SMS marketing platforms offer the opportunity to send live texts as well as scheduled texts. There is also a way to integrate it with your automation marketing to ensure that your clients receive certain messages at ideal points throughout the year. As a marketer, you may be wondering whether or not to set up automated messages for your text messages. Automation has its drawbacks as well as its benefits, so it works best in some situations and not in others.

Advantages of Automation

There are numerous benefits of automated marketing campaigns. Automation is an efficient way to send messages. It sets up a simple way to create, track, and monitor messages. Your routine marketing messages are sent out when needed, simplifying the process and allowing personnel to focus on other aspects of the marketing campaign. When you rely on automation services to create and send the messages, it reduces the risk of human error or oversight. This helps you to engage consumers while predicting their needs and behavior patterns, which in turn leads to better customer retention.

Disadvantages of Automation

Many people feel as though automation leads to a de-personalization and generic marketing campaign. However, the opposite is true. It actually allows you to better personalize your relationship with customers and potential customers, especially as you will have more data from which to track and analyze each consumer.

Another downside that many marketers see when considering automation is that automation software programs tend to be expensive. This may be true, but this type of marketing has a relatively high return on investment, especially as it helps to streamline your work and improve customer retention. In terms of SMS marketing, much of the automation process is already a part of the platform, making it a cost-effective solution. However, you often have the option to integrate your text message data with your automation program or other customer tracking software for a more comprehensive view of your followers.

When to Use It

Marketing automation and creating automatic text messages for your SMS marketing campaign is slightly different. Most text message campaigns are inherently automatic, especially for the opt-in message. An example is a confirmation message when a customer texts you the opt-in keyword or a special discount or reward when they text you a designated keyword.

Once your customer is on your list, there are other ways to incorporate automation into your text message campaign beyond just scheduling them. You can send out special birthday texts, anniversary messages, and more. Some text platforms also make it easy to take the concept of automation marketing to create personalized drip campaigns based on when your customers signed up for the campaign or other data.

When to Avoid It

Utilizing concepts of marketing automation or integrating your SMS marketing campaign with your larger automation program works well for business in a variety of industries. Although you have set up your automated messages, you may want to supplement them with live messages that you create. This gives a little more life to your campaign, especially as you can take advantage of current events. Text messages are opened within a few minutes of receipt, so they make for the perfect marketing channel for last minute messages. This includes developing a flash sale, discounts for services or goods to drive business on a slow day, and other ways to get people to respond right away. These types of messages cannot be automated (yet), but rely on a savvy marketer seeing potential for business in a particular situation.

Marketing automation and SMS marketing go well together. It is a way to create personalized messages while streamlining your entire campaign. However, there are times where you do not want to rely on this type of marketing, so it is important to remember to also take advantage of the unique benefits text message marketing can provide beyond being a part of an automatic marketing strategy.

Contact us to discuss automating your text message program.