Emails can go to the ‘Spam’ folder, but text messages will always reach your prospects.
In prospecting, the most important thing is finding the best communication tool. This tool must be able to relay your business messages to your leads with no hiccups. The simpler your communication tool, the better your engagement is. For ages, email was considered an irreplaceable, highly effective, straightforward channel to reach your target audience. However, the rise of cellular technology was about to change this mindset.
Marketers that wish to launch marketing campaigns for their small and medium-sized businesses have traditionally preferred email marketing. Today’s marketers, however, have a multitude of options, and one growing mode of great communication is text messaging.
Introducing SMS or text messages as a sales approach can be a game changer for your small business. It can help you break through the noise faster and reach your target customers without getting swayed into folders like Trash or Spam.
Let us give you an example.
Domino’s, the popular food chain known for its great pizzas and faster delivery, once decided to promote its franchise located in Charlotte, North Carolina. The team decided to reach the 25000+ students that studied at the university next to their pizza store. The goal was to promote their Facebook page. In one of the football events, they created a new ad that displayed an offer of free pizza for anyone who texted ‘49ER’ to 313131. Anyone who texted the code received the following message:
“To get FREE pizza join our Facebook group at UNCCDominos.com once you join post a message (I GOT A TEXT) & you will get FREE pizza code Reply STOP 49ER 2 Optout.”
The results were outstanding. Over 10 percent of the students in the game joined the Facebook group within 24 hours. The team focused on a similar marketing model throughout the semester and added over 2000 students to their Facebook group and 850 students to their SMS marketing list.
If you are still not convinced, here are some unique features that make SMS superior to email messaging.
ALSO READ: How to Turn Your Events into a Lead-Generating Machine
Growing use of mobiles
Mobile users around the world are growing at an exponential rate, so much so that the number of users in the world today is close to 7 billion, or 91.54% of the world’s population. Telegraph reported that 20 billion text messages are sent every day. With stats like these, you simply can’t miss the opportunities presented by an SMS service and not use this lucrative option to get connected with your next customer.
Additionally, consider the following stats:
- American mobile users check their phones 47 times a day on an average
- 91% of customers intentionally opt in for texts
- 97% of Americans own cell phones
Texts usually don’t go to “spam”
When was the last time you checked your ‘spam’ folder in the messaging application of your smart or feature phone? The answer might be once in a full moon, or never. Now, can you say the same for your emails?
Yes, messaging apps too have a spam folder, but not as active as email apps. Your email application may wear the hat of the decision maker and categorize the incoming mails under different tabs, but your messaging application shows everything on the primary interface.
This means the chances of your business message of getting opened, seen, and getting acted upon, increases by leaps and bounds.
Outstanding Open Rate
This is a game of open rates and click-through rates. Studies show that:
- Texts have a 98% open rate
- 34% of people read their messages within five minutes of receiving them
- SMS response rate is 45%
Now, if we compare that with emails, we will have the following statistics:
- Emails have 21.3% open rates
- Less than 10 percent of people read their emails within five minutes of receiving them
- Email click through rate is 10.29%
Other miscellaneous benefits
SMB owners need to reach their customers fast, but emailing requires permissions. Email marketing has rules where your business cannot sound salesy or promotional. Other drawbacks include it is not time-sensitive, can be easily unsubscribed, and is too costly.
SMS, on the other hand, is cheap, cost-effective, time-sensitive, and fast. Above all, they are simple and convenient.
So, now you know what benefits SMS service brings to your small business. Switch to SMS marketing today and explore its advantages. If you need the best SMS marketing practices, request us in the comments section and our experts will be happy to help you via a follow up blog.
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