How SMS Marketing Can Be Used for Lead Generation
Text message marketing is a great way to connect with your customers and build trust. But, it can be hard for new marketers to know where to start with SMS lead generation.There are many different ways you can use text messages in your business, but finding the right one for you might take some time and effort.
Are you thinking of adopting SMS lead generation as your marketing strategy, but aren’t sure of what it entails and what to expect? Then, this post is specially written for you to offer you in-depth knowledge and guide you on your SMS marketing journey.
SMS means Short Message Service which also means a text message. Today, a great number of internet users do so via mobile phones and other mobile devices, and about 60% of Google searches are done via mobile. This gives you plenty of reasons to incorporate text messaging into your marketing endeavor most especially when the most used data service in the world today is a text message.
Text messaging as a marketing strategy makes a lot of sense because it gives your business a competitive advantage and doesn’t require people to be connected to the internet to receive your messages.
Delivery is also very fast and guaranteed because SMS doesn’t end up in the wrong folders or lost in transit like email that can get discarded in spam filters. It is also one of the most affordable forms of communication.
Where SMS Lead Generation is Mostly Used
SMS lead generation is a marketing strategy that is used by any serious business that needs paying customers. They benefit from SMS lead generation because it connects them more effectively with prospects.
So many companies, agencies, and industries utilize SMS lead generation, and this strategy is very efficient in the following business areas:
Talent Acquisition Agencies Employment agencies make use of SMS to contact job seekers. They also use it to send invitations to qualified applicants or to ask them to apply via texts. SMS is also further used to keep the candidates abreast with information during the entire hiring process.
Real Estate Agencies
Most real estate agencies use SMS integration on their websites to make it much easier for interested buyers to find out more information about a property.
They also use SMS to collect prospects’ contact information. Once the contact information is collected, the agents then send open house reminders and other vital information to prospects via SMS.
Event Management Event managers use text messages to increase event attendance, promote ticket sales, and even collect more information from attendees at trade shows.
Political Campaigns
Political campaigns that desire to reach their voters quickly also utilize SMS to help their campaigns more effectively and to generate more leads. They normally add a shortcode to text messages to collect useful details which can then be used for re-marketing.
SMS lead generation helps you find people who are interested in your business and by sending appropriate text messages you can then turn them into paying customers.
3 Advantages of Using SMS for Lead Generation
Reach Your Target Audience.
The first and most important reason to adopt the use of SMS for lead generation is that it makes it easier and quicker to reach your actual audience compared with email.
The chances of prospects opening and reading SMS once delivered to their phones is much higher than that of emails. According to MailChimp, an email open rate is an average of around 21% overall. And for other marketing and advertising, it is around 17%.
SMS-based marketing is a significantly successful channel with open rates that average 95% or even higher when compared to all of the other failing channels.
If a business actually wants its marketing communications to reach prospects and customers more efficiently, then investing in SMS lead generation is the best approach.
Separate Your Audience and Target Them With The Appropriate Messages.
Your prospects have different interests and are also at different phases in their purchasing journey.
And therefore, they must be segmented differently to avoid mix-ups and to reach out to them with only messages that are relevant to their interests
After painstakingly observing their behavior and categorizing them on separate lists, you can send target text messages and offers to specific groups.
Make sure the SMS is short, objective, and summarises your entire purpose. You don’t want to send misleading messages that are off point, difficult to interpret and don’t make any sense.
Sending SMS is an immediate way of communication, which means that your prospects won’t have time for long readings.
Although categorization of prospects can also be done on email, text messaging’s higher open rate makes categorization with SMS marketing far more effective.
Improves Marketing Messaging.
A common marketing problem is that most marketing tactics that actually seem like a good idea often fail in practice. But, to now figure out which of the tactics is actually fine can be unfortunately expensive and all you can do is to just try each one.
When you run a campaign, you will have to monitor the results and learn something, then you make appropriate changes.
But when it comes to SMS marketing, you can learn things very quickly because prospects’ engagement level with SMS messages is very high.
For instance, you decide to try out a new discount to see if it increases sales. You will want to see how about 50 people respond to your offer before you finally decide whether you will continue to use that discount or not.
Based on the above illustration, with an email having an open rate of 20%, you would need to send the email to 250 people in order to get 50 opens. This means that you will need to send out 250 email messages just to find out if the discount is effective.
While if you use SMS which has been proven to have an open rate of about 95%, you would only need to send text messages to just 53 people to get the same 50 opens.
Therefore, because text messaging is much more efficient than email you can easily gather data to assess your marketing performance much faster because you will gather the data very quickly using SMS.
And with this data, you can easily improve your marketing much more quickly and also identify the best possible ways to generate leads. This will ultimately help you drive more revenue.
5 Steps For Effective SMS Lead Generation
In addition to the above-listed SMS lead generation strategies, to start sending messages that will successfully drive more leads, you should also do the following:
Opt For Reliable SMS Service Provider
This is actually the first and the most important step to take if you are ever considering SMS lead generation.
You must choose from the list of top SMS service providers that offer services and offer tools and features that perfectly suit all your SMS needs.
We have a list of some of these SMS providers below that you can choose from.
Promote Your Number
You need to promote your number so that people can easily access it and reach out to you. This can be achieved by including your number in your website, your Facebook page, and also on paid ads. You should encourage people to send you an SMS whenever they want and be sure to respond right promptly
Constantly Engage your Prospects
Since the ultimate goal of SMS Marketing is to create a fast and reliable way of communicating with your customers. You should create complex conversation flows which enable your mobile number to send messages and to also receive messages from your prospects anywhere in the world.
After the setup, make sure to keep sending your customers periodical SMS informing them of new products, promotions, and special offers. This will keep them glued to you and keep them abreast with the latest developments in your business.
Also, use this technology to show them that you not only care about your business but care a lot about their well-being as well. Send them birthday greetings and season greetings during different festive periods.
By doing this, you will stand out among your competition and earn the respect, love, and loyalty of your customers.
Encourage People To Sign Up For Your SMS To Receive Special Deals Or Events.
This method works great as you can text specials of the day and other special promotions to your subscribers.
It is most ideal for bars, restaurants, and for service-based businesses. You can invite prospects to text you to receive a custom quote. Once they do that, you collect their data and send the information along and at the same time put them into a lead nurturing sequence.
Text messaging provides an excellent opportunity for businesses to communicate directly with customers, but it requires a great deal of caution so as not to infringe on your customers’ privacy.
It is of utmost importance that a business understands the rules and regulations around mobile marketing, such as privacy policies, and carefully getting audiences to opt-in, before they begin to send SMS to the customers.