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How to Optimize Conversion Rate with SMS Marketing as an eCommerce Marketer?
One of the overlooked and underused mobile marketing tactics is the text message marketing, also known as SMS marketing. It is not being used much these days. Yet, SMS marketing has a huge untapped potential, which, if used properly, can serve as an excellent tool for improvement.
Having and maintaining an eCommerce store is not an easy task these days, even with numerous online websites that help you improve your conversion rates, your website structure, and analyzing your entire data. Even with all of those tools at hand, many smaller eCommerce stores are struggling to keep up with the industry giants that have cemented themselves as the go-to websites for everyone with any type of need.
Because of this, many smaller and less known e-commerce stores have to strategize and carefully consider their marketing tactics that will propel their business and increase their website conversion rates. There are currently lots of available options for marketing your website, both old school means, as well as fresh new online/mobile marketing tactics.
The Importance of Improving Your Conversion Rates
First of all, in order to understand the importance of improving your website’s conversion rate, you have to understand what is the conversion rate and what constitutes it. The conversion rate is defined as the percentage of visitors that land on your website who complete the desired action. This means that you will need to know your goal to define conversions that align with your business goals more accurately.
The most viable and measurable success that can also be seen as a conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who purchased something from your online store (in a set period of time). However, this is not the only metric that you shall use to measure the success of your online store. Below are some conversions for an eCommerce store:
- An online sale
- A user adding a product to their cart
- A user adding an item to their wish list
- Email signups
- Social media shares
- Text message marketing open and click rates
- Any KPI your company finds valuable
It should be already clear by this point that by improving any of the points mentioned above, your eCommerce store will gain more following, thus increasing your sales. On average, the eCommerce conversion rates are 1% – 2%, according to Bigcommerce.
Even when you are doing everything right, a 2%+ conversion rate should be the baseline goal for your eCommerce store. Also note that conversion rate optimization (CRO) can be conducted on landing pages, category pages, or any other customer touchpoint.
How Big is SMS Marketing?
Active mobile phone usage increasingly becomes the standard amongst the vast majority of the consumers. According to GSMA real-time intelligence data, there are now over 5.15 Billion people with mobile devices worldwide. This means that 66.60% of the world’s population has a mobile device (cell phone, tablet or cellular-enabled IoT devices.)
According to Techjury, SMS messages have a 209% higher response rate than phones, email, or Facebook messages. Statistics also show that 30% of consumers interact with brands via text messages, and 95 to 98% of consumers read their texts almost immediately after they receive it. If your target demographic consists of Millennials or Gen Z, you will have a much easier time reaching them via text messages thus driving more leads for your brand.
Texts also allow companies to meet their customers where they spend their time – on their mobile devices. This explains the fact that the average time that an adult spends on their mobile device is 3 hours and 23 minutes per day. It should be clear at this point that if you want to reach customers on their preferred devices, you need to focus your marketing efforts on mobile and SMS marketing means.
The Importance of SMS Marketing in Every Stage of The Sales Funnel
The concept of a “sales funnel” is the visual representation of the sales process from initial contact to final sale. It uses the metaphor of a leaky funnel, into which a seller can “drop” sales opportunities. There are four depicted stages of the sales funnel, which are:
- Awareness – At this stage, your main focus should be on improving the visibility of your website and driving more leads. You must work on lead generation anyway since it is one of the most efficient tools to increase your website traffic. After all, it also increases the likelihood of having higher conversion rates.
- Interest and Evaluation – Once you have managed to attract the lead’s attention, they enter this second stage. In this stage, customers are interested to know more about your business but are still not prepared to make a purchase.
- Desire – At this point, all of your leads and customers are considered as prospects. You have their attention and they are considering making a purchase from your store. However, they are still going to be weighing in their other options, budget and expectations.
- Action – After properly attracting and nurturing your lead, you are ready to seal the deal and convert your prospect. At this stage, you just have to make sure that your customers complete the transaction and are left gratified and pleased with your provided services and products.
SMS marketing can assist your business in successfully gaining new leads and converting them into customers who will be willing to make purchases from your website.
First of all, you can use text messages to increase your website’s traffic and attract new leads. By sending your potential customers shortened links to your website, you can make sure that they gain interest in your website and take the action of clicking through.
By minimizing the effort required to take the desired action, you have more chances of converting new leads. Don’t expect customers to look for your website or the sales and promotions that you have. Hand it to them on a silver platter.
To convert the leads into customers, you have to send them useful and relevant messages after they have been informed about your website. Besides, those messages have to arrive at the right time. Be sure to time your messages carefully and only send content that can help you make the most out of the SMS format.
For example, you can send your leads: deals and promo codes, retargeting triggers and reminders, important information about your brand. These types of messages will inform your leads about the benefits of your company, thus attracting their attention, and they can also generate desire and credibility for your store.
For the last stage of the sales funnel, SMS marketing can prove as a useful tool for confirming a committed purchase and receiving feedback from your customers about your services and products. By confirming purchases, you will make sure that your customers will feel at ease once they know for sure that their transaction is completed on both ends. And prompting them to give you feedback or positive rating will only benefit your business.
When it comes to sending text messages to thousands, potentially millions of customers, smart automation is an option to consider. An advanced SMS marketing platform will allow you to send eye-catching personalized messages in large numbers.
Also, never forget to measure your conversion rates and other KPI that are important for your business. These can be important for measuring the success rate of your business and optimizing it accordingly for further improvements.
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