The essence of any type of marketing is the type of reach it provides. SMS marketing has grown in leaps and bounds because of its wide reach to people with basic mobile access and its speed with an almost instant acknowledgment.
Online businesses have unsurprisingly jumped on the bandwagon with more and more businesses taking advantage of the opportunity and intrigue inherent in sms marketing. Marketing has moved beyond putting out information and adverts about business to creating a close relationship with the customer and be able to reach for the customer’s ear like it is a constant conversation.
The question for most online businesses is whether marketing via sms can ultimately drive traffic to their websites and boost sales. This question is being answered daily by online businesses who have integrated this key part of marketing in their overall strategy. We take a look at how sms marketing is benefiting a lot of online businesses.
It’s an easy way to advertise
Running an online business is a full time job and owners of start-ups and eCommerce sites need every break they can get. Sms marketing is a very easy to do and with an established contact list you can schedule messages to be sent at various intervals without having to take an hands on approach.
This is very important for emerging businesses who cannot afford paid advertising but still need to reach out to their customer base. With sms marketing, business overhead is kept relatively low, till the business breaks even and is able to support full scale advertising.
Conversion
For online businesses, the ultimate goal is to drive traffic to their websites and turn visitors into loyal customers. Through text messages, online businesses attract traffic by informing potential customers of promotions, contests, discounts and massive sales. With short punchy messages, it peaks the interest of readers and results in immediate traffic and business for the website.
High open rate
A major problem in marketing is the message not getting to its intended recipient. For online businesses, a premium is placed on forms of advertising outside the traditional. This strategy focuses mostly on social media platforms and personal emails. The problem with this strategy is that these messages do not pass through filters set up to screen them.
Most emails end up in spam making it hard to even break the ice with potential customers. Online businesses after coming to this realization have embraced sms marketing with reassuring statistics on its open rate giving them the much needed confidence. Capitalizing on our nature to pick up our phones at the shrill sound of a message, online businesses are getting the word out.
Building relationships
For online businesses, sms marketing has become the melting point for all information gained from other marketing channels. Through surveys of social media behavior and profile information, online businesses can now send personalized reminders.
From an online gift shop reminding you to treat yourself on your birthday to an auto products company reminding you that you need lubricants for a tune-up, there are boundless opportunities existent. These reminders show customers you have them in mind and create brand loyalty.