Marketing strategies are sometimes quite a fickle business – emails get trashed and phone calls are labeled as spam. But amidst all this, bulk SMS marketing provides a better way for businesses to effectively reach the target audience.
Before investing in SMS mobile marketing, however, you should stay abreast of the best practices guiding this type of campaign and how you can expect them the benefit your business.
But first, here are the basics of SMS messaging.
SMS Messaging
SMS messaging is more like texting, except that it targets a specific audience with different kinds of messages including:
- Upcoming sales of product and service sales with discounts
- New products or innovations that a company is set to release
- Business developments include moving to a new location, notifying stakeholders, distributors, and more
- New branches, or announcing the upcoming of major events, etc.
It is worth noting, however, that in SMS messaging, you can only send letters, numbers, and special characters. Pictures, videos, or other types of multimedia are not supported. To send these types of messages, you need MMS, which stands for “multimedia messaging service.”
SMS Marketing Opt-in Rules
Every marketing or advertising strategy has guidelines and rules that must apply. Bulk SMS marketing is no exception. Before you send a customer a marketing message, it is important to remember that they need to have given you consent by opting in.
Also, if you hire a bulk SMS provider for the same, you’ll need to get permission for that company to send messages on your behalf.
Luckily, there are different ways of asking customers to opt in to the service. This is especially done when you sell someone a product or service when you ask them for their permission to receive such marketing messages.
Others include offering incentives, offering exclusive invitations to events, or adding a call to action (CTA) that encourages customers to accept the messages.
Customers should also be given an easy way out when they want to unsubscribe from the service. Therefore, you should include an opt-out feature in your SMS marketing. A good example is through the “reply STOP to stop receiving messages” line.
How to Target the Right Customers with SMS Marketing
To increase conversions and get more leads, every marketing campaign must target the right people. Bulk SMS gives your business different ways of targeting the audience. Some of the most effective ways include:
- Send bulk SMS to recipients who have expressed an interest in receiving them
- Text customers who are mostly in a region where your business is located
- Send messages at the right time, including those with discounts during special days of the year or holidays
- Target customers who haven’t bought anything from your business after a specific amount of time.
Although it is the most affordable way of marketing, you should always use bulk SMS to target customers as accurately as possible. Otherwise, your return on investment will be negligible.
Reach Customers with Celcom Africa’s Bulk SMS
Celcom Africa makes it easy for you to send messages to the right kind of audience. After registering for a free account, you can activate your account, integrate it with your messaging solution, and start sending bulk SMS to customers!
With intelligent routing, your text messaging goals will be achieved easily. The texts will reach their destination fast, all the time.