SMS marketing is a great way to get your message heard above the noise of other direct marketing channels. It uses the most popular form of peer-to-peer communication to deliver your marketing campaigns to consumers wherever they are, whatever they are doing.

No other direct marketing channel has the reach, the intimacy or the immediacy of SMS marketing. 92% of the population owns a mobile device capable of receiving an SMS message. 91% of those keep their mobile device within reach at all times, and the average response time to an SMS message is just 90 seconds.

SMS marketing offers multiple opportunities as a delivery service for plain text marketing messages or messages in multimedia format. It can be used effectively as a stand-alone marketing vehicle or to support a wider mobile marketing campaign.

Thousands of businesses uses SMS marketing to get their message heard above the noise of other direct marketing channels. If your business is not yet using SMS marketing to maximize the effectiveness of its mobile marketing campaigns, you are giving other businesses in your industry sector a competitive advantage.

How SMS Marketing for Businesses Works

Undoubtedly you will have seen an advertisement inviting consumers to text a keyword to a short-code number in order to take advantage of a special deal. When consumers text the keyword, they are invited to “opt-in” to a business´s text marketing database in order to receive details of future special deals.

Other methods also exist for inviting consumers to opt into a business´s text marketing database. “Click-to-join” widgets can be placed on websites or distributed via social media. Word of mouth is a great way to attract consumers interested in what your business has to say, as are SMS polls and surveys.

Details of opted in consumers are stored on a web-based group texting platform. When the business next wants to connect with its customer database, it logs into the platform, uploads the database of contacts, composes a message, and clicks send. Within minutes, the business´s customers are reading about the latest deal, responding to a poll, or saving attached vouchers to use at a later date.

One special feature of SMS marketing for businesses is the option to sort customers into groups. The sorting process is automatic when different keywords are used for different marketing campaigns, and the benefit of dividing a database into groups is that customers are only sent promotions that of interest to them. This feature can also be used to reduce marketing costs.

Further Tools to Maximize Mobile Marketing Campaigns

Group texting platforms are typically feature-rich and contain many different tools to maximize the effectiveness of mobile marketing campaigns. SMS polls and surveys have already been mentioned, and these are a great way to generate engagement and get insights into your customers´ interests that can help shape future mobile marketing campaigns. Other available tools allow you to:

• Personalize each SMS marketing message with the recipient’s name.
• Rather than immediately click send, schedule messages to be sent at the most effective time.
• Save sent messages as templates to re-use for future marketing campaigns.
• Integrate tiny URLs to redirect customers to additional information on your website.
• Attach coupons or QR codes to SMS marketing messages.

The group texting platform acts as a management portal for SMS marketing for businesses. Replies to your marketing messages are collected by the platform and can be viewed from any Internet-connected device or forwarded by SMS. Delivery rates and spikes in engagement are also recorded by the platform, and you can use these analytics to fine-tune future mobile marketing campaigns.

In addition to the above tools to maximize the effectiveness of mobile marketing campaigns, clients of Club Texting can import contacts from Mailchimp, Highrise, AWeber and Constant Contact. Clients using Eventbrite can increase database opt-ins by inviting contacts to join their group marketing service, while clients using Salesforce can track their SMS marketing analytics from within the Salesforce platform.

Try SMS Marketing for Businesses for Free

Here at Club Texting, we recognize that any mobile marketing solution you choose to drive customers to your business needs to be thoroughly evaluated to ensure it lives up to the sales pitch. We are quite happy to oblige, and offer a free pricing option you are invited to use for an unlimited time to put our group texting platform through its motions.

If you need to send more messages than the free option provides, we have a range of competitive subscription plans and a pay-as-you-go pricing option. The free trial plan comes with a demo keyword, so you can see how easy it is to build a customer database from scratch.

To find out more about SMS marketing for businesses, or to register for your free Club Texting account, do not hesitate to contact us. Our team of Client Success Managers will be happy to answer any questions you may have about SMS marketing for businesses and will guide you through the registration process and introduce you to our group texting platform. If you experience issues using the features of our platform, our team members are also on hand to provide guidance and advice.