Say Yes to SMS:
Text Marketing Is A Must Have
For All Businesses

May 27, 2021 | 5 Minute Read

I can guarantee that you’ve sent or received a text message since reading this blog.

I can also guarantee that within this month you’ve received some sort of text promotion from a business advertising offering you a special promo or discount!

This is because..

Texting has become one of the most popular communication channels within the last few decades due to its fast and convenient use. In fact, about 80% of North Americans are currently using text messaging. (source)

Due to its wide popularity and effectiveness, we have begun to see more marketers adapt SMS into their marketing strategy. Any business, ranging from small independent business owners to larger corporations can benefit from integrating SMS into their communication systems, so let’s go over the basics of SMS and how your business can thrive from it. In particular, we will cover:

What is SMS
How does it work?
SMS vs Email
Major benefits of SMS
How to connect SMS with your current software

What is SMS and what does it stand for?

SMS stands for short message service. This typically refers to text messages, a component of telephones, internet, and mobile device systems. Within a business context, people refer to it as business SMS. This is when companies utilize texting to send mass messages to promote their products or services, share promotions, give discounts, confirm or cancel upcoming appointments, and share any updates or news within the community. SMS has quickly found success within the marketing world because it is one of the simplest and cheapest ways for business to engage with customers while receiving impressive results.

How does it work?

Like all integration modules, you will need to integrate SMS into your software to create a mass message. Luckily for you, SMS can easily be integrated into your business management or customer relationship management (CRM) systems. From there, you will be able to manage your database such as creating personalized SMS messages, selecting from your list of contacts, keep track of sent-messages, and reply to individual responses if needed. Creating a text can take up to a minute, and once you send it, it can reach thousands of customers in seconds.

Email VS SMS?

For decades, email campaigns have been the main method for sending out mass messages. However, SMS marketing has erupted the playing field and is considered equally important in reaching your audience.

SMS mass messages work similar to an email blast, but have been found to be far more effective. One of the main reasons that SMS is so immensely powerful is because everyone is an arm’s reach from their phone throughout the day. Responding to a text takes much faster than an email. In addition, email campaigns generally have a lower engagement rate due to the fact that most people’s emails are swamped with junk and spam mail. SMS is generally more personalized and therefore has a better open rate. As a matter of fact, SMS has an open rate of 98% whereas email only has 20%. (source) If these staggering statistics haven’t convinced you to adopt SMS messaging in your marketing strategy yet, continue reading!

The benefits of SMS marketing for businesses:

1. Quick and Efficient

Unlike other traditional marketing campaigns that can take weeks or months to prepare and deploy, you can create a text in under a few minutes. Once it has been sent, it only takes seconds to reach a large audience. Most SMS software will even allow you to set automatic messages for a future date and time. Depending on how advanced your software is, you can take it one step further with AI messaging which allows your software to send automatic replies, so that you do not need to reply to every individual message response. Ultimately this will help you save time and energy, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.

2. High engagement rate

People respond to text messages quicker and more often than they do any other form of communication. They have the highest engagement rate compared to emails and phone-calls. Text messages have a 60% engagement rate, whereas emails only have a 30% engagement rate and phone-calls have 25% engagement rate. (source) Generally customers or clients who give out their phone-numbers have engaged with the brand before, and actually prefer to receive messages. Therefore when you send out your mass messages, you will know that you’re delivering the message to a highly target group, who most likely will not ignore or unsubscribe to the messages.

3. Adds a personal touch

Making sure your customers feel cared for is an integral part of the CRM experience. You will have no business, if you don’t have customers. That’s why it is so important to create a personal experience to create a strong brand loyalty and separate yourself from your competitors. SMS is a great way to help do just that. Businesses have the ability to customize each message to make customers feel special. Texting also lets you segment your audience, so that different customers can receive different promotions or discounts that suit their needs more. Simply by contacting the user by their name, sending discount codes, or wishing a happy holiday, will help build that bond between your customers and your business.

4. Cost Effective

Whether you’re a big or small business, spending a fortune on marketing is never ideal. Lucky for you, SMS will only cost you a few cents. Every company has a different pricing model, but the typical fee ranges from $0.01 to $0.05 per text message. SMS is a considerably cheaper form of guerilla marketing, with an incredibly high open and engagement rate. In comparison to running billboards, creating commercials or getting featured in magazines, which sometimes don’t even work, your business will save a significant amount of money. Furthermore, you can even bring the price down when you buy more SMS messaging rates in bulk, once again depending on your business of choice.

4. Trackable Results

Most SMS services will provide you a reporting dashboard to track how your SMS campaigns are doing. They would commonly have analytics on how many messages were successfully sent, total number of people that opened the message, the clickthrough rate, and more. By monitoring the results of your SMS mass messages, it can help you gain insightful data on your customers and make informed business decisions.

How do I connect SMS to my software?

Connecting your SMS module to an existing business management software is a piece of cake, as long as your software allows for integration modules. For example, Milano Text can easily be integrated with your current Milano software.

Milano Text integration is one of the best SMS solutions in the market because of its ease of use, range of features and intuitive dashboard. Through this integration, your software will possess a greater all-in-one experience. This is the perfect solution for your business if you need a straightforward tech solution to communicate with customers and build a stronger customer relationship management. To send out a text, you do not need any marketing or tech background because the Milano Text platform makes sending SMS incredibly easy to create and manage.

The power of SMS is truly unlimited. Text marketing is an easy, direct, and cost-effective way to reach your customers. Learn how you can integrate it into your software today, right over here.

Start your journey with Milano