Have you ever heard of Matti Makkonen? No? Well he is the Finnish engineer who invented SMS. Way back in ’92 he designed a simple communication technology that took the world by storm. 27 years later, online SMS is one of the most effective direct marketing channels, used by millions of businesses worldwide to reach their customers.
In this blog, I’ll share the top 5 reasons why businesses are exploiting online SMS in 2019. Its a long one, so might be an idea to get a cuppa 🙂
Reason 1: Open rates are critical to sales conversions
OK so we all hear about the sales funnel and how you get people to your website, then into free trials and then (hopefully) into conversion to paying customers. 2 techniques at the very start of this funnel are email and SMS Marketing (or online SMS). Let’s compare the 2 for open rates, which is the first step in getting people into your retail or online store.
The average open rate for email campaigns averages out at around 22%-30% if you have a hyper-responsive list. In OUR email campaigns we see a LOT less than that, we see open rates of between 6% and 10%.
Now, With SMS you can expect to receive anywhere from 82-98% open rates, which means an instant increase in people coming to your online or bricks-and-mortar store. In fact, the brand manager for an Australian Wine Retailer reported that their SMS campaigns produced 300% more sales than their email campaigns!
Reason 2: High click-through rates
Following on from open rates, for an email or online SMS campaign to be successful, you must have a high click through rate.
SMS has a naturally high click-through rate. With 98% of SMS opened and the content of message being short sharp and concise, according to SmartInsights.com 19%+ of people are likely to click on a link inside an SMS as compared to only 4% with email.
Customers are almost FIVE times more likely to click through on an SMS than an email.
Reason 3: SMS is not seen as an online marketing channel (this is a GOOD thing)
Everyone is investing heavily into online marketing meaning that there is a LOT less competition in certain offline media channels – SMS is one of those channels! In fact in a recent survey on marketers in the US, only 39% of them are using SMS. This means that most marketers haven’t cottoned on to the power of online SMS yet so by using it you will be ahead of most of your competition. Why is the business down the street doing so busy? Well maybe you’ve just found the answer !!!
Online marketing comes pre-packaged with challenges like SPAM filters, search algorithm updates, ad-blockers, skyrocketing paid ad costs etc. all designed to protect the consumer while also seriously suppressing your marketing results.
Since SMS isn’t an online channel it doesn’t suffer from any of these barriers giving you 100% access to leads and customers. Remember, SMS is pre-installed on every single mobile phone in the world.
Reason 4: Works great with other channels
While SMS is great by itself for delivering clear and concise promotions to your customers, it also works well when integrated into existing channels.
For example, if you have an important event coming up and have sent out an email newsletter promoting it, many companies will send everyone an SMS asking if they’d seen your last email newsletter. This will instantly increases email open rates.
Companies will typically use SMS to improve:
- Opening nights and exclusive VIP opening hours
- Product Launches
- Webinar Attendance
- Abandoned shopping cart recovery
- Reactivation of account campaigns
Reason 5: It’s a low cost, high ROI marketing channel
In the early 2000’s it was possible to get clicks for only a few cents using AdWords (these were referred to these as ‘penny clicks’) allowing businesses to generate new visits to their websites for next to nothing. Unfortunately, those days are long gone, and as I am sure we have all seen, you’re easily paying anywhere very heavily for per click through.
While the cost of Adwords has become less competitive, we still see email as a cheap alternative. Email is cheap, no one can deny this. BUT with low open and response rates, you are spending little to get very little.
Right in the middle is SMS. It is a little more expensive than email, way cheaper than adwords BUT with a far higher response rate then either channel. Pound for Pound, we believe SMS gives the best value of all marketing channels because of the open rates, click through rates and ultimately the response rates from customers.
About Sendmode
Sendmode was started in 2008 by 2 computer programmers, Barry Murphy and John McNamara, who believed that business owners were being charged too much for ineffective marketing tools. Today the SMS platform they built sends over 10 million SMS per month on behalf of business owners worldwide. They are committed to keeping pricing at the lowest on the internet while building long lasting relationships with all our clients.
Thanks for taking the time to read this post and we hope you found it helpful.
John
