Deemed dead by many people, text messaging is still very useful for promotional and marketing purposes. Here’s how to use it
Many consider them dead. Or at least outdated. The arrival of instant messaging platforms has, in fact, somewhat overshadowed (not to say replaced) SMS. The number of people using them has dropped dramatically compared to a decade ago and, despite the fact that there are hundreds of them available in the active rate plans of smartphones, no one (or almost no one) uses them anymore.
And yet, SMS still play a very important role in marketing. An increasing number of companies, in fact, use text messages to keep in touch with customers, communicate exclusive offers, ask for feedback on products or services used and so on. This is the so-called SMS marketing, a communication strategy that is increasingly in vogue and that allows you to maintain a direct line with your customers and strengthen it with targeted and unobtrusive advertising actions.
What is SMS Marketing
When we talk about marketing with SMS we refer to promotional and advertising campaigns carried out using cell phone text messages. This form of communication can be used both to acquire new customers and to retain customers already “acquired”. Cheap and easy to “consume”, SMS are a transversal and almost “universal” medium.
With SMS marketing it is possible to establish a direct and “confidential” relationship with the customer who will receive the message. Profiling the contacts you have available (even in broad terms: divide the database between men and women; between adults, minors and adults; between soccer, basketball and rugby fans and so on) it will be possible to send targeted messages to a type of customer, thus avoiding wasting resources unnecessarily.
SMS marketing can be used to communicate new offers or exclusive discounts; news about your business or to remind the customer of some particular deadline; promote events and offer assistance.
How to do SMS Marketing for your business
Like all other promotional activities, SMS Marketing needs to be structured and “timed”. It is not an impromptu activity, to be improvised on the spot. For example, it will be necessary to establish an editorial calendar, in which to foresee the type of communication to be sent and to whom to send them. In this way, you will have to study your users’ behaviors and preferences; understand when to contact them and when, instead, it is better not to disturb them. In short, a real promotional activity, for which it is necessary to invest in a “full-bodied” way.
In addition, it is necessary to have hundreds and hundreds (or thousands and thousands, depending on the size of the company or business) of contacts to send messages to. Without a full-bodied database, in fact, SMS marketing cannot work due to lack of “raw material”. In this case, Italiaonline’s Organization service can be your best ally: this platform allows you to collect and manage an infinite number of customer forms, with personal and personal details of all kinds.
Organization can be integrated within Sito, the IOL service to create web portals for professionals, SMEs and companies. All the information collected through the contact form, for example, will be used to enrich the database and allow you to have an increasing number of customers, or potential customers, to whom you can send text messages of your advertising and promotional campaigns.
Why choose SMS marketing
Unlike what you may think, SMS marketing is one of the most effective and efficient forms of communication available today. And it’s easy to understand why: among the various “contact” tools (such as, for example, email, paper mail, calls and social advertising), SMS enjoy the highest open and read rate. This means that every SMS sent to customers (or potential customers) will have a very high probability of being opened and read.
In addition, compared to instant messaging platforms, they provide several advantages. They are independent of the availability of Internet connection and are received even when the signal is poor and almost completely absent. In short, a tool that we could define ubiquitous and usable for various purposes. Provided, however, that you use the right platform to collect user data and launch properly “segmented” campaigns.