The Benefits of Text Marketing for Business Sales

Mobile marketing is all the rage and so it should be. With over 80% of internet users owning a smartphone and over 50% of those smartphone users grabbing their phone immediately after waking up, people are using their phones for everything these days. Businesses who understand the importance of mobile to their customers are optimizing their websites for mobile devices, running mobile ads, and making sure their email marketing is mobile friendly.  But many are skipping the most direct way to reach customers on their phone – text marketing.

Reach Into Customers’ Pockets

If you have a smartphone, you know how it seamlessly integrates into every aspect of your life. 98% of all texts are read and people check their phones 150 times per day on average. As soon as your phone lights up with a text message, you better believe you are going to unlock your screen and see what it says. As a business, this is one of the most effective ways to reach customers directly into their pockets.

Text Marketing Higher CTR Than Email Marketing

How many emails do you actually go through and read in your inbox? The average person receives 1,216 emails per month vs 150 text messages per month. With 98% of text messages read, text marketing can produce engagement rates 6-8 times higher than email. Even the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is better! Text messages from businesses have a 19% CTR compared to a 4.2% CTR with email marketing.

Draw More Business Sales

With impressive open and click-through-rates, text marketing presents a multitude of opportunities to draw more business sales. Here are two examples:

A gym sent out a text that read: “Start your membership for just $1! Start personal training for $0! 12 hour sale, 9am-9pm Tuesday. Call for details.” 65 people bought 3 year memberships for $1,000 each, allowing the gym to make $65,000 in 12 hours!

A pizza shop sent out a text that read: “Payday Friday? Show text to get 25% off your entire food purchase TODAY ONLY. Valid for delivery/carryout/dine-in. SUPPORT LOCAL!” 41 people showed the text and brought in their friends, causing 85 people to come to the pizza shop. They made over $1,700 with just one text!

The best way to see results like these is with killer special offers that are exclusive to your text club. By rewarding your VIP text club members with exclusive offers and by introducing those offers with perfect timing, you can see great improvement in your sales.

Additional Convenience to Your Customer

Outside of drawing business sales, you can keep your customers loyal and coming back for more of your product/services with additional conveniences that a text program can offer. These include:

• Digital Loyalty Program. Get rid of the plastic cards and allow your customers to earn rewards easier with a digital loyalty card they can “punch” with their phone.
• Appointment Reminder System. Reduce the amount of work your receptionist is doing calling people to remind them of their appointments. A text appointment reminder increases appointment attendance by nearly 50%.
• Birthday Club. Perform awesome customer service by wishing text club members a happy birthday and sending them a special birthday offer.

How to Get Started With Text Marketing

Before you can reach into your customers’ pockets, you first need to build your text marketing list. Mobile marketing laws do not allow you to buy phone numbers to text people, like you can with email lists. Instead, you provide a text code that people can text to a number to join your list. An example would be texting SALE to 76626. Once they text that number, they will be asked if they want to join the club and must respond YES before you can send them messages. After replying YES, they will be added to your marketing list.

Because people need to opt into your text club before receiving texts, you need to spread the word about your exclusive VIP program. Every business is different and will require a personalized promotion strategy for their text club. If you are interested in talking about text club promotion tactics, feel free to contact us today!