The SMS Marketing Retail Plan to Earn More this Holiday

With the holiday season fast approaching, knowing how to properly market your business to your clients during this time of year is important.

Unlike traditional market methods, SMS marketing offers a unique and fast way for you to add a personal touch to your client outreach.

PureText offers SMS marketing services that can help just about any business owner further develop their line of communication with clients. This is regardless of the nature of the business– doctor and lawyers can benefit just the same as local shop owners.

That’s why we put together a handy list of how you can earn extra retail “jingle” during the holiday season through the use of SMS marketing.

SMS Marketing should be on your radar

SMS marketing taps into one of the biggest open playing fields there is right now: smartphones and the massive amount of people who frequently use them.

71% of people sleep with their smartphone in their hand or within a few feet of them, according to a Huffington Post report.

Don’t be surprised by this statistic, as SMS marketing can only help you to tap into the group of people who have grown very attached to their phones.

It’s only the next logical step to believe that since so many people are willing to sleep next to their phones regularly, that the great majority of people spend their days with their phones in their hands.

In fact, it takes the average American 90 minutes to view and reply to an email. The time it takes for those same people to view and reply to a text message? 90 seconds.

When you take open rates into account, SMS marketing begins to make a lot more sense. Although clients will have to opt-in to this type of interaction between your business and their phones, there is a 98% open rate with SMS marketing.

The overwhelmingly positive response to SMS marketing makes it one of these most successful methods out there to contact your customers and notify them of sales, upcoming appointments, events, and changes to your business.

Comparatively, the average open rate for email marketing campaigns is between 15 and 20%. Notice any difference?

Why you should start planning now

Including SMS marketing into your business plan requires a little bit of planning, which is balanced out by the fast nature of SMS marketing.

When it comes to composing a traditional email marketing message, the time it takes can vary from minutes to hours. SMS marketing allows businesses to send shorter messages that pack a punch– users are most likely to open these messages and interact with the information they’ve been provided.

Managing SMS marketing campaigns is straight forward and allows you to promote events with ease, sending messages out at specific times of the day to ensure that your customers receive ample notice and plenty of calls to action. And remember, if you want additional feedback about your company, studies have found that surveys are most effective through SMS.

Five things you need to do to earn some more “jingle” this holiday season through SMS marketing.

So this holiday season, try employing SMS marketing to help you earn extra retail through this method of interactive marketing.

Get opt-Ins

As we mentioned earlier, the only legal way that you can participate in SMS marketing is to develop a database of customers who have opted-in to receive this type of communication.

Gathering this group of people can begin at a personal level, speaking to people checking out at your retail store or checking into your office for their appointment.

By getting a head start on this database, you will be able to begin your SMS marketing in the holiday season.

Create interaction

By asking your customers questions through texts and informing them of deals or events they may be interested in, with personalized touches throughout the message, you are creating a dedicated user base that is more likely to text back than opt-out.

When companies send the same type of messaging and use the same marketing strategies over and over again, customers become desensitized and disinterested. Instead, wording like “We thought you’d find this interesting…” or “This caught our attention- what do you think?” may reign users in.

Create urgency

We know that SMS marketing will get you the outstanding open rates you need to convert more sales and bring more customers into your growing business, but these messages must be of substance for those rates to mean anything.

Creating a sense of urgency and grabbing the attention of your audience is key here.

By adding time sensitive information, like “this sale is only going on until Saturday!”, will help you draw people in.

Additionally, creating messaging that resonates most with your user base will help you continue to create content that people will be interested in. As a silly example, try to avoid sending out information about your big BBQ cook-off if you know many people interested in your business are vegan.

Send coupons

Who doesn’t like a discount? Giving your clients the opportunity to save money as a reward for being on your opt-in list for SMS marketing is one of the top ways to bring in extra retail during the holiday season.

You can even tailor your messages to address each holiday respectfully (remember- there’s more than Christmas!) so that all corners of your database are included and happy to receive the perks of being on your list.

As a bonus for you, the redemption rate is 10 times higher for coupons sent via SMS marketing, meaning you will be drawing in extra customers to your location to make their purchase and use their coupon.

Link to other platforms

The usage of social media is incredibly large and widespread, so it makes sense for you to begin using your SMS marketing to link to your other platforms.

All smartphones are able to open links that are provided to them via an SMS message, so giving your customers a link to a special holiday page or “greeting card” is a great holiday touch that can be transmitted via SMS marketing.

Linking to your social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter also gives your customers the option to keep in touch with your business even further by getting updates and additional opportunities to interact with you.

And remember…

During this holiday season SMS marketing can really bring in some extra “jingle,” so be sure to contact us to talk about how SMS marketing can impact your business.