What is text message marketing?

David Smith
3 min readJul 1, 2020

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SMS marketing is the specific word for a variation of the activities relevant to commercial text messaging. Of starters, when marketers speak about such things, that may imply they are thinking about a text message polling or contest. As mobile phones and the usage of text messaging have become almost inevitable in the U.S., especially in the younger audiences that marketers seek to target — brands utilize these emerging innovations to deliver information from their clients to the buyers.

Consumers are increasingly bombarded with social alerts. Because of these disruptions, many emails and other social networking notifications are disabled. If you want real-time marketing, you need to send a text message.

Text message marketing is just one of the ways advertisers use mobile devices to promote brands and products as they seek to reach out to potential customers. Text message marketing is focused on a database comprising the names of the consumers, phone numbers, and other details that can help you manage the sales cycle. That could involve full names, home telephone numbers, groups, and consumer preferences.

The more details you have on hand, and the more accurate the customer segments are, the easier, as in any campaign project. The best text message marketing is highly personalized and targeted towards a particular target demographic, similar to how Facebook advertising would target people within a defined location, by age, and my interest.

However, most brands do mean sending mass text message alerts to potential customers when they talk about SMS marketing. You can compare it to email marketing; only a brand will send text messages to consumers who have opted into their mobile marketing campaign, instead of emails.

How will users sign up for an SMS marketing campaign?

First of all, it is necessary to note that marketing text messaging is purely a marketing client. As a brand, you cannot send messages to people who have not opted in to your SMS campaign.

Consumers must first pass an opt-in process, which confirms their willingness/consent to receive messages.

Text message marketing opt-in methods:

Besides offering the opt-in method of sending a keyword to a short code, brands can also provide consumers with the option to subscribe via a form on their website. A third alternative is a point-of-sale method, where people are given a chance to opt-in to an SMS campaign when they are at a physical store’s checkout counter.

But there are lots of opt-in approaches marketers may use to attract followers for their ads, but it is essential that customers actively agree to accept messages.

Consumer responses to SMS Marketing:

Once the SMS alert reaches a subscriber, such as going to a restaurant and trying to redeem a coupon to enjoy a free food item, or going to an online store to buy discounted products, that person can then react to the offer in the message.

While these are favorable responses for marketers, they must bear in mind that customers may still choose to opt-out from the marketing campaign at any given time.

Potential advantages of text message marketing:

Text marketing brings several benefits. Because the overwhelming majority of customers have their mobile phones with them most of the time, marketers have a better likelihood of connecting to them in real-time.

Additionally, people are far more likely to open text messages than promotional emails. Companies that give mobile users exclusive discounts and prices may also boost sales and attract people towards a purchase they would otherwise not have made.

So that’s the pure phase of SMS marketing, which is also a potent contact tool for companies who choose to send their advertising messages to several consumers concurrently.

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