One of the main challenges in marketing is getting your promotions seen by the people who could be potential customers.
Many marketers say focus on conversions and that is fine, but I would argue that the first and most important job is to get as many people to see your marketing message as possible and then start to optimize your offer for conversions.
Bulk SMS actually gives marketers an opportunity to get maximum exposure on any marketing message, in fact, I’m unaware of any other advertising medium that can help business owners and marketers gain so much exposure.
More exposure means more sales conversions according to smspapa.com.au.
In this article, I’ll share with you the exact reasons why I think businesses (especially small and mid-sized businesses) should have bulk SMS as part of their overall customer engagement strategy.
What Is Bulk SMS?
Bulk SMS is essentially text messaging using an online web portal.
The exciting thing about using an online-enabled version of text messaging is that you can extend your capabilities into the online world for example sending SMS messages from you’re your favorite email platform with bulk SMS or integrating it into your e-commerce platform so that you can send out an SMS to shoppers who still have products inside their cart.
Here are 6 reasons why businesses should be using bulk SMS to generate more leads and sales.
1. High Open Rates
If your marketing doesn’t get opened it doesn’t matter how good your offer is which is why marketers place such a high value on open rates.
While email drags its heels offering an embarrassing 20% open rate on average, SMS will get you anywhere from 82-98% open rates – that’s with no fancy graphics – just plain old text.
2. Bulk SMS Is Easy
If you have ever sent a text message to more than one person at a time then you have 90% of what you need to know on how to use SMS online. Most SMS portals are incredibly simple, more “advanced” web SMS portals that will allow you to add an image to your text.
To get started all you need to do is upload your mobile contacts and get started sending messages.
If you don’t have mobile contacts then you can set up a text messaging campaign to start collecting which every web SMS platform allows you to do.
3. High Click-Through Rates
Once you get your message opened and read you still need to get that click-through, it’s the next step in the conversion process.
Email marketers will typically see around a 3-5% click-through response rate while SMS can be as high as 30%+.
When you combine high open rates with high click-through rates you’re starting to see some exciting revenue potential.
4. No SPAM Filters
Have you ever wondered why only 20% of people open your emails? SPAM filters.
Did you know that there are over 400+ words (most are everyday words) that could potentially trigger the spam bot to throw your email into the SPAM folder?
SMS isn’t an online tool so there are no SPAM algorithms to block it which means close to 100% delivery rate!
5. No Ad Blockers
Running paid ads is a tough game it’s a constant game of squeezing the most out of your budget while trying to capture the most attention and all of this is for nothing with people who have ad blockers built into their browsers.
SMS currently has no blocking technology apart from a person actively blocking your mobile number which means you get 100% delivery.
6. No High Ad Costs
Every year more businesses try their hand at online advertising which drives down the ad inventory supply which drives up the costs making it more expensive every year to acquire a new customer.
SMS has no inventory limitation which means the costs not only do not go up they actually have come down making it one of the cheapest advertising channels available to business owners and marketers.
7. You Own The Platform
When it comes to marketing on social media or on advertising networks it’s important to understand that you do not own that channel which means at any point a policy change can happen that can hurt your campaign performance – and it does happen to remember when Facebook dropped organic reach to just 1% overnight? A lot of businesses lost a valuable marketing channel and were forced to pay to play.
At any given time an ad network can ban your account and are only required to give you a standard reason as to why which could be something like “you’ve violated our advertising terms”.
If you’re running ads on Facebook this could mean weeks or months sending emails to try and get your account ban overturned all the while losing sales during this period.
With SMS you essentially own the platform, there are no strict ad policies or SPAM folders you get 100% access to everyone on your list – the only requirement is that you use an opt-out option on every message so people can unsubscribe.
8. Low competition
Since most businesses will typically use the same advertising channels (driving the costs up for everyone) only a small percentage are using bulk SMS which means you have little to no direct competition.
Also, there are new SMS services starting up all of the time which brings down the prices of SMS across the board making it a big win for those who do use it.
Conclusion
- Bulk SMS technology comes with a lot of benefits out of the box like high engagement rates and online capabilities like email to SMS and API features.
- It’s also an offline marketing channel which means it is immunized against such as algorithm updates, ad blockers, SPAM filters, reputation scores, and overnight policy changes all of which have a negative impact on advertising campaign performance.
- On top of that Bulk SMS is very easy to use and most people can use it right out of the box.
- With the increasing number of mobile phones being used and SMS being one of the most popular social channels online text-messaging will be around for a while.
