Many smart marketers make the (giant) mistake of underestimating the promotional impact of text messages. Others commit the twin sin of failing to use them to their full advantage. Understand the seven core benefits of text marketing, however, and you're on your way to properly harnessing this tool's impressive influence.
How weighty is that influence? An estimated 8.3 trillion text messages are expected to be sent in 2015, and in 2013 North American users averaged 6.5 billion SMS messages per day. Texting's transition from novelty to integral part of everyday life is complete. And, with that change, text marketing's potential advantages have expanded. The vast majority of people who enroll in SMS loyalty programs believe they gain value from it, and SMS coupons are 10 times more likely to be redeemed than paper or email coupons. If you're not considering text marketing, you should be. Here are seven clear advantages of this marketing method.
1. Higher Open Rates Than email and Direct Mail
With text marketing, you're reaching people who have opted in and want to receive offers from you. Marketing to an existing customer base has a high return on investment. Furthermore, since these people want to receive information from you, they deliver very high read rates for your messages.
2. Text Marketing Allows Detailed, Up-to-the-Minute Analytics
With many types of marketing it's hard to get decent analytics and deduce what you're doing right and what could use improvement. With text marketing, by contrast, you should expect timely analytics on open rates and your redemption rate data can be be added to at the point of sale, as the transaction happens.
3. People Like the Simplicity of Text Marketing
If you send a coupon or offer by text message, there's no coupon to cut out or lose, and redeeming the offer is simple. People's lives are complex enough, and text marketing lets consumers take advantage of fun offers, contests, and polls with minimal hassle.
4. People Have Phones With Them Practically 24/7
People generally check their traditional postal mail once a day. Email accounts may be checked several times a day. But phones are in view with near constancy. When you use text marketing, you can be confident that your message will be received and probably read within seconds of arrival.
5. Opt-In Lets You Target Marketing Without Wasting Time or Money
When people opt in to your text marketing program, you can know you're sending your messages and special offers to a targeted, receptive audience. You won't waste time or money messaging people who are poor leads.
6. Text Marketing Is Environmentally Friendly
In 2012, there were $1,535 available in coupon savings for every person in the US, yet on average people only took advantage of $10.75 in coupon savings. That same year, coupon redemption volume dropped by 14.3%. That represents a lot of paper going to waste. When offers are sent by text, there's no clipping, and no searching through pockets or purses to locate coupons at the point of sale. Text marketing is much friendlier to the environment than printed offers.
7. Text Marketing Reaches Coveted Young Consumers
Close to one-third of adults prefer communicating by text message over phone calls, and the percentage is higher among younger adults. Texting is a way of life for Millennials, the up-and-coming consumer generation, so it's only natural that text marketing is a good fit with this demographic.
Text marketing makes sense across a range of industries. It's quick, simple, environmentally friendly, and you can collect analytics with the ease and accuracy needed to make the data useful. Whether you want to run a contest, send out a coupon code, or announce a sale, text marketing is a cost-effective, powerful way to reach consumers on a device that most have within arm's reach at all times.