5 Reason SMS is THE Marketing Channel for DTC Brands in 2020
DTC brands are touting 20x — 100x+ ROI (I’m not kidding) using SMS marketing to market to their customers.
Nevertheless, most online stores have yet to dip their toes into this uncharted water.
As a rule, the less a channel is utilized by your competition the more valuable it is, and the reality is, as of writing this, very few brands are texting their customers.
The whitespace is massive and brands that are stepping up and trying it out are seeing uncomfortably high returns.
If you are an online store owner, I thinks it’s genuinely irresponsible not to at least explore what this channel has to offer and taste it for yourself.
That said, I know that some of you may not know what exactly it has to offer yet.
In this article, I’ll dive into 5 reasons why text is such an important channel for brands to leverage in order to scale and provide better user experience in 2020 and beyond.
5 Reasons DTC Brands Need SMS
1. Speed
“95% of text messages are opened within 90 seconds of being sent”’
Is that eye-popping stat a desperate, hail-mary to get you to stick around? Possibly…
But if you as a business owner or marketer had 3 wishes.
I’m guessing the ability to be instantly seen and heard by your customers would be wishes 1 through 3.
And, frankly, SMS comes quite close to granting.
With the speed of engagement on the channel, you are able to not only drive traffic quickly (Businesses literally see massive spikes in traffic after sending text promotion simply because they are opened so quickly)
You are also able to personalize your communication due to its conversational nature in a way that isn’t possible anywhere except maybe messenger. (Which you should be doing too, but that for another post)
Now, of course, this power must be used wisely. Unlike email or even paid media, text is a much more volume-sensitive channel.
If you are texting people twice a day, you will burn your list pretty damn fast.
However, this does not change the fact that weekly or even bi-weekly promotions and content sent to your SMS list will drastically increase both revenues for your business, and customer experience for your loyal patrons.
As mentioned earlier businesses are seeing 20x to 100x ROI on their Text Marketing, and using the channel to build closer relationships with their customer base at that.
2. Access
“95% of text messages are opened within 90 seconds of being sent”
I didn’t copy it again by accident.
The 90 seconds bit is important for this reason. It allows for all kinds of promotional and marketing strategies that are all but impossible when you don’t have the near guarantee of the person seeing your message within minutes of receiving it.
Just as a couple of examples.
- Flash Sale Promotions — someone may not see your email for a week, but with SMS you can run hour-long flash sale promotions that drive real urgency with your most engaged and high-value customers.
- Post Purchase Up-Sells — Of course, you can do this with other channels, but the effectiveness of offering someone a sponge along with their bar of soap instantaneously right inside SMS drives conversions dramatically higher.
The immediacy of the channel is also something that doesn’t exist virtually anywhere else in the marketing world and it allows for all kinds of und creative promotions that you could not do otherwise.
3. Low Competition/Untapped
Competitive advantage.
We all talk about it with regard to your USP, but not many talk about it with regard to marketing channels.
Imagine 2 companies with comparable products, but one using a marketing channel that is much more personalized, faster, and higher engagement than the other.
This has real impacts on your ability to stand out from other companies that may already have your customer’s emails or cookies in browsers.
By leveraging text messaging, you are able to put yourself where the competitors are not, and really increase the likelihood of a person recalling your brand over someone else’s, which has material impacts on sales.
4. Loyalty
The same reason many business owners are leery to begin texting customers is the precise reason it is so valuable.
We get text messages from those that are closest to us. Friends, family, significant others. It’s an intimate medium.
What does that tell you about the kind of people that will subscribe to your brand’s text list?
They love you!!
These are by far your most loyal customers with the highest LTV.
And by using a high engagement channel like text to communicate with them you are making all the more valuable to your business.
5. Personalization
This last piece is an understated, but important part of what makes text, in particular, so dangerous as a marketing channel.
It’s conversational.
This makes it not only more personable as a channel, but also more personalized.
Of course, you should be segmenting your email list. However, all the data you have at your finger-tips in email is opens, clicks, and webpage visits.
You cannot get and segment based on actual responses from your customers.
With text, you have real responses to go off of.
And this opens the door to more targeted personalized offers, which studies have shown increase the likelihood of becoming a repeat customer by 78% (Neil Patel) and increase likelihood of fist time purchases as well.
Conclusion
Like anything else, SMS is but a complement to a holistic set of marketing strategies and channels.
I’m not recommending anyone abandon their email list here. That’s for sure.
However, companies that jump on this now will be at a significant advantage over those that wait months or years to do so.
After all, there are only so many SMS lists a person can subscribe to. I don’t know about you but I don’t envision a future where people are subscribed to 50–100 SMS lists like they do with email.
There will be a crowding-out effect.
If you are not there first and your competitors are, you run the risk of being squeezed out. So hop on this now using a tool like Postscript or Attentive Mobile and let me know how it goes.
And if your brand is already using SMS Marketing I’d love to hear in the comments how it’s working for and what you’re finding success with.
Market well, my friends.
Bayo Ojo
