Is SMS text message marketing effective?

The overwhelming feeling is common when deciding on the channels best suited for your business and target audience. However, I’m sure we can all agree that more often than not our mobile will be the first thing that we reach for in the morning and the last thing we put down in the evening. A study has shown that during the day, on average we will check our phone 85 times and spend a total of five hours browsing the web, using apps and sending and receiving text messages!

With over 5 billion people owning a mobile phone it offers companies a perfect opportunity to have direct communication between their business and their customers. With a 98% open rate you can almost be certain that when you send your SMS message it will be read. A study has recently been carried out by the NHS surrounding the launch of their new app. It shows that 20% of patients who received an SMS promoting the NHS App clicked on the link to get more information. This highlights how effective SMS was and has helped the NHS to raise awareness surrounding their new app as well as sharing useful information with ease. Compare that to your last email campaign!

Serval different industries across the globe are using SMS successfully, whether they are targeting other businesses or customers, selling food or clothes, SMS has proven to be a great addition to their marketing strategy or customer service. FireText have put together lots of different examples for how your business can use SMS here.

The key thing to remember is that SMS is a very personal method of communicating, so injecting personality into your message will transform how your customers interact and respond. This can amplify the personal customer service. Let’s take a look at how a hotel can inform customers their room is ready:

“Hi Mr Jones, it’s Hannah from the reception of St Ives Manor. Your room is ready and we look forward to welcoming you later and I’m pleased to inform you we have blue skies over the hotel today. If you would like to book a meal on our hotel terrace, please do let me know. You can reply to this message or call me on: 01234 560000”

As well as the high open rate and wide reach, SMS is both time and cost-efficient, the act of putting a message together then sending it out to an individual or your entire customer base can take a matter of minutes. Once you’ve hit the send button, your message will be sent to the networks immediately and on average research shows that your message will then be read within the first 3 minutes of the user receiving your text, making it perfect for any time-bound campaigns that need that extra push.

Additionally, SMS is great to help boost interaction across other channels you may be running a campaign. You may recall my comment regarding email campaign open rates – SMS can help you here too. If you were sending out promotional codes to your customers via email you could send something short and sweet over text to help push the traffic to your email:

From: Fire Fashion
“Hey Alex, head over to your email to receive your exclusive Fire discount today! Limited offer only so be quick… Enjoy, from the Fire team”

With FireText's text marketing platform, you can pull a delivery report to see which customers received your message or if you include a URL you can track who clicked on it, at what time and on what device, you can also easily monitor and track all your replies. This gives your business the perfect opportunity to analyse the success and as you send out more campaigns you can simply compare your reports and decide what works best for your audience.

Get in touch with one of our SMS gurus today to discuss your plans, we are always on hand to help you with your campaigns

Data sources: Nottingham Trent University Mobile Study, GSMA, Gartner

This article was originally displayed on the FireText blog