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Selecting the right SMS marketing software is crucial. Our guide provides key factors to consider, from features to integration capabilities.
Text message marketing is an essential part of a marketing strategy in 2024, and to make sure that your text campaigns reach their full potential, you need to find the ideal SMS marketing software for your business.
Discover why you should be harnessing the power of SMS messaging, and essential considerations when searching for the SMS marketing platform for you.
What is SMS Used for in Marketing?
Text message campaigns are useful in marketing to send out short, to-the-point messages with a clear CTA for leads and clients to take. If you have a new product or service launching you could send an SMS out to leads who have shown interest or that fit your ideal customer description. Otherwise, if you have a sale, you can let your customers know quickly and efficiently with bulk text messages.
You can use SMS marketing tools to create workflows where it automatically sends out triggered text messages. For example, if someone doesn’t finish their account sign-up, you could send them an email reminder, and then 2 days later send them a text message to push them to finish signing up.
Text messages are also a great way to have personalized loyalty campaigns for your clients. You can use the data that you have about their previous purchases, geographic location, age, etc. to send personalized SMS messages with offers and useful information for them.
Does SMS Marketing Still Work?
Yes, text message marketing is an effective strategy! According to G2, 91% of consumers like receiving texts from businesses. SMS messages also have an average open rate of 98%, if you compare that to email which has an open rate of 21.33% the difference is massive. This shows that text messages do still work and that you should be using them.
Is SMS Marketing Legal in the USA?
Yes, it’s legal to send text message campaigns. However, it’s important to follow the laws around SMS marketing, including GDPR, TCPA, and the CAN-SPAM Act. SMS marketing platforms can help ensure that you are following the relevant legislation.
The Advantages of Using SMS Marketing for Businesses
Text message marketing offers many benefits, including:
- A quick way to reach customers: Text messaging allows businesses to reach their clients fast. SMS messages are sent quickly and are often read within minutes.
- High open rates: As stated above texts have an average open rate of 98%.
- Great response rates: The average response rate to text messaging is 45%.
- Good engagement from clients: 90% of customers reply to texts within 30 minutes
- High ROI: With such impressive statistics, the return on investment is very good for SMS marketing campaigns.
- Opportunity for highly personalized text messages: Unlike more traditional marketing channels, you can personalize SMS campaigns, making your clients feel closer to you.
- Integrates easily with other channels: You can integrate your SMS marketing platform with other marketing tools that you currently use, making it more effective.
- Get customer feedback via surveys: Use text messaging to send surveys to your customers and gather their valuable feedback.
What is SMS Marketing Software?
SMS marketing software allows you to create and send text message campaigns, and track the results. You can manage your SMS marketing, view open and click-through rates, and manage opt-ins and opt-outs. You can also set up integrations to other platforms, such as CRMs.
Why Use SMS Marketing Software
SMS marketing software enables you to manage all your text message campaigns easily. You can set up campaigns based on triggers, analyze results efficiently, and adjust future campaigns based on what works.
SMS software also helps you understand and follow text message marketing regulations within the platform, so you don’t have to worry about it.
Finally, you can also set up integrations with your CRM, sales platform, and internal team messaging software to make sure that you keep up with all notifications, and that your data is shared efficiently, avoiding silos.
How to Choose The Right SMS Marketing Software for Your Business
To have the best text message marketing campaigns, and maximize your ROI, you want to choose the best SMS marketing software for your business.
You want to ensure that the platform fits your budget, that your whole team can use it easily, that it works well with your other marketing tools, and that you can analyze your campaign data efficiently. You need to find the software that will save you time, improve your marketing efforts, and ensure that your campaigns are delivered effectively.
Top Considerations When Choosing SMS Marketing Software
- Cost and Budget Considerations
- Sit down to analyze your budget to see how much you could set aside for SMS marketing software.
- You should think about the upfront costs, but also the long-term expenses. It’s important to ask the companies you’re considering to be clear about any potential hidden fees.
- It’s important to not go for the cheapest tool just because it fits into your budget, you need a tool that has good cost-benefits.
- Alignment with Business Needs
- Think about your specific business requirements, you want a tool that matches you, not you forcing yourself to match the software.
- Consider factors such as the size of your business, your target audience, and what your marketing goals are.
- User-Friendly Interface
- Software needs to make it easy for you to use, it should be intuitive, and easy to navigate so that you can use it efficiently.
- Ask a couple of people in your team to test it to see what they think, so you get different perspectives.
- CRM Integration
- Consider what customer relationship management system (CRM) you currently use, and see if the software you’re considering integrates with it.
- By integrating your SMS marketing platform with your CRM you guarantee a unified experience for your customers.
- Automation Capabilities
- The SMS marketing solution you choose should automate repetitive tasks and streamline marketing campaigns to save you time and effort.
- Automatically send messages based on pre-set triggers so they receive texts tailored to them.
- Compliance with Regulations
- Ensure that the software adheres to legal standards like GDPR, TCPA, and other relevant regulations.
- Analytics and Reporting Features
- Look into the depth and usefulness of insights that the software provides you to enhance your decisions with data and improve your marketing efforts.
- Easy-to-understand analytics will help your marketing team continually improve your SMS marketing campaigns to boost engagement and conversions.
- Customization and Workflow Integration
- Think about what workflows and processes you currently have, and how text messaging could fit into them.
- For instance, if a prospect doesn’t complete a purchase, you could email them a reminder and then 24 hours later send them a text message with a discount to push them to finalize their purchase.
- Quality of Customer Support
- Evaluate the responsiveness and quality of the vendor’s customer support. If something doesn’t work, you want to be able to count on their customer service to be able to help you.
- API Access and Integration Capabilities
- Look into what integrations are available, and how easy it is to integrate with other systems that you use, or would like to use.
- You could integrate with your CRM, team communication software, and your current marketing platforms.
- Scalability
- Ensure that the software can scale as your business grows and that it can handle an increasing volume of messages. It should have features that you can grow into.
- You could ask what features they plan to add as well so that you can understand what direction they’re going.
- Reputation and Reviews
- Read reviews from other customers, especially those similar in size or industry to see what their experience was with the text messaging marketing platform.
- Reviews are your most powerful way to see what the software and service is really like.
- Trial and Testing Opportunities
- It’s important to do a free trial or to be able to test the software yourself before committing to it.
What SMS Marketing Tool Should I Go For?
Sakari is a cost-effective, highly customizable text message marketing platform. It empowers you to integrate with over 1,000 other tools, including the most popular CRMs, marketing services, and team messaging platforms.
It provides in-depth analysis to help you adjust and improve your SMS marketing strategies, and its easy-to-understand dashboards will save you time.
Sakari also has a 4.6 rating on Capterra, and over 10 years of experience to ensure that your text messaging is next level.
I Chose My SMS Marketing Software, What’s Next?
Once you’ve chosen the SMS marketing software that works best for you, you should start by setting up integrations with the marketing tools that you currently use. These could include your CRM, email marketing tool, or internal team software. This increases the effectiveness of your new SMS message marketing software and improves data visibility.
After that, you need to train your team to use it effectively. Set up at least one training session and encourage them to play around with the software. They could set up test campaigns and workflows. That way they will feel more comfortable using it, and feel more ownership of the software.
How to Send Effective SMS Marketing Campaigns
To make sure that your SMS marketing messages are well received by your audience, make sure that you keep them short and to the point. A text message should be up to 160 characters, so craft a simple message, with a call to action. You want to be clear in what you want your lead to do, so give them a simple next step to take.
Your message should also have your brand’s name at the beginning so that the recipient knows it’s trustworthy and from a brand they know. For instance, your message could be: Acme – Get up to 50% off in our sale, shop now!
The other thing for you to bear in mind is when you’re sending your text message, you don’t want to send it at 3 am, as it could wake the receiver up and they could feel resentful of you. So make sure to send all your SMS messages between 8 am and 8 pm.
Finally, you shouldn’t overwhelm people with texts from you. Make sure that you spread your texts out so that people aren’t receiving constant messages. You need to run tests to find out the ideal frequency for your audience.
Sakari is The Best SMS Marketing Software. Start a Free Trial Now!
Choosing SMS marketing software isn’t an easy task, but when you find the ideal one for you, the benefits are huge. Sakari is the first company of its kind to offer cost-effective, automated, measurable messaging across several demand-generation channels. Leverage its 1,300 integrations to ensure more effective, automated marketing campaigns and higher conversion rates. Set up your 14-day free trial today and harness the power of text message marketing for free, no-credit card required!
