Text My Customers – 3 Ways to Get More from Your Advertising

What is SMS Marketing

SMS (short message service) marketing, also known as text marketing, is the ability to send marketing or other short messages to your customers through a text message. Any sms marketing campaign is strictly an opt-in service, meaning every person has to give explicit permission for you to text them before you can send them any message via text. The easiest way to obtain this permission is to have them text a keyword to your text number. This can be done by advertising “Text Church to Your Number (877-989-8180, for example) for a daily Bible quote”. This simple message tells the subscriber what to do and what they will receive. Many businesses will use a coupon, discount, or free item to entice the user to opt-in. When the individual sends this first message the sms marketing system will collect their phone number and add it to your contact database so that you can send them other messages in the future.

3 Tips for SMS Marketing Success

The fact that sms marketing is permission based means the contacts list you build is a very rich medium for successful marketing, these people have made the effort to specifically request messages from your business or organization. You do have to keep in mind that they can request to stop receiving your messages just as easy as requesting them.

1. The best tip for sms marketing success is to make sure your messages have real value. That doesn’t mean you have to give away something free every time; put some thought into what your contact list will find valuable. Maybe you’ll be sending notices about schedule changes or appointment reminders, or maybe you have a weekly special or monthly highlighted product. As long as your messages are sent at an acceptable time of day and are not too frequent that they become bothersome, your clients will be happy to receive your messages.
2. The second sms marketing tip is to be flexible, adapt your campaign as necessary to fit your audience. Request feedback on what your clients like or don’t like and what they would like to see you do, then make use of the suggestions and find ways to turn their ideas into money-making opportunities. Just keeping them engaged in your business and invested in your brand name is going to help your bottom line.
3. Our third sms marketing tip is to link your text message campaign with your other social media efforts. Here again you are keeping your customers engaged in your business. Each medium can be used to drive traffic to the others; you can use a Facebook or a Twitter post to invite followers to text your keyword and be added to your text list or use your text message to invite clients to follow your social media account or join your live event. One option would be to have a giveaway; clients enter by texting in a keyword.

Integrate SMS Marketing with all Other Advertising

You will get more from all of your advertising if you integrate text marketing into it. Take a look at all the different marketing strategies you currently use, perhaps you do newspaper or other printed ads, marquee advertising, business cards, in-store ads, etc. Wherever you currently talk about your business add the “text keyword to text number” verbiage to keep people engaged with your business and to give them an immediate call to action. If they do something now and get a reward now, a text with a coupon, etc., they are already investing their interest in what you have to say.
Following these few simple sms marketing tips can help you get more from your advertising by texting your customers. Sms marketing is easy to use, it is very affordable, and most importantly, it is very effective. So much of printed advertising is wasted but if you can use your printed ads to drive more traffic to your text campaign you will be getting a lot more bang for your buck!

Originally Posted on: September 8, 2021

Posted in: Text Marketing Tips
Tags: 3 ways to use sms, best sms marketing, text my customers