Top 3 Reasons Why You Should Be Using SMS Marketing To Grow Your Business

Is SMS marketing the new “big thing” for store owners in 2019? First off what is SMS marketing and how does it work? Simply, SMS marketing is sending permission-based text messages to spread promotional content. Just like email marketing, customers are required to opt in to a SMS service provider in order to receive promotional content like new product releases, discount codes and upcoming events/sales. You can use SMS software just like your ESP, you can segment and list all of your subscribers, send out automated triggered flows (ie abandoned carts), and even send campaigns.

So you may be wondering why bother with SMS marketing if you already are implementing all of this in your email marketing and have a large email list built? There are many great benefits to SMS marketing but I will focus on what I believe are the top 3 benefits of SMS marketing.

1) You can use SMS marketing to compliment your email strategy

SMS marketing shares some important similarities with email marketing that makes it perfect to compliment your email marketing. When using both methods it can allow you to send the right messages at the right time. For example try using your SMS marketing for short time sensitive communications like last minute sale reminders or when a new product that just launched is almost out of stock and use your email to push more of your informative content like blog posts.

2) Great engagement with your customers

Whether you are sending out a discount code or a informative message your potential customer is a lot more likely to respond to your text message compared to another promotional channel. Research has shown SMS marketing has a response rate of 45% which allows a ton of opportunity to interact with your customers to provide great support and help them complete their purchase.

3) Extremely high open rates and conversion rates

SMS has an open rate of 98% yes you read that correctly 98% which is incredibly high compared to other marketing mediums which makes SMS such a powerful marketing tool. With such a high open rate brands are seeing conversion rates of up to 45%. Not only are 98% of your SMS messages are being opened but 90% of them are being read in the first 3 minutes of being received. Think about how effective of a method this would be for things like abandoned cart notifications or back in stock notifications knowing the customer has a 98% chance of opening the message and within three minutes. Also having such a high and quick open rate this allows you to market time sensitive content and also have support ready and waiting for a possible influx of messages after a campaign is sent.

How to implement SMS marketing

If you were looking for a marketing edge on your competitors SMS marketing might be the best solution, but how do you implement this? Two great apps to look into on the Shopify app store are Post Script (https://apps.shopify.com/postscript-sms-marketing-for-shopify) and SMS Bump (https://apps.shopify.com/smsbump)

Both apps have many great features like being able to segment your subscriber lists based on their activity, send out automated flows and campaigns and much more. Post Script comes with a free plan and then increases in price as you send out more messages. SMS Bump is free to install and has a pay as you go feature ( for US and CAN $0.0149 per sent text). If you are looking to do SMS marketing just for retargeting you might want to check out Carts Guru (https://apps.shopify.com/cartsguru) as they have some great features that combine SMS and other marketing mediums to recover abandoned carts, they have a 10 day free trial to try it yourself.

If you have any questions about the benefits SMS marketing or would like to go over SMS marketing strategy feel free to email me at brent@onlygrowth.com and I’d be happy to help answer any questions you may have.

Or visit onlygrowth.com for your free site audit and other great free content to help you grow.

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