In today’s fast-paced business world, every company is looking for ways to stay ahead of the competition and maximize their ROI. One powerful tool that B2B marketers often overlook is SMS marketing. With its high open rates and instant communication, SMS can help you reach your target audience quickly and effectively, while also generating new leads and building stronger relationships with your existing customers.
From simply calling and texting, mobile phones have evolved into something more, a lot more! Apart from these two tasks, today’s smartphones have impacted nearly every aspect of our life, from work to gaming, taking exceptional quality photos and videos, internet browsing, and nearly anything else. As such, businesses are developing ways to adapt to these changes in consumer behavior, one of which is SMS marketing.
SMS Marketing Explained
SMS marketing is simple and easy to use, but it can be a powerful tool for your business—but what is SMS Marketing? SMS stands for “short message service,” a text-based service allowing users to send and receive information via mobile phones. The main advantage of SMS is that it is ubiquitous – nearly everyone has a phone with SMS capabilities. This eliminates worries about compatibility issues and whether customers will receive your messages.
You can create an SMS-enabled website that visitors can use to subscribe for text alerts about your products and services. Once you have a subscriber base, you can send messages one-to-one or bulk to a large group of people. Either way, you can receive and deliver messages instantly, making them a great way to reach your audience quickly and easily.
4 Benefits of SMS Marketing Campaigns for B2B Campaigns
Increased Engagement
SMS marketing is more personal than email because you can send real-time updates relevant to the customer. With SMS marketing, you will be able to share timely information like special offers or discounts using push notifications on the customer’s mobile phone.
This can increase customer engagement because you are letting them know about things that are relevant to them. For instance, if they are in the market for new tires, you can send them an offer for tires when they walk into a store or drive by one of your locations. You could also send a discount code when they are about to make an online purchase but have not decided what product they want.
Higher Open Rate
An SMS message is delivered directly to your customer’s phone and read within seconds — much faster than email or social media posts, which recipients often ignore due to lack of time or interest. As such, SMS marketing campaigns can increase your open rate.
One study has shown that SMS marketing gives a 98% open rate. This means recipients read SMS messages 98% when received, overwhelming the email marketing open rate of only 22%. As such, you can get more people to read and act on your messages instead of getting lost in their inboxes. This may be more effective if they recognize the text as a trusted business SMS.
Lower Costs
Again, these SMS messages are more likely to be opened than an email or social media post as these are sent directly to mobile devices, making them easier to read. Moreover, boosting your engagement with prospects and customers translates to lower cost-per-click.
On top of this, sending messages directly to a customer’s phone gives you more control over your message delivery than using another type of digital communication like email or social media posts. You can also send multiple messages without worrying about duplicate content issues as you would with email newsletters or blog posts.
With the right message and targeted audience, you can get a higher return on your investment in SMS marketing.
Ability to Integrate with Other Channels
Suppose you want to increase engagement in other channels, like email or social media campaigns. Your SMS marketing strategies will be handy because you can integrate SMS messages into your other channels. Doing so allows your customers to automatically get the same message across multiple platforms at once or in sequence over time.
Connect with Your Customers Better
SMS is synonymous with mobile marketing today. With the number of emails that people receive daily, marketers are now looking for other ways to reach out to their audiences.
SMS marketing may be the answer, allowing you to send messages directly to your subscribers. You can follow up on leads that otherwise you would have likely missed due to a lack of response at the first instance of contact.
However, SMS marketing should not be a one-size-fits-all solution. You will need to customize your message to engage your target audience. Static, boring SMS messages will go unnoticed or unread. So, if you plan to use this marketing tactic, make sure you put a little thought into your approach.
