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Effective Ways You Can Integrate SMS Into Your Business
Many businesses are turning towards SMS marketing strategies in recent years. There is a very good reason behind this phenomenon that has a lot to do with insufficient emailing marketing efforts. As you’ll see further down the road, SMS marketing offers the most engaging form of communication on mobile devices. In addition to this, SMSs have an extremely high opening rate. Here are some effective ways you can integrate SMS into your business.
You Need a Database
If you are looking to integrate SMS into your marketing strategy, or as any aspect of your business, one of the first things you will need is a database. In other words, you will need an audience to send SMS messages to, an analog to what a mailing list is to email marketing strategies. There are many ways you can achieve this. The easiest way is to start a contest or a giveaway where it will be possible to enter through SMSs only.
This will ensure great interest among your users. Another way you can create a database is by leveraging your existing email newsletter to inform your readers that they can also receive SMS alerts. Be sure to always give your users an option to unsubscribe from these alerts for legal reasons that will protect you from liability.
Identify Goals
Before you set your sights on integrating an SMS marketing strategy into your business, you should gather your marketing team and have a long session. You should thoroughly identify what your goals and objectives for the upcoming campaign will be. Some of the most common SMS integration goals are to encourage users to give feedback or to increase average order value.
Without consulting your whole team, you can end up with an unsuccessful SMS campaign that will take months to correct. In addition to this, you can even do some damage and result in a decreased number of customers. This is why it’s essential to have clear goals in sight, and the proper personnel to consult, and to see the progress of your new campaign through.
Find the Right Strategy
In addition to identifying the goal of your SMS marketing, you and your team should work on finding the right strategy for it too. The right strategy is equally important in successfully integrating SMS marketing into your business. As well as the goals for integrating, there are also many different strategies for sending out SMSs.
One of the ways to do it is by using software such as SMS API to integrate and manage all the SMSs you send from your applications and software. This software has the option to automate all SMS alerts you want to send out, and it can also collect and sort API replies directly onto your software. Consider implementing this as a part of your strategy because it will make it easier for you to manage all the data.
Increase Outreach
If you’re looking for a quick way to integrate SMS into your business, you can consider specific ways to expand the reach of your current campaigns. One of the best ways to do so is by targeting and segmenting specific customer bases. Don’t just jump in with special offers and text-only promotions since there is a better way to increase the outreach.
The main reason why you can quickly see a spike in conversations through SMS channels is that they are much more likely to be opened than emails. In other words, text messages have a click-through rate that is twenty times bigger than other commonly used channels such as emailing.
Optimize Your Forms
One of the easiest ways you can integrate SMS into your business is by optimizing or improving your forms to include the information needed for the customers to give you their phone numbers. If your forms already have a “mobile number” field in your current forms, read no further. However, if you lack this option, be sure to rethink this strategy, as it can greatly improve the SMS integration into your business.
This will pave the way towards a better campaign and more interest in your products or services. Once the user has entered their mobile number, follow up with a confirmation, or if your business can allow it, you can even follow up with a surprise additional offer that is text-only.
Work Hard
Once you and your team have identified the goal and the strategy for integrating SMS into your business, now it’s time to work as hard as possible to see it through and to ensure the whole process doesn’t last a century. There are many actions to be covered, such as getting feedback and measuring the success of the SMS marketing campaign.
However, there are some tips and tricks to make this easier for you and your team. The SMS gateway you use usually has an option to show open rates, as well as the click-through rates. You can also add specialized landing page links or coupon codes to measure just how successful the integration of SMS into your business is.
Combine it With Other Resources
Before implementing any additional marketing strategies into your business campaigns, you should consider how much they can benefit you, but also what are the possible drawbacks. SMS campaigns are great because they offer an extremely wide range of use cases, ease of usage, and accessibility. This is why they provide a revolutionary middle-ground in business messaging.
However, there is a slight inconvenience with SMS marketing, which is its lack of versatility. This small but limiting factor can be a problem. However, you can correct it by combining an additional marketing strategy such as emailing to balance it out. Emailing makes up for the versatility that SMS lacks, and SMS makes up for the low open rate that emails have, making them a great tandem.
SMS marketing is, without a doubt, a great way to boost your business’s existing marketing strategy, thanks to the high opening rate of this type of message. Be sure to follow all the steps for the maximum result in your new campaign, and to remember to balance out any problems that may arise.
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