A Beginner’s Guide To SMS And Email Marketing

One of the ultimate goals of marketing is to reach out to existing and potential customers. If you’re looking for the easiest way to connect with your target audience, you should consider SMS and email marketing.

It makes sense to do so because most people these days are on top of their mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Also, they’re becoming more comfortable and open to engaging with businesses via mobile devices.

SMS marketing enables you to send promotions, campaigns, and others to your customers through text messages. The same goes for email marketing, but instead of text messages, it delivers emails directly to your customer’s inbox.

Nevertheless, note that SMS and email marketing are permission-based. This means you can’t just send text messages and emails to those who haven’t opted yet into your contact list. Otherwise, all your marketing efforts will be in vain.

For powerful marketing campaigns, consider using platforms like Drop Cowboy or other similar providers. These platforms have built-in features (e.g., ringless voicemail and bulk messaging) that may help improve your marketing efforts.

What Are The Benefits Of SMS And Email Marketing?

SMS and email marketing are powerful tools to include in your marketing arsenal. Below are the top benefits that can directly affect your bottom line:

. Reach Customers As Soon As Possible

If you plan to deliver time-sensitive pieces of information, use SMS. It has an extremely high open rate of not less than 95%. This makes SMS marketing ideal for sending information that requires immediate action. For example, if you’re promoting a limited-time deal, you can inform your customers by sending them a text message.

Furthermore, did you know that most people open a text message within three minutes after receipt? That’s how powerful SMS marketing is.

. Promote Brand Awareness

SMS and email marketing can be excellent ways to spread awareness about your products and services. They enable you to share educational content, updates, resources, and more with the people who opted into your messaging list and subscribed to your newsletter.

Nonetheless, make sure the content of your campaigns aligns well with your brand. Otherwise, your emails and text messages won’t make sense to your recipients, let alone spread awareness.

. Easy To Set Up

SMS and email marketing are easy to set up. It only takes a few minutes to send text messages and emails to multiple subscribers.

For email marketing, a simple email account may work, especially for small businesses and local startups. When your business expands, consider using a business account to help manage and keep track of all your emails effectively.

For SMS marketing, a working smartphone is enough, especially for small businesses and local startups. But for those with a high volume of text messages every day, consider working with a service provider. They can help you send hundreds or thousands of SMS in minutes.

Watch this video below to learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUzsbIrz840

. Increase Revenue

SMS and email marketing can help increase your revenue by driving foot and web traffic to your shop and website. You can use them to promote events and limited-time offers and include CTAs to encourage customers to purchase the offer while it lasts.

You can also use SMS and email to remind customers about the items in their shopping cart and encourage them to check out.

. Boost Response Rate

SMS and email marketing can help you reach people directly through their smartphones. This is why text messages and emails have higher response rates compared to other platforms.

A higher response rate is a measure of a successful marketing campaign. It means your customers are comfortable interacting with you. It also means your messages are engaging and worth their time and effort.

To boost response rates, consider adding clear calls to action (CTAs) to your messages and emails. This encourages customers and prospects to do what you want them to do. For example, you can use ‘Click here to learn more’ or ‘Reply YES to subscribe.’

. Generate Traffic

SMS and email marketing can help drive more traffic to your site. You can use these platforms to share educational links and encourage subscribers to read your blog. You can also add CTAs to motivate subscribers to visit your page and learn more about your brand.

. Boost Other Marketing Channels

SMS and email marketing are already powerful, but you can use them to amplify other marketing channels. This shows how flexible SMS and email marketing are.

For example, you can send text messages and emails to spread the word about your promotions on social media. You can also use SMS and emails to remind subscribers of upcoming sales, webinars, conferences, and more to increase the number of signups.

What Are The Tips For An Effective SMS Marketing Campaign?

Are you ready to take your SMS marketing to the next level? If you do, here are some best practices (and examples) to get you started and help you create effective SMS marketing campaigns:

. Never Send A Message Without A Clear Opt-In

Suppose that you’ve collected all the numbers of your customers. Does that mean it’s alright to flood their inbox with promotional text messages and campaigns right away? No, it’s not. This is to protect consumers from robotexts and spam messages.

You have to get their consent first before you start sending promotional SMS. This is where clear opt-ins come in. Opt-ins are messages asking customers if it’s okay for them to receive marketing and promotional text messages.

To do this, you need to send one text message (ONLY ONE) asking customers to verify their opt-in with ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ If you don’t get any response, don’t send a message again. The same goes for those who respond ‘no,’ obviously.

Here’s an example of a clear opt-in message:

‘Hi, John! Welcome to Pets Galore! If you want updates about future promos and discounts, subscribe now! Text ‘YES’ to 2222 to confirm your subscription and get 25% off on your first purchase.’

. Don’t Forget to Send Opt-Outs

Like opt-ins, opt-outs are essential for SMS marketing campaigns—often a legal requirement. Opt-outs allow customers to unsubscribe anytime they want.

Since SMS has extremely high open rates, expect your unsubscribe rates to be high. But make sure to analyze it from time to time. If the rate becomes too high, your campaigns no longer grab your customers’ attention.

Here’s an example of a clear opt-out message:

‘LLA Alerts. Your delivery is nearby. See you in 10 minutes! Do you have any questions? Reply STOP to unsubscribe and end updates.’

. Introduce Yourself

When you send a text message, do you think your recipient knows who you are or what you do? Probably, not unless you make yourself known right away. If you don’t, your message will likely be deleted right away. After all, nobody wants to interact with a stranger.

An easy way to introduce yourself is to place your name at the start of your message and a colon right after. Here’s an example:

‘Jessica Parks: Hey Anne-Marie! It looks like you’ve left some great finds in your shopping cart at Walnart.com. Still interested? To unsubscribe, text ‘STOP’ to 2468.’

. Send Messages at The Right Time

Time is of the essence when it comes to SMS marketing. That’s because there are particular times when people turn on or off the alerts for text messages. However, others would turn on their Do Not Disturb feature when they don’t want to be disturbed.

Here are some tips to follow:

• Don’t send a promotional message when customers are most likely asleep. Waking them up in the middle of their slumber is the last thing you’d want to do.
• Don’t interrupt your customer’s sumptuous dinner with a marketing offer.
• Don’t send a promotional message when customers are at work, especially between 8:00-10:00 a.m. They’re most likely busy at these times.
• Don’t send a marketing offer when customers are about to leave their post, especially between 5:00-6:00. They’re probably preparing themselves to go home.
• Don’t send a marketing message on Friday afternoons. Since weekends are rest days, expect their response on the coming Monday.

So, when to send a message?

• Send a message between Tuesday and Thursday. These are the times when most employees entertain marketing offers.
• Send a message before and after your customer’s lunch break. These are the times when most employees have less workload.

If you’re serving customers overseas, be mindful of their time zones. Be aware of their sleeping times, waking hours, and working schedules. And apply the don’ts above.

. Check Your Character Count

Text messages have a limited character count, with only 160 characters to work on. This isn’t enough, especially when you’ve to introduce yourself and provide opt-outs. That’s why you have to know what you have to say so as not to waste even a single character.

The key here is to get straight to the point. And if you want to add links for more information, make sure to shorten them using a link shortener.

What Are The Tips For An Effective Email Marketing Campaign?

Are you ready to ramp up your email marketing campaign? Below are some best practices that may help you take your email campaigns to the next level.

. Choose A Relevant Email List

If you want your emails to be as impactful as possible, make sure to send them to the right audience. For example, a local event from a multinational brand should target the local audience. You can also consider age and gender when segmenting your campaigns.

Furthermore, be mindful of unethical ways of creating an email list, such as buying email addresses. This may negatively affect your engagement and conversion rates. Also, it can get your emails marked as spam or blocked by email providers.

. Make Your Emails Look Good

You want your emails to be filled with insightful and educational content. But if it doesn’t look appealing, it might not create an impact on your customers.

Here are some tips that may help you create a visually appealing email:

• Include your brandings, such as your logo, brand colors, and font styles. Make sure the design perfectly aligns with your brand identity.
• Take advantage of white space. Add blank areas around images, visual objects, and typography for a more professional, readable, and engaging email.
• Add images as much as possible. An email filled with nothing but text looks boring, so include images or animations to make it more appealing and engaging.
• Make sure your emails are responsive. This means your emails should look great regardless of the device, whether desktop, smartphone, or tablet.

Don’t forget to use alignment and other hierarchy principles to create an organized email design (e.g., different font sizes for titles, subheadings, and content body).

. Personalize Your Content

People want to be treated like a person with individual needs and identities. That’s the reason why personalization is important.

Personalization enables you to create an email tailored to subscribers based on the information they provide. This adds a human touch to your email and makes it more relevant.

Here are some tips for personalizing your emails:

• Call out the subscriber’s name when writing the subject line.
• Include the subscriber’s location to promote nearby events.
• Recommend products based on your subscriber’s recent purchase activity.

Personalizing your emails encourages people to open your messages. So, stop being generic and tap into your customers’ hearts by providing personalized emails.

. Create Follow-Up Emails

Sometimes, one email isn’t enough to do the trick. This type of situation calls for follow-up emails. You need to do this to nurture and encourage your subscribers to convert successfully.

Here’s an example of a series of follow-up emails that aim to recover sales from cart abandonment:

• S­end emails reminding customers about the items they’ve left in their shopping cart.
• Send emails with discount coupons (e.g., free shipping) they can use when checking out.
• Send emails that promote urgency (e.g., telling customers that their cart is about to expire).

You can automate sending follow-up emails to make the process easier. Create emails and schedule releases using time-sensitive triggers. All you need to do is wait and let the software do all the work.

Final Thoughts

SMS and email marketing are among the most effective marketing tools. They help businesses reach customers quickly, promote brand awareness, increase revenue, boost response rate, and complement other marketing channels.

Digital-Marketing Email-Marketing SMS