Most Businesses Suck At SMS Marketing: 3 Ways For Effective Onboarding
Start your SMS marketing list now, before it's too late.
*Please note: I’ve shared some affiliate links below, but these are tools I’ve been using and implementing for over 3 years. I don’t suggest things I don’t love.
These predictions may seem obvious, but something small businesses may not be thinking about that they should start implementing is SMS marketing.
SMS or Text Message marketing is something that has continued to emerge and become more common when it comes to customer connections.
Like email marketing, SMS marketing is an excellent platform for avoiding algorithm changes in social media and pay-to-play options in paid ads.
💡 Did You Know: SMS marketing has a 99% open rate.
Offering exclusive coupons or loyalty rewards to customers gives small businesses the power to add a personal element to their marketing.
The key to successful SMS marketing is not to abuse it — so if you’re thinking of trying this out, be sure to have a plan to text your customers with timely messages, announcements, and specials.
What is a good place to start?
I prefer SlickText for SMS marketing (aff*)with easy-to-set-up landing pages, embedded forms, and loyalty programs. Their customer service is dynamite too!
→ Get 15% OFF Your First Month — Use Code: STR1890
Subscribers Are Great, But How Did The Campaigns Do?
During this time, I started implementing monthly customer specials, which took a few months to catch on. After ironing out the best outreach, I’ve seen massive growth in the specials in the last two months.
3 Strategies To Elevate Your SMS Marketing
The customer base is already used to our email marketing — which is why a newsletter is a great idea for small businesses — so our audience was conditioned to receive communication from us.
When I started the SMS specials, customers were trickling in at best, so I needed to think outside the box with new strategies for subscribers.
To implement the new SMS marketing strategy, I enabled a few campaigns:
#1: Created Pop-up on Website
Is that a given? Wrong. This was a significant change. I removed our newsletter pop-ups and used the Slick Text pop-up instead to ask for text subscribers.
But…Virginia, didn’t you lose out on newsletter subscribers?! Nope.
With Slick Text, you can integrate MailChimp into your SMS marketing pop-up to get phone numbers and emails. So that’s what I did. It jumped up our SMS subscribers while also maintaining our newsletter growth.
#2: Added A Sign Up At Checkout
I found a handy iPad stand for our checkout area that keeps the tablet secure and charged. With the Slick Text, I can implement the Loyalty Screen for customers to sign up.
**But the Loyalty Program through Slick Text is not adding subscribers, it’s a separate list.**
So, to remedy this, the opt-in text for the loyalty program also asks customers if they want to opt-in for specials, along with a link to funnel them into that onboarding sequence.
#3: Used Our Loyal Newsletter Following
With the newsletter audience established over six years, the list of 4,000+ subscribers was a gold mine for sharing our new exclusive SMS specials.
Every month, I email customers that a new special is “coming soon,” but they need to subscribe to our SMS to receive it. This has helped with the growth of already loyal readers.
These strategies are all in a small business atmosphere where I saw growth of over 715 SMS subscribers (at the time I’m writing this), of which 300 were added in just eight months.
Ready to start your SMS Marketing Journey?
→ Get 15% OFF Your First Month — Use Code: STR1890
Keeping your audience engaged with value from your SMS marketing is the key here.
Added Value = More Subscribers
Find creative ways to use Slick Text (or other SMS providers) to onboard and use these direct marketing methods to give your customers reasons not to text back “STOP.”
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