SMS Marketing in E-Commerce: How to Increase the Revenue of Your E-Commerce Store?
Mobile devices are steadily becoming the number one digital tool, and this dramatic shift affected the way people shop online. So much so that we are witnessing 20%+ annual growth in mobile commerce sales. It’s no wonder that E-Commerce brands around the world come up and test new marketing strategies to reach customers on their phones and tablets.
As a result of this, one of the marketing channels that were thought to be dead is making a comeback. We are talking about SMS marketing, also known as text message marketing. But why is this old channel, long believed to be dead, gaining popularity among E-Commerce brands? Let’s take a closer look to understand.
Benefits of SMS Marketing for Your E-Commerce Store
E-Commerce was one of the fields to benefit the most from the rise of SMS marketing. Through their short and on-point nature and ability to reach customers directly on phone, they've made an incredibly powerful promotional tool that has a number of benefits for online brands. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Wide Reach and High Engagement Rates
With 6.4 Billion people using smartphones around the world, SMS has a global reach arguably compared only to email. Couple this with the fact that SMS texts have six to eight times higher engagement rates, and you’ll get one of the most powerful marketing tools at your fingertips. This wide reach allows E-Commerce brands to target potential customers in different parts of the world and connect with them with tailored messaging.
Opt-in Channel
Similar to email marketing, SMS marketing is an opt-in marketing channel. This means that brands can only connect with customers who’ve given them their numbers. While this may seem to limit at first, it’s in truth the main reason behind the success of SMS marketing: you spend your resources and budget only on reaching out to people who’ve already shown interest in your brand. This means that you won’t be shooting in the dark in hopes of landing a customer, but know exactly who your messages go to.
Affordability
Another benefit of SMS marketing for E-Commerce is its affordability. While the exact cost will depend on the service provider of your choice, as well as the number of subscribers: the bigger the list, the more it will cost. However, the costs of SMS marketing campaigns usually remain relatively low, on par with E-Mail, and significantly less than paid ad campaigns.
Valuable Analytics
Another feature worth discussing here is, of course, the analytics. The success of every marketing campaign can be assessed by taking a look at the results and metrics and then using them to improve the ongoing or future campaigns. By analyzing open rates, CTR, or churn rates, you can get an understanding of what works for your customers and what doesn’t, and then maybe even use this information not only for SMS marketing but other marketing channels of your E-Commerce store.
How Can You Use SMS Marketing for Your Brand?
At first, SMS may not seem like the most versatile marketing channel out there. However, you’d be surprised at how many ways you can use it for your store. Here are some of the more popular ones.
- Conversational Texts
This is arguably the best way you can use SMS for your E-Commerce store. You can use conversational SMS to provide customer service, for re-ordering, and for receiving feedback from your customers. This makes the process of purchase and communication with the brand more personal, fast, and comfortable, which will, in turn, form trusting relationships between the customer and your retail brand.
- Reminders and Celebrations
SMS is a great way to share important milestones, great news, and reminders with your potential customers. This can be product reminders, announcements of a new collection, or even about the anniversary of your store. You can also use SMS to show your customers that you care about them by joining them during their celebrations, for example, by offering them a small discount on their birthday.
- Discounts and Sales Announcements
Have a big discount or a sale around the corner? SMS is one of the best ways to announce it! Send a short and sweet message to your subscribers telling them all about the exciting opportunity, e.g. the dates, discount code, if available, and, of course, include a link to your store.
SMS marketing offers many wonderful opportunities for E-Commerce brands. All you need is to dive a bit deeper, be creative, and experiment a little.
SMS Marketing Best Practices
Now that you know about the benefits of SMS marketing and how you can use text messages to promote your brand, let’s take a look at some best practices you need to consider.
Create Opt-in Opportunities
SMS marketing is an opt-in marketing channel. This means people will need to give you their phone number before you’ll be able to reach them with your messages. And getting them to opt-in is going to be a large chunk of mobile marketing effort. Website pop-ups, post-purchase checkbox about receiving offers, email opt-in forms are some of the ways you can use to build your SMS marketing list.
Be GDPR-Compliant
Let’s talk a bit about compliance. When developing your SMS marketing strategy, it’s important that you remain GDPR-Compliant. Be transparent with your customers about data privacy and how their information is being used, only connect to subscribers who’ve agreed to receive messages from you, keep your texts profanity-free, and give options for opt-out.
Be Concise With Your Messages
This comes with the name: you need to keep your messaging short. Make your message as short as possible, but don’t do this at the expense of skipping anything important. Make sure to include all crucial information into your message so that people have a full idea of what's happening just by reading your text.
Include a CTA
When crafting a message, always have in mind what is the action that you are trying to get the person on the receiving end to take. Is it shopping your new collection or checking the sales section? Then be sure to include this as a call-to-action (CTA) in your message. After all, “Up to 50% discount on selected items today, check here: xyz.com” is a lot more catchy than “Up to 50% discount on selected items today!”
Don’t Spam
SMS is a great and simple-to-use tool, and you may feel the urge to use it as often as possible. However, if you send messages too often, no matter how great and useful they are, you are at risk of being spammy. This will reflect badly on your brand and may result in being blocked, which can attract the attention of mobile service providers and damage later campaigns. To avoid all of this, experiment a bit and then take a look at the campaign data to choose an optimal frequency of sending promotional messages. You can even segment your subscribers based on the analytics, and send them customized messages at different times.
Wrapping Up
Whether you want to go with a simple welcome series campaign to build a relationship with your customers or you have a more sales-oriented campaign in mind, SMS marketing offers almost limitless opportunities. While starting can be a little intimidating, it’s a very intuitive and powerful tool, and you’ll get the grasp of it fairly quickly. All you need to do is be open to experimenting, be attentive to data, and be ready to experiment, and you’ll see sales growth in no time.
