Starbucks is one of the most popular brands in the United States, but did you know that they're also an innovator when it comes to SMS marketing? Starbucks was one of the first companies to fully embrace mobile applications, and they continued their mobile focus by launching several successful SMS marketing campaigns.
Here are three lessons that you can learn from the success of Starbucks:
SMS Helps Increase Brand Loyalty
Major companies are investing in mobile marketing efforts, such as SMS, to help boost their brand loyalty. By closely tying in SMS marketing to mobile apps, loyalty memberships and exclusive perks, customers will have more reasons to choose your brand and return repeatedly.
After Starbucks SMS marketing push, they found that their mobile sales had increased a whopping 75% over last year. In addition, they found that twice as many customers were using their mobile app for payments (ten million people total). Because of the SMS campaign, these customers are now more fully integrated with Starbucks, and much more likely to continue returning to them.
SMS marketing campaigns sometimes feel like they're printing money!
It Helps You Stay Relevant
One of the most difficult challenges marketers face is staying relevant in an increasingly agile world. Marketing campaigns can be outdated before they go live, but SMS marketing is instant. Starbucks was able to take advantage of this by launching an extremely successful campaign for iced coffee drinks throughout the summer. They offered coupon codes, happy hours, and random deals throughout the summer. They added to the campaign by adding humorous, surprising touches, like a picture of a cat in outer space.
Starbucks has also had great success with their 12 Days of Christmas promotion where they offered a different gift for sale each week. Some of the most popular items they offered included refillable coffee mugs that could be used throughout the next month of January. By offering deals to drive the Starbucks brand for Christmas gifts, they were also able to incentivize the recipients of the gifts to return often the next month- turning them into customers, as well!
SMS Marketing Works Hand-In-Hand With Social Media
One of the reasons that Starbucks' SMS campaigns are successful is their terrific integration with social media. Starbucks uses their online presence to drive traffic to SMS, and vice-versa. This provides a great opportunity to grow your social media presence while also focusing on customer loyalty and sales!
This is how Starbucks was able to leverage their social media presence:
- Offering incentives. Many of the opt-in forms posted by Starbucks promised gifts, coupons, or other promotions. Incentives have been proven to drive email subscriptions, so it isn't surprising that it would help boost SMS subscriptions, too.
- Using media to stand out. Starbucks was able to grab attention by posting Facebook pictures of frappuncinos with faces in them, and tweeting pictures of dogs with coffee on a beach. The pictures were relevant, humorous, and demanded attention.
- Drove awareness. Throughout their summer campaign, Starbucks continued to send out social media messages, which continued to get shared, favorited, and commented on. Their tight, relevant marketing message reached enough people to have a significant effect on mobile sales and app signups.
Social media is an SMS marketer's greatest ally!
Do you think you have what it takes to match Starbucks success? Give it a try for free by taking advantage of our free trial here!