How Marketing Strategies Have Evolved to SMS
When we talk about traditional marketing strategies, how far back are we thinking? From as early as 1420 businesses were printing logos and sending them out to raise awareness of their brands or services but this clearly was not environmentally friendly. The 1930s gave rise to TV and radio ads but that has now been superseded with modern technology e.g. social media. The 90’s saw the start of email marketing flying out to thousands of potential consumers but it very quickly became saturated and somewhat spammy. Then, around 2003 5 and 6 digit shortcodes were created and we saw the rise of SMS Marketing to what it is today!
Where Marketing is Heading?
You may think of SMS marketing or text message marketing as the new kid on the block. Well actually, that’s not quite right. SMS stands for short message service and on the 3rd December 1992, the first-ever SMS message was sent from a PC to a mobile device using the Vodaphone network by a man called Matti Makonen. The concept couldn’t really be used to create an SMS marketing campaign at that time as so few people owned a mobile phone and smartphones were a much later arrival. Now, it’s estimated that around 96% of people aged 16-24 years and 76% aged 55 and over own a mobile phone, so most of the population is within reach of the SMS marketeer. As the average person looks at their mobile phones every 4 minutes, there is a captive audience too. The current open rate for SMS messages is 97%, which is 4 times more successful than the open rate of an email.
In general, the SMS marketing message spend has grown in the last decade by 28015%. In its infancy, it may not have seen the same level of success as we are seeing now for two reasons:
- Text messages were not as popular as they are today
- There were originally some issues with privacy laws and many companies were spamming recipients and mishandling their data.
With the enforcement of the Data Protection Act and the introduction of GDPR and PECR, SMS marketing is much better regulated and as a result, more trustworthy and reliable. There would often be an issue with spamming which is off-putting to potential customers and irrelevant. More recently, it not only regained its popularity but exceeded it.
What’s behind this exponential growth spurt in SMS marketing strategies?
- It’s fast and can directly reach your target audience in seconds – leaving traditional marketing efforts standing.
- It’s the most cost-efficient method of marketing you will find.
- Customers are driving companies toward SMS marketing because they actually prefer it to any other mode of communication.
- It’s trackable so companies can actually measure the rate of engagement within a few minutes.
- There can be two-way communication, meaning that with clever additions to the format, recipients will actually be able to reply or click through to links to your website or contact form.
- SMS marketing messages can be personalised, so businesses can use the recipient’s name or include dates and times.
- There are no limits to how many people you can send it out to. With Bulk SMS marketing, you can send messages out to hundreds and thousands of people, anywhere in the world, and across any network.
- To optimise the customer experience, all the subscribers should have consented to an opt in option. All professional businesses offer an opt out option on every marketing text message. For example, to stop receiving these text messages, reply with “STOP” at any time.
- To optimise your schedule, you can use automated messages via an SMS automation service.
How Text Anywhere can get you started on with our advanced SMS marketing tools
At TextAnywhere, we believe that SMS marketing campaigns can help your company to grow, whilst enabling you to handle an influx of new business. As a company, we have also grown in what we can offer to our customers, including the latest innovations in SMS marketing. With our company you can benefit from:
- Advance secure technology
- Access to a free account manager
- No contracts
- Outstanding free support
- Exceptional value
- Simple powerful API
Our customers come in all different shapes and sizes and work in a variety of different industries such as:
- Retail
- Leisure
- Local government
- Insurance
- Schools
- Travel
- Recruitment
Why are SMS marketing and business text communications are so versatile?
We tend to think of SMS marketing as just marketing. However, using an SMS channel for business is beneficial not only for communicating to drive sales but also for internal communication with staff and as a way to enhance your customer experience. Our specialist SMS marketing platform can enable you to use texts to enhance your current business, reach more people and make the most of your audience interaction, whoever you are trying to reach. SMS marketing is simply the best tool for:
- Flash Sales – along with offers and exclusive deals to your customer’s phones.
- Competitions – encourage interaction with your recipient by engaging them with the chance to win. You can also provide updates as you go along.
- Nurturing leads – has someone been looking at your website, or, have they left something unpurchased in their basket? Remind them to check-out or that stock is limited, or even send them a discount voucher to encourage the sale.
- News and alerts – keep customers, employees, and subscribers up-to-date with the latest information. Let them become a part of your story or simply get information to them instantly.
- Booking confirmations, tickets, and reminders – let your customers know that you have received their bookings and set reminders to avoid costly no-shows and streamline your admission process when your customers arrive. Save on paper waste from printed tickets.
- Important updates – if you experience a sudden change or receive important information that needs to be communicated quickly, SMS messages are the fastest way to let everybody know. For example, school closures, event cancellations, or a business restructure.
- Appointment scheduling – appointments sent straight to a mobile phone are a handy record and can even be synchronised with a digital calendar. For example, this function is invaluable to the healthcare sector, the hair and beauty industry, solicitors, and schools. It can reduce the occurrence of no-shows and allow for last-minute rescheduling to avoid wasting appointment slots.
- Employee management – rotas, shift changes, and meetings can all be managed via SMS business messaging to ensure that all employees are up to date and improve the work schedule. Changes and updates are instant and far-reaching, so everyone should be kept in the loop to avoid staffing issues.
How TextAnywhere are helping our customers to grow SMS marketing
Since we began providing SMS gateways to businesses, we have watched our customers grow with the use of our own product. You can take a look at our case studies to see for yourself, the amazing journeys our customers have been on, since adopting an SMS messaging platform from TextAnywhere.
Water Babies
From what started as a husband and wife team in 2002 teaching their own children to swim, Paul and Jess Thompson were able to grow their business at a phenomenal rate by creating a franchise with our help. The business is now international and teaches over 30,000 children. They are able to use SMS mobile messaging to communicate important information to their clients instantly and also use it internally to schedule and communicate with staff.
Working with other franchise owners, an important requirement of the SMS business message platform, is that it’s simple and easy to use. Thankfully, our system makes it really easy to train other users within your business to use with their personal client base. Here’s what Paul and Jess had to say about us:
“Water Babies confirmed that the TextAnywhere system is so easy to work with existing users only need to spend around 10 to 15 minutes training each new franchise contact, which in turn saves the head office a significant amount of down time”
Water Babies – Head Office
Fife Council
Fife council chose TextAnywhere as their SMS provider on the basis that we out-performed other providers when they rated our features. They were looking for a very simple and easy-to-use platform. As a local council, value for money was vitally important. Following the success of SMS, they further invested in it for the purpose of matching supply teachers for its schools with vacancies. One of the most welcome features was the use of a dedicated phone line to alert parents and carers on multi-facility closures quickly. The way they described our service was “on time, on spec, and on budget”. Thanks to our SMS business messaging system, Fife council went on to win two prestigious council awards.
Ocado
We were tasked with helping one of the UK’s leading supermarkets to communicate with their customers effectively on deliveries. Ocado also needed to use the SMS platform to communicate with their staff to keep operations running smoothly. Using our product has enabled Ocado to be unrivalled in their customer liaison, they have an outstanding level of client satisfaction. Keeping customers up-to-date in this way has helped them to maintain brand loyalty.
Our SMS business messages have also helped them to increase staff efficiency by sending out text messages in bulk to staff regarding shift swaps, overtime, and holidays. This has freed up time for resource planners and the staff much prefer to manage their work in this way as it’s quick and easy.
How to get started with SMS marketing messages:
The most important thing you need to do to experience the benefits of SMS marketing is to choose the right provider and we are ready for when you are. The rest is just as easy:
Step 1: Set up your account with TextAnywhere and discover our free trial.
Step 2: Build your database to include all the people you want to reach from your website or create a campaign to encourage new subscribers to give you their details.
Step 3: Start creating your content and hit the send button – it really is that simple!
Discover how SMS marketing can work for you?
So why wait any longer to experience the exceptional benefits SMS can bring to your business? As you can see, SMS is currently leading the way in marketing and business communications and producing the best results for many different types of business. SMS business messaging has a sustainable future and could substantially reduce your advertising costs.