How to Use SMS Marketing to Complement Your Email Marketing Strategy

You’re probably familiar with using email marketing to communicate with your eCommerce shop’s current and future customers, but did you know you can also text them? An SMS marketing strategy that adheres to TCPA guidelines can be a quick and highly effective way to get simple announcements that don’t require many details to your subscribers.

What Is SMS Marketing?

SMS marketing, or short message service marketing, is a marketing strategy that allows eCommerce shop owners to send potential and returning customers information about their products, services, and promotions by text. This method works similarly to email marketing, but messages are often more condensed and provide another option for communicating with people who may not check their email as often as they use their phones.

Benefits of SMS Marketing for eCommerce Shop Owners

Integrating text messages into your marketing strategy gives your customers another way to receive information about your eCommerce shop’s promotions and new products if they do not want to receive marketing emails. Your customers probably don’t always enjoy waking up to a full inbox that is 90% marketing emails, and it can be easy for yours to get lost in a mass delete without being read. Most text messages will be opened, or at least have their previews read, as soon as they arrive. In fact, approximately 98% of all texts are opened, compared to approximately 20% of all emails. With up to 75% of people open to receiving marketing texts from brands, exploring this method can help eCommerce shop owners reach a wider variety of people.

SMS marketing can also be an effective replacement for other types of marketing that were once highly successful. Although retargeting ads on Facebook used to be one of the easiest and most effective ways for brands to keep products that had interested users top of mind, recent changes to iOS that were designed to protect users’ privacy will inadvertently make reaching Apple users who opt out of data tracking impossible. SMS marketing is more effective overall because it allows brands to contact their current and potential customers directly, rather than having to depend on a third party that may change or disappear at any time.

Use Multiple Types of Marketing to Match Your Customers’ Preferences

It’s important for eCommerce shop owners to remember that the goal of offering SMS marketing is to help customers receive communication in the way that works best for them, not to bombard them with the same message over and over. Adapting your marketing strategy to match the preferences of a variety of customers requires finding a balance between making sure each piece of communication conveys what you want it to and not annoying customers that may be receiving more than one type of message.

Much like following a person or business on all their social media profiles only to find that they post the exact same content at the exact same time can get irritating, your customers probably don’t want to receive identical emails and text messages within seconds of one another. While it may seem like having your customers see your communication more than once is an efficient way to get them to remember it, this strategy is more likely to be ineffective because it can come across as obnoxious and even creepy.

Instead, take the initiative to ask your customers which communication channel they prefer and focus the majority of your communication with them on that channel. Only add them to the contact list they indicate and keep other communication, such as following up after a purchase, to their preferred method whenever possible. Creating two slightly different variations of each message can help keep customers that sign up for both types of communication (or do not indicate a preference) from losing interest. Likewise, making it relatively easy for them to unsubscribe from the list of their choice can help avoid having customers ask to be completely removed from all communication.

Creating an Effective SMS Marketing Strategy

Your SMS marketing strategy is intended to supplement other types of marketing, rather than stand on its own. It’s important to make sure your text messages bring in a worthwhile ROI. By timing your SMS messages strategically, including acquisition pop-ups in your texts, and making sure the content they contain is valuable to your customers, SMS marketing can be a cost-effective type of marketing that helps your business reach more customers.

Choose Strategic Times to Send SMS Messages

Timing your SMS messages carefully is a must to make sure that they will actually be effective. Although most text messages do get read, customers that receive them at a time when they are able to visit your website to learn more find them more helpful than messages they receive while they are at work or busy making dinner and forget about by the time they take a break. Try to time your texts so that your customers will receive them first thing in the morning or during their lunch breaks in order to get the best possible outcomes.

Set Up an Acquisition Pop-Up

Including a pop-up that makes it easy for your recipients to get to your website increases the likelihood that they will do so within a reasonable amount of time after receiving your SMS. Making them do this themselves outside the text message can lead them to decide they will do it later and never end up following through at all.

Create Valuable Content

Text messages may be shorter than emails or social media posts, but they can still contain relevant information that gets the recipient in your promotion or new collection. Be sure each message clearly and concisely conveys what your offer or new item is, as well as a call to action that directs recipients to your website to redeem an offer or learn more.

Use Postscript to Implement a Top-Notch SMS Marketing Strategy

Managing your SMS marketing strategy is more involved than simply sending your customers a random text when you happen to have a free moment. Instead, use an SMS management platform, such as Postscript, to plan and analyze the effectiveness of your SMS marketing campaigns. This platform can help you manage your subscriber list in accordance with TCPA guidelines, automate your text messages, create targeted campaigns that can significantly increase your ROI, and quickly respond to any questions your customers may text you in response to your messages. Postscript’s many flexible options are highly customizable to meet the needs of both large and small eCommerce businesses.

At Future Holidays, we assist our clients with a variety of digital marketing strategies to effectively reach as many people as possible. If you’re considering adding SMS marketing to your eCommerce shop’s advertising toolbox, we can connect you to a platform that integrates smoothly with both your Shopify store or other major eCommerce platform and our email marketing, web design, and other services. Contact us today to learn more about Postscript or to start planning your SMS marketing strategy!