SMS marketing is the most popular way to establish a direct connection with your users. Whether you’re a fan of email marketing, prefer reaching out to users via abuzz social media, or love to pop an advert on their Facebook wall, you should still invest your time in SMS promotions. SMS is always the right personal way to knock at users’ doors and get them to open the gates of a strong relationship.
Today’s post will help you understand how to start bulk SMS marketing in 5 easy steps with Textmunication.
Get Started with SMS Marketing in 5 Easy Steps
1. Set up Your Textmunication Profile
Now that you’ve decided to get invested in SMS marketing, you’re at the right place. Textmunication’s SAM is a cloud-based API you can integrate with any marketing software you have been using, CRM software, or as a standalone tool. SAM offers customer service and support, sales, operations, and fund-raising options.
You can start with Textmunication’s free trial account and then upgrade to the pricing plan that suits you.
2. Create Your SMS Marketing List
Build your list of customers. That doesn’t mean you add everyone’s number you have collected. You must seek opt-in permission from your interested users before starting your SMS campaign.
Print the customized phone number you receive from our messaging tool on your campaign billboards, marketing brochures, social media posts, and emails. You can also promote this opt-in number in your store. Once you have sought permissions from your customers, you can feed all the numbers in the Textmunication SAM tool.
3. Plan Your Marketing Strategy
You can’t simply start sending them SMS because you have a subscription for a tool and a long list of your audience’s numbers. You have to define your marketing strategy, segregate customers, define the right time in the day, and send them apt messages—promotional or transactional.
You can send announcements about your latest updates, upcoming events, product launch, or special occasion promotional SMSes. Whether you want to offer them a birthday discount or a festive sale, you need to know who should be receiving these texts.
Your SMSes can be used to send them delivery status, order confirmation, OTPs, and account alerts. These transactional messages are known to help your users. But before you send them anything, segment your audience.
Know which segment of the customers should be notified about a new store in their locality and who would love to celebrate their wedding anniversary with a buy two, get one free offer.
Remember, SMSes have high open rates. So, consider your audience’s time zone. It won’t be apt to wake them up in the middle of the night. And don’t flood their inbox with a series of messages.
Prioritizing your marketing agenda and following these tactics can help you onboard loyal customers in a long-term relationship.
4. Start Your First SMS Marketing Campaign
Once you have decided which kind of users you want to target with what message and at what time of the day, don’t hesitate to send your first outreach SMS.
Your text should be clear and crisp. Hence, the text size limit of 160 or lesser characters should be used wisely. You should be able to convey your message within this length. Also, never miss adding a call to action (CTA) at the end of your message. A clear CTA helps users to understand what they should do next. Like clicking on an embedded URL of your website to check new products, sending a reply with Y as consent, or keeping in mind their rescheduled delivery timing.
Finally, don’t spam your users with just a short code. Instead, identify yourself and make your users feel safe. Otherwise, your loyal customers can block your number. Always include an opt-out option or a link to unsubscribe from these promotional messages.
5. Track Your Results and Metrics
Sending bulk SMSes and seeing your audience grow is one thing. However, measuring your growth is another indispensable part of any marketing branch. And with SMSes, this is equally important as with email marketing or Google adverts.
Textmunication’s SAM offers a comprehensive dashboard to monitor all the important KPIs for your SMS marketing activities. You can continuously watch these numbers, make decisions based on your charts, and tweak your marketing approach on time to align the expectations with results.
Are You Game for SMS Marketing?
The Textmunication team comes with industry and technical expertise to help you start with your SMS marketing campaign. We hand-hold you while you configure the tool for the first time and let you transition to understand the easy working of SAM. Should you be looking for a loyal partner in SMS marketing, you’re at the right place. Contact us here to discuss your requirements.
