Why you’re missing a trick by not using SMS marketing

January 13th, 2014

SMS marketing is the Frankenstein’s monster of marketing formats. It’s surrounded by negative myths and industry rumours that mask it in the guise of a monster and hides the hugely beneficial truth beneath the surface.

Below are a few truths and misconceptions that we would like to shine some light on.

 

It’s too expensive – wrong

Probably the most common misconception with mobile marketing is that it’s too expensive. Look at the whole picture however, and you will see that this isn’t the case.

Obviously there is a cost to mobile marketing and that comes from two areas, buying or building your database of numbers and then sending the messages themselves. Compared to other forms of advertising this cost can seem prohibitive. But as with all things, initial costs are only significant when the final results are factored in and its time to work out the profit.

Mobile marketing is targeted at people who have opted in and are receptive to the adverts your sending. It offers a higher read rate than email, twitter and facebook combined. It’s fast, the average message is read within 5 seconds of being sent. It offers click through rates that are nearly 5 times greater than those of email marketing and with smartphones reaching nearly 90% saturation of the mobile phone market it delivers a huge audience.

All those facts combine to create a higher profit margin than almost all other forms of marketing, even with initial costs taken into account. With those results how can it possibly be too expensive?

 

It’s unreliable – wrong

  • SMS might not be delivered or get through
    Get your data cleaned by Liquid11 and you can ensure that your data will always been live and switched on so your messages are almost always going to get through
  • People won’t read messages even if they receive them
    It’s simply not true. Research show that 98% of all text messages are read and that the average click through rate on mobile marketing is 19% which is nearly 5 times higher than email
  • People might not notice their messages in time to act on them
    The average person checks their phone 150 times a day, do you really think they won’t notice?

 

It’s not as effective as other forms of marketing – wrong

The below stats should put this idea to rest.

  • Message read rates:
    SMS = 98%
    Tweets = 29%
    Email = 22%
    Facebook = 22%
  • 68% of people in the UK would like to receive offers on their mobile
  • 57% of people would be interested in a brand’s SMS loyalty program
  • Average click through rates of URLs:
    SMS = 19%
    Email = 4.2%

People don’t want to be annoyed by SMS Promotions – wrong

As said before 68% of people in the UK have actively indicated they would like to receive offers on their mobile. On top of that, all people who receive mobile offers must have actively opted in to receive those messages and if they aren’t happy then opting out is a doddle as all they will have to do is reply to the message with ‘Stop’.

You can also consider the fact that the average person receives 1,216 emails per month but they only receive 178 texts per month. That just shows that people aren’t inundated with ads on their mobile phone and so won’t have even had the chance to get annoyed with them.

 

There’s too many limitations to market effectively – wrong

The biggest limitation with SMS marketing is that you are limited to 160 characters per text message. That may seem small and limited but when you consider that one of the most popular sites in the world, Twitter, relies on their content being in messages of 140 characters or less then you can see that short messages is exactly what the world wants. If you can’t sell it within 160 characters then you probably won’t keep your audience’s attention long enough to try and sell it with more.

 

THE TRUTH

The truth is that SMS marketing is the future.

Every aspect of the world is going mobile and marketing needs to keep up. It’s already been proved that people with smartphones or tablets are more than twice as likely to buy from their mobile devices than they are from a PC. Stats show that people click on more ads on their phones, read more emails on their phones and are basically more reachable via their phone. There really isn’t a reason not to take your marketing mobile and the stats support that SMS marketing is the best way to do that.

Add to that the fact that sites like SMS Traffic Herding offer a service that will not only help you manage and send your messages but will also provide reports and feedback that will improve the reliability of future campaigns, tell you the handset type of your users and improve your database all at the same time, there really is no reason not to give SMS marketing a try today. As always content is key and if your message is relevant and something that your customers will want to read and act on then these features plus the power of SMS Marketing will make your campaign the most successful it can possibly be.

Visit SMS Traffic Herding today to get started or you could call 0844 884 3005 and the SMS Traffic Herding team would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

 

Stats from http://visual.ly/10-mobile-marketing-statistics

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