The art of communication, some say it’s been lost with all of this tech relegating our face to face conversations into the dustbin of history. Even the ways in which you used to nurture leads like direct mail, phone calls and even email are losing their effectiveness.
All is lost!
What if that’s not the whole story though?
The old way is just that; the old way.
Communication, marketing communication specifically, has always ebbed and flowed with the times. From radio supposedly killing newspapers to tv killing radio and the internet killing them all, how we communicate and generate/nurture leads for business has always strived to leverage the tech of the day.
A shift in perspective and The Snow Agency is all that’s needed to see the power of SMS text campaigns in your marketing toolbox and, most notably, it dramatically shifts the landscape of how you nurture leads.
What Is SMS Text Marketing?
Let’s start from square one. SMS means Short Message Service and it’s the basic form of texting we all started out using back in the day when T9 predictive texting was all we had. The dark days before full keyboards were available, kids these days will never understand…
Anyways, SMS text marketing aka text message marketing is simply sending marketing communication via text. Like your email campaigns, text marketing is also permission-based which means people need to opt-in to hearing from you, a huge advantage over other types of marketing already.
Having been equipped with a little background on what it is, here are some stats to consider:
- 5 billion people send and receive SMS texts (about 65% of the world).
- 75% of consumers want to receive texts with special offers.
- Americans check their phones 96 times per day.
- 83% of millennials open SMS messages within 90 seconds of receiving them.
- 90% of sent text messages are read.
- Text messages have a 209% higher response rate than phone, email or Facebook.
Is your mind sufficiently blown?
Texting messaging might get overlooked for marketing avenues with more name cache and flash these days. You’ll be tempted to plow your marketing budget into ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc. and that’s not wrong for sure but diversifying your ad spend and putting some into extremely high engagement vehicles like text marketing can reap big rewards.
If you haven’t put much thought into leveraging SMS, particularly for nurturing leads, you’re truly missing out on an incredibly effective method.
How to Use Text Marketing Services
Now that you’re squarely in the category of convinced, how exactly do you use text marketing services to follow your leads?
Well, as you’ve likely noticed, lead nurturing with things like email has become somewhat less effective, the open rates starting to dip and wane. Therefore, finding new ways to expand how you touch base with your prospective clients and customers becomes all the more important.
The beauty of employing an SMS strategy is that it plays to what people want.
People check their phones 90 times a day, a remarkable stat in its own right, and what that shows is that it’s quick. People don’t spend 5 minutes on their phones when they check them (5 minutes x 90 would be 7.5 hours), so people value immediacy and brevity. 2 things that texting offers in spades because they go out instantly and the character limit for a single SMS message is 160 characters. Less than a Tweet.
That encourages simplicity, another thing people crave now more than ever.
Just like your email and social media campaigns, you can segment and personalize your text marketing as well to keep it human.
Most importantly, using multi-channel campaigns help drive up your response rate by 37%.
Get Savvy With The Snow Agency
All in all, SMS text marketing is as close to a must as you can get these days, the art of communication isn’t lost at all, it’s just shifted to new means.
If you’re wondering how to implement text marketing to nurture your leads, get in touch with us today. At The Snow Agency, we’ve been texting since those T9 days, we get it.