to send a personalized thank you. Throw in an unexpected freebie. Give them exactly what they bargained for, and be sure to monitor the results.

The benefits of SMS marketing can be immense. Response rates are usually between 10-30%, compared with 1-3% for most advertising, and the cost of sending each message is less than two cents. Once set up, this simple process can occur within just a few hours using SMS marketing. It can be so easy it almost feels like cheating. 

We understand, however, that the biggest barrier is getting started. That is why we have dedicated customer support and developers ready to get your SMS marketing campaign up and running with an easy-to-use system that works for your specific needs. Live support is available at our site.