Black Friday is just around the corner and businesses – just like yours – are keen to make the most of it by nailing their Black Friday marketing campaigns.
SMS marketing is a really effective marketing tool, and if you’re not using it already, you should be! The average open rate for an SMS message is 98%, and 90% of text messages are read in less than 90 seconds of being delivered. With stats like that, it’s no surprise that SMS is a vital marketing communication channel!
When used in the right way, SMS can really boost your Black Friday marketing promotion strategy, helping to expand your reach and improve engagement.
But how do you make sure you’re doing the right stuff, at the right time, in the right way? There’s so much to consider and potentially, a lot of profit riding on it (Brits plan to spend an estimated £3.95 billion on Black Friday and Cyber Monday purchases this year), and so preparing your SMS marketing strategy can feel a little overwhelming.
However, worry no more as we’ve put together four fantastic SMS marketing tips for Black Friday which will make sure your peak season SMS marketing campaign is a total success and you get the best out of this peak shopping period.
1. Tailor your messaging
Customers like to feel special and understood. They don’t respond well to being treated like just one of many. You must tailor your messages to the individual recipient, as well as the channel and industry. This is vital if you want your customers to continue on the buying journey once they’ve received your SMS.
In a recent webinar which discussed how businesses can ensure the peak shopping season is successful, Chief Marketing & Product Officer at Esendex, Tom Rahder, advised: “In mobile, your messaging needs to be crisp. It’s great that consumers are happy to accept newer channels with higher conversion rates, but you need to be able to tailor your message precisely in comparison to an email or direct mail promotion.”
2. Keep the customer experience consistent
When using omnichannel communication strategies, you have to ensure that your customers can hop from channel to channel and still experience the same brand. This is much more important than just having a presence on as many channels as possible. Even if the customer service or sales representative assigned them alters across channels, the experience should stay the same.
Tom explained: “Customers don’t want to have an impactful and timely marketing experience over SMS and then when they need assistance, move to a slower, offline channel. If you engage with a customer over a mobile channel, they expect for the complete lifecycle to continue over that same channel.”
3. Nail your Call to Action
You need to make it clear what you’re asking the customer to do when reaching out to them with mobile messaging. Your call to action needs to be really clear.
Tom said: “Winning the attention of the consumer in the 90 seconds during which they’re opening the message is critical. You need to understand when to contact them and what CTA will get them to click through and go further on [in their journey].”
4. Use SMS hand-in-hand with other marketing communication channels
When you compare SMS with email – which has an open rate of 21% – it may feel like a no-brainer to replace email with SMS messaging completely. But don’t fall into this trap, email can add considerable value to your mobile marketing campaign and you’ll get better results if you use the various channels simultaneously. Let them work together, rather than against each other.
And remember that while SMS has high engagement rates, only 29% of consumers have signed up to receive text messages from companies. Compare that with the fact that 48% – almost half – are subscribed to email newsletters and you’ll see that if you only look at SMS, you’re missing out on a big chunk of potential business. Therefore, you need to familiarise yourself with the strengths of each channel and use them in a way so they can complement one another.
An example of this is sending out a promotional email, and then sending a follow-up text to anyone who didn’t respond.
We can help with your Black Friday SMS marketing strategy
Still a little stumped about your Black Friday SMS marketing campaign? Fear not, we’re here to help! Contact us today and we can help you make the most of SMS marketing this Black Friday.