SMS Marketing is one of the most effective yet underrated forms of direct-to-consumer marketing. It’s an efficient way to get offers and information to customers through a medium that will capture their attention, and campaigns often deliver a high ROI. SMS marketing benefits brands in many different ways. Here are five surprising advantages of SMS marketing that business owners should consider when planning their marketing strategy.
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1. Customers Want to Receive Offers Via Text
There is a common misconception that customers will be annoyed or off-put by receiving communications from brands via text. But in reality, they welcome it. A recent study found that 75% of people aged 44 and below enjoy communicating with businesses via text. Younger consumers understand SMS marketing benefits and appreciate personalized messages and offers being sent directly to their phones.
That being said, you need to make sure that your campaigns are engaging and offer real value to your customers. No one wants to be bombarded with spam that doesn’t contain any deals or information relevant to their lives. But if you send updates and exclusive offers that are concise and to the point, your customers will love it.
The benefits of SMS marketing are great because 85% of customers prefer a text message over a call or email. A text is a straightforward way to get in touch with a customer that isn’t intrusive to their lives.
Today, many people will send a phone call from a number they don’t recognize straight to voicemail, making it different to get your point across, even if you have a great deal to offer. Likewise, it’s easy for promotional emails to get sent straight to a spam folder before the customer can read what’s inside.
Customers are much more likely to open and read a text message – as long as it’s well written and to the point. They’re also far more likely to take action after receiving the notification.
Most consumers understand how SMS marketing benefits them in their daily lives. 64% of consumers actually think businesses should contact them via SMS more often. So, if you aren’t currently employing SMS in your marketing strategy, you’re missing out on a large demographic of people who are prime for deals and information.
2. SMS Has a Higher Open Rate and Click Through Rate Than Email
Another incredible SMS marketing benefit is that campaigns often feature an extremely high open and click through rate. The reasoning behind this is fairly simple to comprehend; most consumers monitor their text messages more closely than they do their email.
SMS marketing features an open rate of up to 98%, with only 1% of messages going to spam, while open rates for email are dwarfed in comparison at just 22%. This is a huge advantage of SMS marketing. Consumers are far more likely to read a text than they are an email.
Most of us are tethered to our phones 24/7, while we may only check our email for important work correspondences or personal messages. Promotions and other paid marketing material may be easily sent into a spam folder or quickly deleted without ever being opened. But, when you receive a text, most of us are primed to give it a quick scan to see whether or not it’s essential. This SMS marketing benefit means far more eyeballs come across text messages than emails.
But SMS marketing advantages don’t stop at open rates; they also feature a much higher clickthrough rate. Research shows that SMS marketing has a CTR of around 6.16%, compared to email marketing, with a CTR of just 2.8%. This statistic proves that customers aren’t just viewing the message and ignoring it; they’re taking the time to view the content more frequently than with email.
Source: Klaviyo
So, does that mean you should simply abandon your email marketing campaigns in favor of SMS? Absolutely not; they can be used side by side to generate more engagement and lead to superior results. Email marketing on its own can yield up to a 4400% ROI. Combining it with SMS marketing benefits creates a powerful synergy that will help you better reach your campaign goals. Whether you’re looking to offer a discount, send customers reminders, or encourage them to visit your website, pairing SMS and email marketing will allow you to reach customers where they prefer to communicate and offer twice the opportunity for discounts and promotions.
3. You Can Use SMS Marketing to Learn More About Your Customers
Another vital SMS marketing benefit is the ability to capture analytics to learn more about your customers. The more you can learn about your customers through analytics, the better their overall experience with your brand will be. Proper data capture leads to faster, more confident decision-making, more significant insights, greater engagement, increased sales, and more repeat business. One of the primary SMS marketing benefits is having a direct line of communication with your customers, which can help you learn more about them.
SMS marketing offers an excellent opportunity for personalized messages. Personalization could be as simple as including their name in the text or tracking their favorite purchases and sending discounts and coupons on select items for being loyal customers. The vast majority of marketers agree that personalized messages significantly impact the customer experience because modern consumers want to be shown content relevant to them — not mass campaigns that don’t offer them individual value.
Source: Klaviyo
Luckily, one of the leading SMS marketing advantages is capturing data and using it to offer a more personalized experience. 31% of consumers respond to a survey via SMS and typically respond within 5 minutes. Surveys can be a powerful tool because they allow businesses to gain critical insights straight from the horse’s mouth and use the data to create a better overall customer experience.
The results speak for themselves, and interactive content like surveys and personalized SMS messaging generates conversions 70% of the time. So rather than pouring all of your precious advertising dollars into stale campaigns that may or may not be relevant to your customers, experiment with SMS marketing and interactive content to boost engagement.
The SMS marketing benefits are most evident when targeting younger generations. Companies can increase engagement from 11% to 30% with text campaigns geared toward millennials. Younger generations especially are moving away from traditional media and embracing new technologies. If you’re looking to tap into this key marketing demographic, you need to meet them where they are and take advantage of all the SMS marketing benefits afforded to businesses through this direct-to-consumer model.
4. SMS Marketing Allows You to Reach More Customers Worldwide
SMS marketing benefits customers all over the world. While not everyone uses email regularly or actively participates in social media, most adults own a text-enabled cell phone. Five billion people across the globe own a mobile device, and about half of them are smartphones. Out of those 5 billion, 97% of Americans have a text-enabled phone, and 85% are smartphones. That gives businesses everywhere the potential to tap into this massively expanding market and reach new customers through a channel they already use every day.
This SMS marketing advantage allows marketers to reach a larger demographic that may not actively respond to other channels like email or social media. Statistics show that 60% of consumers read texts within 1-5 minutes. This SMS marketing benefit can be significant for time-sensitive campaigns. For instance, if you are offering a sale that only lasts 24 hours, it may be over by the time a customer sees an email or scrolls across a post on their Instagram feed. But if you send an offer through SMS, you have a much higher statistical probability that the customer will read the text and take action in time to benefit from the promotion. Speed and efficiency are among the main SMS marketing advantages, which can be essential for campaigns that require a quick response.
Plus, SMS marketing benefits those who may be flooded with emails and don’t have time to sift through every one. 40% of consumers have at least 50 unread emails, but only 4% have more than 50 unread texts. People tend to use email more frequently for work and more official communications that may feel like a chore, whereas texts are more commonly used for personal communications with friends and family.
The oversaturation of the email marketing landscape may also mean that a customer’s inbox is flooded with offers that they may or may not want. In contrast, SMS marketing is still a
developing field. As a result, customers are more likely to delay reading their email or skip over messages they don’t view as necessary. In contrast, they are far more likely to look at a text and decide whether the information benefits them.
Instant communication is one of the SMS marketing benefits that can’t be overstated and allows businesses to communicate with a broader audience faster than other forms of digital marketing.
5. Most Companies are Not Using SMS Marketing
Despite all the evidence of SMS marketing advantages, most companies are not using text as a part of their regular strategy. The global SMS marketing industry is projected to grow by 20.40% by 2028, offering ample opportunity for those companies looking to enjoy all the potential SMS marketing benefits. But, despite this astonishing growth, only about 39% of businesses engage in SMS marketing. This means that more than 61% of companies are missing out on crucial SMS marketing advantages, including faster communication, greater engagement, and the ability to gather more data about your customers.
While the benefits of SMS marketing may not appeal to every business, the majority will gain some boost or improvement from utilizing text messaging as part of their overall digital marketing strategy. Email marketing, social media ads, and SEO are here to stay, and businesses shouldn’t just abandon these other strategies in favor of an SMS campaign. SMS marketing benefits many of these different techniques and can be used to boost engagement across a variety of channels.
For instance, you could use a text campaign to boost your email list or offer personalized discounts for following your brand on social media. SMS marketing advantages are endless, and companies not currently using the technique as part of their overall marketing strategy would be wise to consider this emerging trend.
SMS marketing benefits the speed and efficiency of a campaign, and it’s also relatively cost-effective compared to other similar advertising channels such as Facebook Ads. So, it has the potential to help you reach more customers and create more engagement without increasing your current advertising budget. If you ignore SMS marketing, you may be leaving money on the table.
You don’t need to miss out on the benefits of SMS marketing if you’re not sure how to create and launch a campaign successfully. If you need advice to create an effective SMS marketing campaign or need help pairing this strategy with other digital marketing methods, we can help. At Coalition Technologies, we help businesses across various industries optimize their digital marketing strategies to reach more customers and see a higher ROI. Get in touch today if you need help with an SMS campaign or want to chat about your overall digital marketing strategy.
