SMS marketing has gained popularity because of its fast open rate and assured delivery. Thanks to no automatic spam tagging and reliable mobile carriers with deeper reach than the internet. So, if you’re planning to ramp up your brand marketing, having an SMS marketing tool in your arsenal is indispensable.
But how to choose the right partner in the SMS marketing area, you ask? Very valid question, indeed. This post will walk you through some “must-haves” pointers to picking an SMS and MMS marketing partner.
Factors to Consider While Choosing a Right SMS Marketing Partner
- Experts, Not Just Established
Partnering with an established software company is the most preferred route when choosing any vendor. And why not? Established companies bring in industry experience. But we stress choosing experts with experience rather than just a label.The marketing industry is highly dynamic, with new technologies and trends entering every few months. An established company may still stick to the legacy style while a brand with experts keeps tapping on new growth methods. They keep themselves updated and grow their expertise by experiencing the latest trends and flowing with the tide.With the ever-changing rules and regulations, an established player may or may not keep themselves abreast, but expertise and experience together bring readiness for challenges. - Customization
What good is an SMS marketing program if not customizable? You don’t need just an off-the-shelf program that is promoted by fancy jargon. The more customizable a program is, the better would be its services.Brands need SMS marketing programs that gel well with their existing CRM and other marketing software. And branding the screens and campaigns is equally essential. So, choose a texting tool that can integrates with your existing tool kit and adapts to your brand guidelines like logo, fonts, color scheme, and themes.More importantly, choose an SMS software that allows you to amend your SMS quota based on your business’s scaling demands. It should offer an API for easy use and shouldn’t stop at SMS but also cover MMS. A cloud-based SMS program like Textmunication comes with flexibility and affordability, and that’s just the thing you might need. - Support for Best Practices
With SMS marketing tools, automatically flagging a message as spam is not easy as an email client does. So, you need to find a company that offers readymade best practices in their build. This will help you follow most of the guidelines and best practices at the backend to stop being a nuisance to your users.The topmost rule you have to follow is seek permission before you SMS-market. Never breach users’ privacy, something that is rampant in more ways than one. For instance, opting in and out for users should be possible. Double-opting information in your database should be used. Following the right time slots to send SMSes is needed to get reads.Likewise, shortcodes are crucial to ace a marketing campaign because they assure users of authenticity. Compliance with the mobile carriers’ guidelines should also be ingrained in the tool. And that is indispensable for a brand to market successfully. - Value for Money
Ensuring to buy the right fit SMSing tool is the availability of a trial version. If your vendor doesn’t offer a trial version with which you can realize some benefits, the trial version is as good as nothing.We suggest getting the best out of your trial period. The vendor’s team should help you seamlessly transition into the SMS marketing mode. The integration has to be smooth and swift and enable to launch a pilot project within a couple of days.Your SMS marketing partner should help you set up the system and get going. And with sufficient A/B testing using SMSes, you can decide on your initial and basic—if not a complete and long-run—strategy.Additionally, the SMS marketing tool must provide ways to use URLs, images, audio, and video files without compromising the length of your SMS. - Holistic Admin Activities
If you can’t measure your success, the SMS tools fail you there. Apart from a rounded set of features for creating and launching campaigns and communicating with the users, you should be able to see the performance of your marketing endeavors.This is where the advanced reporting features of a tool come in handy. Set goals and compare your achievements with them: a must-have feature for all marketing tools and not just for SMS. Generating and sharing reports with stakeholders is another important aspect of a great tool.
How Textmunication Helps with SMS-based Campaigns
Textmunication is not only a long-running market player in SMS marketing but also prides to have a team of industry experts. If you plan to partner with an SMS marketing company, Textmunication is an excellent choice. Apart from all the mentioned factors above, we also run a white-label partnership program, and our 30-day free trial comes with no strings attached. Reach out to us here today to chalk out your SMSing strategy.
