Using SMS To Send New Product Launch Messages
Launching a new product or feature is an exciting time in any business. Whether you’re the biggest company in the world, like Apple, or a small-town main street operation, releasing a new product is bound to be exciting.
It’s the culmination of dream made reality through hard work, sweat, tears, planning, innovation, and a little luck.
Your vision deserves to be seen and heard by as many people as possible. SMS marketing is the best way to get your new product launch in front of the most people and increase your revenue.
What is SMS?
SMS is an abbreviation for the communication protocol known as Short Messaging Service. You’re probably familiar with texting and online messaging. We text daily without a second thought, but have you ever wondered how it all works?
The first text message was sent in the early 1990s, following its theoretical invention in the late 1980s. Today, though, text messaging has evolved.
Communication protocols such as iMessage from Apple, Rich Communication Service (RCS) from Google, and many other online messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger and Telegram all owe their origins to SMS.
Despite their differences, all utilize SMS as their core communication protocol when data isn’t available or incompatible devices are texting one another. Today, SMS is the gold text messaging standard and is available on nearly every cell phone worldwide.
Increased cellular network availability, affordable cellular plans, and the adaptation of the smartphone by most consumers have all led to SMS texting becoming the preferred method of communication, whether the text is to a business or to a friend.
Why use SMS for product launches?
You should use SMS marketing for all your business needs, internal and external communications, but especially for promotions such as new product launches.
There are various options available to you for marketing your new product, including SMS marketing, product launch emails, or teaser emails. There are also television ads, newspaper and magazine ads, radio ads, and social media platforms. However, none of these options produce the results that SMS marketing does..
New product launch email campaigns can be beneficial as a supplement to SMS marketing. Plenty of SaaS software solutions, such as Mailchimp, offer excellent automation services for email lists, email design, and even templates for email copy and email subject lines.
However, these functions do not necessarily give product launch announcement emails the edge over SMS. You can find many of the same features with SMS services, like TextSanity, and SMS marketing generates much more traffic and engagement.
Since SMS and email marketing are two of the most effective methods businesses use today, we thought we’d do a side-by-side statistical analysis of both.
Open rate
Texting: 98%
Email: 20%
Response rate
Texting: 45%
Email: 6%
Response time
Texting: 90 Seconds
Email: 90 Minutes
The advantages of texting and SMS marketing over email marketing are blatantly obvious. In every category, SMS marketing outperforms email marketing.
In the real world, these statistics indicate that a promotional or marketing message sent via text is highly likely to be opened and engaged with. This means increased sales opportunities.
While email may be seen as more eye-catching than SMS, incorporating GIFs and emojis can spice up your text messages as much as any email.
How can you use SMS to announce a launch?
SMS marketing is advantageous to your overall marketing strategy. Let’s look at some ways you can use TextSanity and the power of texting to increase the excitement for your new product launch.
Release announcements
The first step for a successful product launch is getting the word out and building hype.
Broadcast messages
The best way to do that with SMS marketing is through a mass text message or broadcast. Broadcasts send a customizable message to any contact with a specific tag.
For example, you can tag all contacts in your contact database with the tag “launch” to ensure they’re included in your broadcast message. Additionally, you can organize your contact database into as many or as few tags as you need.
Consider including launch date countdowns, early access or sneak peek offers, and a call-to-action in your messages to create a sense of urgency and help your new product and release date stand out.
Text message keyword campaigns
Text message keyword campaigns are another great text marketing tool to utilize. Keyword campaigns allow contacts to opt themselves in to your campaign.
For example, set up a text message keyword campaign that says “Text LAUNCH to 50505 to receive product information in real time!” and advertise it on- and offline. Once contacts text the word to the number they receive a predetermined set of other messages (that you create and customize) to keep the person engaged.
Additional text marketing tools
The final goal is to get the customer to pre-order or sign up for your new product release updates.
Once your customers opt-in to text messages from your business, send updates and announcements to them with text marketing drip campaigns.
You can easily design and run multiple campaigns with various text marketing tools simultaneously.
For instance, send a mass broadcast to every contact in your contact database that announces your new product launch. Then, create more tailored messages based on customer characteristics and send them to different groups of tagged contacts.
Pre-order links
You can also use SMS marketing to send customers a pre-order link that directs them to your ecommerce landing page. Part of your overall digital marketing strategy should be to interconnect all your digital touchpoints and allow each one to complement the other.
For instance, your ecommerce site should promote your social media accounts and options to sign up for future text messages and vice versa. By creating a connected web of digital touchpoints, you significantly increase the effectiveness of your marketing and enhance the customer experience.
Regardless of your market research before your new product launch, it can still be challenging to gauge pre-launch production demands. Pre-order metrics can help you in this endeavor and ensure you have enough new products for potential customers.
Future release notifications
Sending future release notifications through push notifications is another excellent way to promote and build excitement over your upcoming product. TextSanity integrates this ability into our platform so that it’s easy for your team.
Although your customers may love doing business with you, if they don’t hear from you in a while, they may purchase a similar product somewhere else simply because they forgot about the experience.
Keeping your company name in mind is an important marketing strategy. Product updates, new features, and pricing details are relevant to promote before launch. Some of the most common household names do this, including Coca-Cola and Apple.
Text promotion specials
Text promotion specials are one of the best ways to build excitement for a new product launch. Consumers love saving money, especially if it’s exclusive. Offering early-bird incentives helps generate traffic to your new website and build excitement about your product.
TextSanity allows you to market new promotional specials to increase revenues and sales through broadcasting, keyword campaigns, and drip campaigns.
How else can SMS help a new product launch?
SMS marketing is only ever hindered by the limit of your imagination. If you can think of it, SMS marketing can deliver it. This article is in no way a comprehensive list of all the ways you can utilize the power of SMS. Use it as a launchpad to consider what you can do to elevate your marketing message.
TextSanity provides the text marketing resources and tools proven to help increase open rates, engagement rates, and revenues.
Drip campaign
Drip campaigns are an integral tool of TextSanity. Before the invention of SMS, drip campaigns were accomplished through email marketing, email campaigns, and postal mailers.
Many still utilize these types of drip campaigns today. However, neither offers the Return on Investment (ROI) rates of SMS marketing.
Drip campaigns send messages to customers at a specific rhythm you specify. These messages are designed to increase awareness and excitement to convert prospective customers into paying customers.
With SMS marketing, drip campaigns encourage engagement and have a far greater chance of success for conversions than other methods, allowing you to collect more data about customers than can be used in future campaigns.
Integrations
Our WordPress plugin integration is a significant resource. By placing WordPress widgets on your ecommerce site, you can start one-on-one conversations via text message, opt-in customers to your text marketing platform, or simply send them a quick text message.
This gives you a more efficient path toward collecting customer data, building your customer database, getting opt-in approvals, and enhancing the customer experience.
Once you’ve inserted the widget, all customers have to do is enter their phone number. It’s that easy! Their number is automatically added to your contact database and any messages that are set to send will do so.
The value of this integration can’t be understated and shouldn’t be overlooked. As we’ve mentioned previously, connecting your various touchpoints to work harmoniously increases your odds of converting prospects to customers.
What’s more, you create a more robust, streamlined customer experience that aids in building brand loyalty.
The bottom line
Text message marketing is the way of the future, and your customers appreciate the option. When launching a new product or service, it’s essential to communicate effectively to as many people as possible.
Sales and revenue growth is a numbers game. When you look at the numbers for SMS marketing, both in its effectiveness, ROI, and how easy it is to send your promotional message, you may not want to go another day without it in your marketing portfolio.
Contact us today to discover all the ways TextSanity amplifies your digital marketing and aids in the sustainable growth of your business.
