SMS Marketing 301

Before starting, it’s important to call out some statistics that were stated in SMS Marketing 101:

You may find this hard to believe but:

75% of consumers are comfortable receiving SMS messages from brands as long as they opt-in to messaging. (Marketing Profs)

SMS messages have a 98% open rate compared to the 20% open rate of emails. (SMS Comparison) 

SMS messages have an average click-through rate of 36%, while email click-through-rates are a dismal 3.4%(DSIM)

75% of consumers are comfortable with SMS marketing. And, if they do opt-in, consumers will open 98% of what you send and 36% will click through to your site. Need I say more?

SMS Marketing is a powerful tool in your marketing toolbox, so let’s double down on SMS marketing and cover additional strategies that will help you grow your Shopify. 

Add To Contacts Card:

The introduction of SMS marketing has had a lot of impact on how mobile operating systems have approached their SMS software. Companies like Apple have now created separate folders for “known” and “unknown” senders. Additionally, they have incorporated the ability to stop notifications from unknown senders, drastically reducing the effectiveness of your SMS marketing campaigns. 

So what can you do about it? 

Encourage your subscribers to save your brand's contact card and decrease the chances your customers will be considered an unknown sender, which improves your overall deliverability. Most softwares will provide you with the ability to include a link that users simply have to click to “Add to Contacts”, making it extremely easy. 

Reducing Cost:

Brevity is your friend when it comes to SMS Marketing. Most SMS marketing softwares have pricing models that are based on the number of characters sent. Meaning, you need to keep your message short but compelling to reduce your costs. 

 

Rule of thumb - try and stay below 160 characters if possible. This can be difficult but gets easier with practice. Try and stay straight to the point and focus on your clear call to action. If you are going to include a link, shorten it with a tool like bitly.  

Also, there are great and convenient tools like the one below that will allow you to test out how many characters are in your message: https://messente.com/documentation/tools/sms-length-calculator 

Additionally, MMS (multimedia messaging service), can provide the opportunity to increase your communication. Although it is more costly to include images in your messages, an image can likely communicate more than you can in 160 characters. If you are struggling trying to get your full message across, consider spending a bit more for MMS. 

Subscription Management: 

Do you have subscription products on your Shopify store? If so, SMS can provide huge benefits to subscription customers. Requiring customers to visit your site, log into their account, visit their customer dashboard and make adjustments is quite a process. Conversely, providing customers with the opportunity to manage their account via SMS allows them to easily dictate the frequency of their shipments with a simple reply.

How could this work? One way is to message customers before their shipment goes out each month. Then they can easily reply “Yes” to receive the shipment, or “Skip” to skip that month’s shipment. Many subscription and SMS platforms have this functionality already built in, requiring no input from you as the seller. 

 

Note - Struggling with getting customers to sign up for your subscription products? Allowing customers to manage their subscriptions via SMS is a great way to sell the service. 

Encourage Interaction: 

Lastly, encourage your customers to interact with your brand! This can include things such as

• customer service
• customer surveys
• events
• product launches
• exclusive access to discounts

The idea here is not to have a one way communication, but to encourage customers to provide feedback to you via SMS. 

Again, most SMS marketing softwares have functionality that can make this interaction goal easier. You can include auto-responders for certain types of messages, or you can have customer service representatives respond to each user individually. 

SMS marketing and the options provided via many of these softwares present powerful ways to reach new and existing customers. Utilize these strategies to grow customer engagement, grow customer service, grow customer loyalty, and grow your Shopify. 

Now go and grow. 

J