All you need to know about Text Marketing

Day-by day the world of eCommerce is getting more competitive, hence as a retailer you need  to find a way to stand out from the crowd. What effective source can be used to attract customer’s attention? And, how can you build customer loyalty at the same time?

Text marketing is the answer!

People will like to receive your special offers and messages on their phones because it not only makes it more convenient and easy to access, but also you make them feel special. This helps you build a loyalty with them and they’ll positively associate your business with great discounts and value.

If you haven’t yet added text marketing to your marketing mix, now it’s the time!

In this blog, we will discuss on things that to need to keep in mind to run a successful marketing campaign

Below are five factors that you need consider for your text marketing to compliment your email marketing.

Permission

You may have a huge list of email subscribers with their mobile numbers mentioned in your database, but that doesn’t mean you should directly target them with your text marketing messages. Similar to email marketing, text marketing is permission-based opt-in channel.

Your customers themselves must opt-in to receive your offers and information on their cellphones. You can either do by:

– sending a keyword with the short code which the customers needs to follow which in turn acts as a confirmation (Text “Receive Deals” and send TO “5101010” for receiving promotional offers).

OR

– add an option (allow a ticker) in your web or email subscription forms.

As per the telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”), a revised law has been enforced for text marketing. Beginning October 16th, 2013 – a prior written consent will be required for all text  and call made to people for marketing purpose. Compliance with E-SIGN Act also satisfies this requirement, means any electronic or digital forms of signature are acceptable too.

Do it either of the ways, in the end you need to ensure that the customer has agreed to receiving text marketing message from your brand.

Characters

Your customers may not like, or have the time to read long messages. Ensure your text marketing messages are simple and short to grab customer’s attention at a glance.

A single message offers a limit of 160 characters, and it’s your duty to ensure the text message should not exceed the limit. By doing this, you’ll save your customer’s time and simultaneously earn a good brand value. The best way is to come up with catchy phrases and relate them with your brand/offers to create an effective impact in your customer’s mind.

Immediate value

Focusing on the limit of 160 characters, it becomes very important you make a good use of it. Ensure you text messages include an immediate value (e.g. click now for an additional 20% discount) that is relevant to your customers demographics. Craft a text message that makes it easy for your customers to understand and get them into action (e.g. allow scannable QR code, or text a simple code to a number as explained in point 1). Offering discounts via text marketing can increase engagement level and sales for your business.

Frequency

Adopting a text campaign doesn’t mean you shoot messages to your customers every now and then. This will not only annoy your them, but also force them to unsubscribe from your text marketing campaigns.

You probably set a correct frequency from the start, this means you can send weekly , fortnightly, or monthly deals. In the end, to make your audience engage more with the brand becomes very important.

Timings

Remember, you’ll want more and more customers to engage with your brand, hence the time that you’ll consider for your text marketing, will matter the most.

Every customer will have a unique lifestyle and you don’t know what it is, hence targeting them with your text marketing messages anytime will not bring in the results you may be expecting. Therefore, know you target audience and decide a particular time to send those marketing messages to them. Ideally, evenings are the best time to target customers as most of them get free from their routine work and it’s their time to relax and chill. And, if you are looking for bigger engagement level, Friday evenings will be an ideal choice. This will allow customers to engage with your brand in the weekend (Saturday, Sunday) with a peaceful mind.

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