Text Message Marketing

In a world of social media, email, and more, text message marketing isn’t always on a business’s radar. But businesses that do invest in SMS marketing reap the rewards.

In fact, 60% of customers prefer to communicate with businesses not via email or phone, but by text message. When you market to customers via text message, you’re meeting them where they are.

Learn more about how text message marketing works and if it’s right for your business.

What is SMS marketing?

Texting became popular in the late 2000s. As more customers purchased smartphones, texting increased in popularity. Over time, consumer behavior changed and people preferred communicating via text instead of phone calls.

Text message marketing is also called SMS, or short message service, marketing. It’s a marketing method that brands use to reach out to both existing and potential customers. Text message marketing works by inviting customers to opt in to a campaign to receive marketing messages via SMS. Typically customers opt in to your list using a short code.

The goal of text message marketing is to build a large subscriber base that you can market to. If your message, offer, and timing are right, customers will reward you with loyalty and repeat business. In this way, SMS marketing compels customers to remember you and buy from you.

Learn more about how SMS marketing works.

The how and why of SMS marketing

SMS marketing usually requires a keyword. When your customers choose to opt in to your list, they use this keyword as an opt in. As a business, you can segment customers into different lists based on which keyword they use to opt in.

For example, let’s say Bob’s Pizza wants to interact more with its customers. They partner with DialMyCalls to send SMS broadcasts.

Bob’s Pizza would first need to register the SMS keyword “BOBSPIZZA” for customers to use. They would then promote that keyword throughout the restaurant, on social media, and even on their pizza boxes. The marketing message could be as simple as “Text ‘BOBSPIZZA’ to 80123 to receive special deals on pizza.”

Interested customers would opt in. At that point, they’ll begin receiving SMS marketing from Bob’s Pizza.

But why should you choose text message marketing? Depending on your business, you could reap many benefits, such as:

1. Fewer distractions: Customers aren’t browsing social media when they’re using SMS. They’re there to communicate, which means there are fewer distractions between the customer and your message.
   
2. Easy reminders: Unlike intrusive push notifications, SMS can be read at any time, at your customer’s leisure. They’re a great way to send reminders and authorizations.
   
3. Segmentation: Change your keyword to build different list segments. This ensures your SMS marketing is always relevant and useful.
   
4. Cost-effective: Text message marketing happens automatically. It requires little hands-on management and is an affordable way to encourage customer loyalty.

Make text message marketing work for your business. Partner with DialMyCalls to automatically build a loyal customer base.

Want more SMS marketing tips? See what our SMS pros have to say. We also have tips designed specifically for real estate agents.