How to Make Use of Automated Text Message Marketing

Chances are you know the value of good marketing. Marketing turns a slow day into a busy one. Marketing gives your brand and your business a reputation, good, bad, or otherwise. Communicate with loyal customers, potential customers, and your community.

To add value to your business through marketing, develop an effective marketing strategy. During the process of developing your marketing strategy, you’ll:

• Determine your objectives.
• Evaluate your industry, your competition, and your audience.
• Set SMART goals and quantifiable targets.
• Formulate plans within each part of your company to reach your goals.
• Analyze your performance and identify strengths and weaknesses.
• Choose the type of steps you’ll take to achieve your goals.

Choose the right marketing channel

Strategize your business’ marketing approach. Consider and choose the right channels for delivering your marketing messages and communicating with your audience. To choose the right marketing channel that fits your marketing objectives, ask yourself a few questions:

• Objectives: Does this channel reach the right audience?
• Audience: Who are they? What are they like? How do they want to communicate?
• Budget: How much will it cost? What’s your budget? Is the ROI worth the effort?
• Timeframe: When to begin? When to end?
• Analytics: How will you measure success? What’s your benchmark?

Not all marketing channels reach the same crowd. Each one caters to specific demographics. Some are more effective at achieving certain goals than others. Some offer a scattershot approach, while others are targeted (i.e. SMS messaging). Some are expensive and complicated while others are inexpensive and easy to use. Text message marketing is the latter.

The available marketing channels allow you to evaluate what works best. Marketing strategists find particular success with text message marketing or SMS marketing.

Why? There are several key benefits to automated text message marketing.

5 benefits of using automated text message marketing

1. Real-time visibility

Marketing increases the amount of space your business takes up in your customers’ minds, particularly when they need a product like yours. When a text is sent, it’s received almost instantly. Meaning when you text a customer, your brand is immediately brought to their attention.

If timed correctly, real-time visibility leads to real-time traffic increase and a quantifiable increase in sales. Text message marketing is one of the few marketing channels that reaches customers immediately, regardless of where they are and what they’re doing.

With automated text messages, schedule texts in advance. Timing is everything in a text message. Plan the perfect message sent at the right moment to boost your marketing efforts.

2. High open-rate

You want people to read the marketing communications you send via text. Almost 100% of text messages are opened. Of the opened messages, they’re read within 15 minutes of being received. Even more surprisingly, most are opened and read within the first three minutes of being received. Why are text messages so successful?

For starters, the majority of text messages are received on a smartphone that customers carry most of the time. Text messages are direct. So, pertinent information gets directly to customers effortlessly. Text messages are limited by character count, so it’s easy to read and reply to them quickly.

When you send automated text messages to your customers, integrate with other apps to direct your customers to: websites, RSVP forms, surveys, registrations, and videos. With little effort, improve your website traffic, conversions, and sales.

3. Consent-based text messaging

In order to have a text message marketing campaign, you need a database of customers. The beautiful thing about text message marketing is the database basically builds itself. Your mass text messaging service provider helps you to build your database.

Set up text message keywords or webforms to capture customer data. Those who opt-in are available to mass text message, or broadcast, to.

When people opt-in, they give their consent to be contacted. And when this happens so does the magic. Customers perceive messages positively which adds value to their experience with your business and product(s).

Segment your database to reach only a specific group of customers. Not all your customers need or want the same thing. Cater to this. Plus, when customers reply, only you see their responses.

For example, you run a sale on baseball equipment. Direct texts to customers that previously purchased baseball equipment, rather than all your customers.

4. Low-cost

Unlike some marketing channels, text message marketing is cost-effective. It’s hard to find any marketing channel that competes when it comes to ROI and measurable results. Due to expedited delivery, getting real-time analytics is a synch! Make adjustments without wasting time.

With the right text messaging service, automating the text marketing process is simple. Through text message keywords and webforms, set up auto-responses to provide information to customers quickly. Drip campaigns help you automatically engage customers which impacts your revenue.

Text message marketing is the new word of mouth marketing

Throughout history, one of the best forms of marketing is also one of the cheapest. If we’re going way back in time, it wasn’t text messages—it was word-of-mouth marketing. This person told that person who told this other person that your product or service was the best around.

Text message marketing has become a big part of the new word-of-mouth marketing.

When people get a coupon or essential information in a text, they forward it to friends, family, and coworkers. At no additional cost to you, your message reaches new customers increasing brand awareness.

For example, send a coupon code for a free appetizer to customers. Customers forward the coupon to friends. And although your customer may not be able to make it in, they sent you a customer in their place.

5. Access to analytics

Automate your analytics process. As you collect data, you learn even more about your target market. Use this information to develop new strategies and product development methods. Over time improve your relationship with customers and reach potential customers.

Thanks to real-time delivery, fast access to click-throughs and conversion rates is simple. The ability to analyze a channel’s success is valuable if you want to make improvements or measure your results.

Summary

With the digital age, it makes good sense to add automated text message marketing to your overall marketing strategy. Whether you use it by itself or with other marketing methods, automated text helps you focus on other, more important, aspects of your business.