Text Message Marketing

Drop Cowboy Text Messaging & Ringless Voicemail Software

Marketing isn’t about using the latest technologies - it’s about using the smartest. That’s why so many companies are returning to text messages - old-fashioned SMS - to deliver critical pieces of information to their customers. They’re doing it because it works.

Today’s consumers are saturated by email marketing, banner ads, and paid search. Not to put a finer point on it, but they’re tired of it. SMS marketing, however, is different. Audiences react to text messages with more engagement, interest, and higher open rates. There’s something about receiving SMS that provokes a positive interaction and bypasses the struggle we see with other channels.

How Do Businesses And Organizations Use Text Messaging Marketing To Their Advantage?

Some of the smartest (and largest) commercial organizations in the world use text marketing as a way of communicating with their customers. They’ve discovered that it’s one of the most powerful tools for building brand awareness and they’re prepared to use it as much as they can. Mass SMS is the go-to option for marketing managers who are struggling to get their messages out in any other way.

Building your SMS marketing operations is surprisingly simple.

Get People To Opt-In To Your Marketing Messages

The first step is to get people to opt into your marketing messages. You can’t usually send text message marketing until you’ve got people’s permission to market to them via mobile. While this wasn’t always the case, rules like this are what give SMS marketing its value. People so rarely receive marketing-oriented text messages that they are still prepared to open and read each one - think about how different that is from, say, email.

To get people to opt-in to your marketing message, you’ll need them to confirm that they want to receive communications from you using a “shortcode” or “keyword.” Customers will send you either of these confirmations, and then you’ll build a database of contacts you can send messages to whenever you like. In the past, SMS marketing was only available to major corporations, but now it’s something that anybody can use.

Start Sending Messages

The next phase is to start sending messages using platforms like Drop Cowboy. Sending texts to your customer via a mobile device isn’t practical. Most companies, therefore, use a third-party, cloud-based platform that can send thousands or hundreds of thousands of messages out to customers with a single click. A text marketing platform allows you to upload your contact list and then divide and subdivide it how you wish. You then type in your text message, ensure that it appeals to your audience, and click send. The platform will do the rest.

Why Is Text Marketing So Powerful?

Data suggest that text marketing is a powerful way to communicate with your customers, but just what it is about it that makes it so good? After all, why would so many alternative marketing strategies have been developed over the last twenty years if SMS was king? More to the point, why don’t we hear as much about text message marketing in the press as we do things like SEO and paid search? Let’s find out.

Better Distribution

The first reason for the success of SMS is the ease with which companies and organizations can send out messages to customers. Mobile networks make it effortless to send marketing information, and practically all consumers own a mobile device capable of receiving SMS.

Did you know that 98 percent of the US population has an SMS-capable mobile device?

The number of people who can receive SMS on their devices is much higher than the number of people who can receive emails (or use company apps). Smartphone penetration is high, but it’s not as high as regular, mobile devices. Even people with landline can receive text messages these days, opening up numerous possibilities.

People Carry Their Cell Phones Everywhere

To say that people are attached at the hip to their mobile devices isn’t hyperbole - in many cases, it’s the literal truth. People love their phones and carry them with them wherever they go, including places you’d never predict before the mobile revolution. Your customers take their phones with them to the bathroom, on fairground rides, and, if it’s waterproof, the swimming pool.

Utilizing a Predictive Dialer can be very powerful if you are properly outfitted for this type of sales environment. Its not always necessary to speak with your customers in real time and depending on the marketing campaign mass texting can be a better option. Your customers are far more likely to redeem coupons you send them. Did you know that customers use between 30 and 50 percent of all coupons send out by SMS? You’d be hard-pressed to find a utilization rate that high in any other form of marketing.

High Click-Through Rates

The holy grail of email marketing and PPC is to boost so-called “click-through rates.” The click-through rate is just the proportion of customers who click the link that you want them to click and arrive at a sales, donation, or sign- up page. Getting people to click through, though, is a significant challenge. People are surprisingly unwilling to do so in most circumstances. Again, however, this is where text message marketing shines. Around 29 percent of people who choose to use text marketing services click on the links contained in the texts. Furthermore, 47 percent of those who click through ultimately wind up making a purchase.

More Exposure Than Social Media

Text message marketing is surprisingly useful when you want to get your audience to read the messages that you send. Text marketing appears to be dramatically more effective than, say social media marketing, despite the latter filling the popular discourse.

The data on the read rates of social media marketing is shocking. Figures show that people only read around 29 percent of company Tweets and just 12 percent of Facebook posts. Organizations, therefore, are putting enormous amounts of effort into something that is yielding poor results. Text messaging is not only easier from a marketing standpoint than these social media options, but is also much more effective at reaching your audience. People seem much more willing to consume text messages than they are other forms of advertising communication.

Higher Open Rates Than Email

When a person receives a text message, there’s something inside them that wants to open it and see what’s inside, even if it’s clear that it’s marketing. What’s interesting is that we don’t see the same behavior when it comes to email. People are much more likely to ignore a promotional email than they are text message marketing. It’s a surprising finding, but true.

One of the reasons for this has to do with the fact that people carry their mobile devices with them wherever they go and usually opt to receive SMS notifications. Text message marketing reaches people instantly, whereas email marketing may not. Furthermore, if a person limits their use of email to work or their desktop computer, they’re much less incentivized to check every item of mail that they receive. They do not get a notification telling them that a new message has arrived.

The combination of all of these reasons is what makes text marketing so effective. The data shows that text message marketing is something that practically all organizations should be trying to use, and yet few are. So long as you have a strategy in place to grow your mobile marketing database, using text message marketing services is vital. If you don’t, you could be missing out on higher click-through rates, conversions, and revenue. Is that an opportunity you can afford to pass up?

Managing Your Text Marketing Database With Grouping

While using keywords and codes can work for small groups of customers, your text message marketing database can become unwieldy the larger it grows. It’s tough to manage each customer who opts in using the same code.

Many free text marketing services will draw you in by promising to provide you with a certain number of free SMS or MMS, but many of these services don’t provide database support. Managing a database of thousands of customers, all replying with particular keywords, can be a challenge if you don’t use the right software.

Professional text message marketing platforms attempt to get around this problem by using a concept called “grouping.” The idea is pretty simple. You group customers according to the keywords that they use and then linking those to particular services. So, for instance, suppose you’re in the pet food business, and you sell food for dogs and cats. All of your customers who own cats would text you the keyword “CATS,” and all of the customers who own dogs would send “DOGS.” Grouping lets you categorize customers according to the type of pet that they own and then customize your marketing messages. What you don’t want to do is waste money irritating cat owners by sending them marketing messages relevant to dog owners. That would annoy them intensely and lead to lower open rates.

The benefits of grouping are, in our view, substantial. The tactic helps to make text marketing more focused - just like other forms of marketing available through other channels. Your primary role is to appeal to the people most likely to buy from you with suitable text messages.

Grouping offers a host of benefits.

Broaden Your Customer Appeal

Not all of your customers will have the same interests. Some, for instance, will want to know more about dog food, while others want to know about cat food - as per the above example. But let’s say that you have a third category of customers who keeps pet fish. What do you do then? With text message marketing and grouping, there’s a simple solution: just create a new group. Once you’ve set it up, you can then start sending specific messages to the owners of pet fish.

Cut Down On Opt-Outs

If people keep getting irrelevant text marketing from you, there’s a high chance that they will opt-out. Your customers don’t want endless messages marketing one kind of product when they want another. Unfortunately, if you don’t use groups and spam all the people in your database with text marketing, you run the risk of frustrating your customers. Grouping helps you to be more specific in your marketing messages, cutting down substantially on opt-outs.

Create More Targeted Campaigns

The overall performance of text message marketing is already fabulously high, as we’ve discussed above. But with grouping, you can take it to the next level with targeted campaigns. With a targeted campaign, you create messages that will appeal directly to particular groups in your customer base. If you know that people have an interest in one of your products, then sending them text marketing about it can help rouse interest enormously.

You can also use grouping to address segments of your audience likely to be interested in specific themes. Suppose, for instance, that you’re running a competition to raise brand awareness and you’re offering two free tickets to a football game. Grouping allows you to target only the demographic likely to want to enter the competition.

Develop Deeper Relationships With Customers

Your customers want you to understand them. If you send them relevant text marketing, they are much more likely to believe that you do. The better you can tailor your marketing messages to their needs, the more likely they are to engage with your business. Grouping here is important. The more finely you can classify customer by group, the better you’re able to deliver your messages. Grouping tools are, therefore, vital to any text message marketing campaign.

Try Text Message Marketing With Drop Cowboy

If you’re planning a text message marketing campaign, then you’ve come to the right place. Drop Cowboy makes the process simple, giving you a wide variety of tools to improve the effectiveness of your campaign. Pair Texting and Online Calling efforts into your sales cycle and you'll have the enterprise level communication system you have been looking for.

The great thing about Drop Cowboy is that there are no ongoing fees, contracts, or any bloat. You pay a flat rate for each message you send - that’s it.

If you want to find out more about our service, then get in touch with us today. We’d love to help you boost your text marketing campaign to the next level. Find out more about the services that we offer and how they can be tailored to your unique business needs.