There’s a reason why so many (in fact 34%) of businesses use personalized SMS messages as a marketing tool. Compared to other marketing channels, it has a higher ROI, engagement and click through rate. Considering the prominence of mobile commerce, and how much time people spend on their phones, this makes sense.
Contacting customers through this channel can therefore have a powerful impact on your business. This post will take you through some best practices to ensure that you are making the most of the opportunity available to you.
Best Practices For Optimized Personalized SMS Messages
Incentivize Customer To Subscribe
It is necessary for your shoppers to consent to receiving SMS marketing messages from you. Since you need them to decide to opt in, it’s important to give them motivation to do this. Ways that you can make receiving these messages appealing are:
- Offering discounts to subscribers
- Making exclusive sale offers available to subscribers
- Discount code messaged as soon as they join
Offering incentives such as this will create more likelihood for people signing up to your list. It’s important to let them know the perks they will receive from being involved. These should be made very clear, so there’s no confusion or misunderstanding.
Personalization
Offering messages that aren’t personalized simply would not provide the same effect. When people receive a message they are aware is a bulk message with no attempt at connecting with their shopping journey, these are quickly rejected. It is personalization that achieves good results.
Personalization can be created by using what you know about customers. Promo codes can be sent that are relevant to their experience on your site. These can be triggered by a certain action being taken on your site; for example cart abandonment. A message can then be sent reminding them that they didn’t complete their order. Sending a discount code at this stage could also be a great idea.
Offering personalized messages that serve as reminders about purchases, appointments or the status of deliveries is a great idea. This shows the customer that you care about them, and will boost brand loyalty as well as helping the customer out.
Personalization At Scale: Audience Segments
Sending personalized messages to individual customers is great if it can be done, but is not always the most practical or available solution. A way of solving this is by using audience segments, and achieving personalization at scale. This means that even if your shoppers aren’t actively engaging with your site, you can categorize them and reach them in ways appropriate to them.
By using a CRM database you can create customer segment such as:
- Loyal customers
- Frequent buyers
- Cart abandonment
- Past purchases
- New customers
Then messages that correlate to these groups can be sent. This way they will all receive personalized messages relevant to their journey. Time frames can also be added, so for example; all cart abandoners in the last 30 days would receive a message. This can help to customize the messages even further.
Use SMS Marketing Software
Using automation is definitely a best practice in ensuring that the personalized messages you are sending are optimized. A platform is ultimately required in order to facilitate this process. It is a sophisticated procedure to utilize data to reach the right groups/people at the right time (timing is important too).
This is a lot to achieve manually, so a best practice is to use an application that specializes in this. Attentive is an SMS marketing platform that can help you to achieve the outcome your business desires.
Pay Attention To Details
Sending your shoppers SMS messages that annoy or frustrate them will have the opposite effect from what you want. In order to avoid this, you should pay attention to the detail in your messages. They should all contain key elements such as:
- Call To Action (CTA)
- Value Offer
- Link To Site
The text should be a conversational tone that isn’t overly text heavy. Your shoppers shouldn’t be receiving messages too frequently, but enough that they are reminded of your business. Using templates to achieve this is a great idea.
Conclusion
Having shoppers engaging with your brand, especially on their mobile devices is not something you should take for granted. Personalized SMS messages should give your customers a reason to open and engage with your brand. They should be engaging and worthwhile. Using these best practices, this is something you should be able to achieve.