5 Advantages of Using Text Message Marketing

Did you know the average American checks their phone every 12 minutes? That’s nearly 80 times per day.

What does that mean for text message open rates? A pretty noteworthy number: 98%.

The point? People are constantly checking their phones, and their phones are always nearby. Plus, open rates for texts greatly surpass email open rates, which hover around 20%. As digital marketers and an Iowa web development company, we talk about mobile SEO, responsive website design and even social apps like Facebook Messenger, but one of the most underutilized tools in the marketing tool belt is still text message marketing.

What is text message marketing?

Text message marketing – or SMS marketing – is the act of sending coupons, special deals, announcements, current events and other information to your customers via text message. In short, SMS marketing is simply a quicker, easier and direct way of reaching your customer.

At Blue Compass, we always think of all of the Chipotle text alerts we receive around the office. The convenience of receiving deal alerts or exclusive promotions directly to our phones makes for super easy lunch decisions! Not only is Chipotle speaking directly to us, their customers, at the exact moment we could make a decision or make a purchase, but they’re also engaging with us on a personal level.

MMS Marketing: Multimedia Messaging Service

Another form of text message marketing is MMS marketing. While SMS stands for Short Message Service, MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service. The difference? Exactly like it sounds. An SMS message is what comes to mind when you think of a standard text message that’s roughly 160 characters long. An MMS message is any text message that includes multimedia content, such as a video or image, or messages that are longer than 160 characters.  

Some marketers think SMS and MMS marketing is heavily regulated, but it’s no more regulated than email marketing. Just like you need individuals to voluntarily subscribe to your email list before you actively send them emails, you also need to give people the option to “opt-in” to your text message marketing efforts. Likewise, people should also be given the option to “opt-out” of your text messages whenever they’d like.

Fortunately for marketers and prospects alike, customers have an easy way to opt in or out straight from their mobile phones with most SMS marketing services.

Why You Should Be Using SMS Marketing

Advantage #1: SMS Marketing Has the Best Engagement Rate

To put it simply, text message marketing has the best engagement rate of any marketing medium. While emails can go unread for days, 90% of text messages are opened and read within the first three minutes of receiving them.

What’s more? Mobile phone ownership among adults is close to 95% worldwide. And with no internet requirement for sending and receiving text messages, SMS text messaging is the communication tool with the greatest reach around the world.

Advantage #2: Trackable Platform

Most SMS and MMS marketing services have trackable platforms. Just like your other marketing efforts, you can manage your text message marketing campaign straight from your desktop. For example, text message marketing service, SlickText, is a web based platform, so there is no app or software to download. You manage everything within their dashboard.

Advantage #3: Interactive Content

SMS and MMS marketing allow you to receive quick feedback from your recipients by including a “reply” button or a link to a landing page. You can deliver short messages to your audience that direct them back to your site so they can quickly interact with your brand.

For example, Funny Bone uses text message marketing to promote reservations for comedy shows.

Advantage #4: Immediate Message Delivery

Another great advantage to SMS and MMS marketing is that it doesn’t take long to gain important insights. Once you hit send, your message is delivered almost instantly. You can set up a text message marketing campaign and have hundreds of clicks or user feedback within minutes.

Take a look at how food-delivery service GrubHub uses SMS marketing as a quick way to learn about the food they just delivered.

Advantage #5: Opportunities to Add a Personal Touch

An additional advantage of SMS marketing is the opportunity to add a personal touch to your message. Using words like “your” and “you” are great ways to keep people interested in to your SMS and MMS marketing efforts.

As you can see below, local grocery store Hy-Vee does a great job of personalizing their text messages.

Needless to say, the opportunities with SMS marketing are truly endless. From instant user feedback to gaining clicks and conversions, you can be as creative as you want.

How SMS Marketing Works

The basic components of any SMS marketing campaign include a keyword and a shortcode.

Here is an example:

• Text “FLAVORS” to 123456 for our flavor of the day!

“FLAVORS” is the keyword users type in the body of a text message, and “123456” is the shortcode to which users will send their text message.

When a user sends a keyword to a shortcode, this is considered their “opt-in.” (Pretty easy, right?) Once a customer is in, you have a few options. You can send them a quick follow up SMS message and let them know what to expect next, or you could add them to a list to be used for future campaigns.

Of course, there are other ways to get people to sign up for text messages, such as filling out a form or submitting their phone numbers on your website.