With the popularity of smartphone users increasing every year, mobile marketing has become a significant opportunity for small business. More than ever, it is crucial to stay “front of mind” with customers in order to stay in business. Using SMS is one of the more affordable and effective ways to keep customers up to date on your products and services.
If you haven’t thought about using SMS to keep in touch with your customers, here are 8 reasons why you should give it a try:
1. Everyone has a mobile phone
There are approximately 30 million mobiles phones in Australia[1] and most people never leave their phone from arms reach which means that your message is going straight to the source.
2. There are multiple purposes
SMS is used by businesses in Australia to deliver alerts, staff roster information, marketing campaigns, appointment reminders, competition coupons, and payment reminders.
Sending SMS appointment reminders allows your customers the convenience of automatically confirming, rescheduling or cancelling their appointments, reducing no show rates. You can improve your cash flow by letting customers know when you’ve sent an invoice, advise them when a payment has been missed or invoices are overdue. For a full list of SMS applications for businesses see SMS Solutions.
3. High open/conversion rates
SMS is far more effective than email when communicating with customers with an open rate of up to 98 percent compared with 22 percent for emails. The majority of these text messages are read in less than 5 minutes after they’ve been received. Unlike an email, an SMS is not sitting in an inbox waiting for the recipient to take the time to read it. If your subscription list has been compiled legitimately and your message is of value, chances are your message will make your subscribers take action.
4. Short and Concise
The 160-character limit of SMS might seem like a challenge to get your message across however it forces you to get straight to the point. You don’t have to think of an appealing email subject line to get them to even read your message, let alone get to the call to action. If you need to convey more information, give them a click through to a landing page on your website.
5. Instant delivery
Once you have decided on your message, you can send it. There is no time required to create catchy looking emails. Additionally, with SMS there are no spam filters or junk folders to get through. As soon as you send your campaign, your message is received in seconds.
6. You’re allowed to
In Australia, spam also applies to SMS marketing[2] in the same way it does email marketing. That is, you need permission, the recipient should be able to easily identify the sender and there must be a simple way for them to be able to opt out. When customers make a transaction with your business, you most likely collect their mobile number, which means they have given you implicit permission to contact them. With that permission however comes trust. If you exploit the opportunity through inappropriate frequency, relevance or value they will opt-out straight away and you have lost your opportunity.
7. Affordable
With little time and expense required to create an SMS campaign combined with low message costs, SMS is an affordable tool for business of all sizes and budgets.
8. It’s really easy
Unlike email, SMS does not require you to design attractive looking emails that look perfect in every email application or on a mobile device. As an Act! user, the free Addon, SMS4Act![3] enables you to create and send an SMS to one or more contacts, straight from Act!. You can even merge fields from your Act! database to really personalise your message. Additionally, the message is recorded in Act! history along with any replies.
SMS is a simple, quick, efficient and cost effective way to deliver messages to your Act! contacts and with a long list of applications, SMS is likely to make an impact in your business.
Visit www.sms4act.com to find out more about SMS4Act! or give us a call on 1300 362 046.
- ACMA Comunications Report 2011-12
- Australian Anti-Spam Laws
- SMS4Act! requires an account with MessageMedia