Ecommerce has gained popularity in recent years. Many brick-and-mortar stores have switched to online selling during the pandemic. It is expected that ecommerce sales will hit $ 4.9 trillion by the end of 2021.
When we talk about ecommerce conversions, the role of marketing is evident in every single step. Whether it's email marketing or hiring influencers to promote your products on your behalf, businesses must integrate the best digital marketing practices into their business framework to witness quick conversions and sales.
Text message marketing ecommerce isn't something new for ecommerce store owners. Digital marketers, dropshippers, and online sellers have been implementing SMS marketing strategies for quite some time now.
The only difference is SMS marketing for ecommerce no longer confined to product announcements and order confirmations only.
Present-day marketers and clever campaigners use the best SMS marketing strategies to improve customer loyalty and foster long-term client-business relationships.
In this post, we're going to highlight the best SMS marketing strategies for ecommerce that can improve your engagement score and streamline your sales funnel through seamless interactions.
What Is SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing is an effective digital marketing tactic that boasts a whopping 98% open rate.
It refers to the act of sending marketing texts and promotional materials using SMS medium.
In other words, SMS marketing is a permission-based marketing strategy that revolves around tools a business uses to communicate offers and information to its existing and potential customers.
Why Should You Care?
The biggest challenge for ecommerce store owners is to get their message across without annoying their potential customers.
Today's customers are already facing information overload in several forms. They see countless social media ads daily, and their inboxes are full. That is where text message marketing ecommerce comes in.
While there are many benefits of using SMS marketing strategies for your online business, we're going to shed light on the ones that we believe can change the way you maintain communication with your target audience.
Gen-Z Always Have Their Cellphones
SMS marketing strategies can be used to target any age group. Especially when it comes to millennials and Gen Z, they have their cellphones all the time.
So if your target audience is people aged 18-44, you must consider leveraging the best SMS marketing strategies for the ecommerce business.
Businesses Can Reach A Wide Demographic Using SMS Marketing
SMS is the most popular activity that people do while using their cell phones. With people of all age groups, ethnicities, and cultures using their cell phones, SMS marketing allows you to reach wider audiences.
SMS Marketing Strategies Are Integrable With Other Marketing Channels
SMS marketing is a single digital marketing channel that seamlessly blends with other forms of marketing. For instance, you can use text messaging with your SMM strategies, email marketing, and even influencer marketing to encourage your potential customers to take action.
Boosts Customer Engagement
Customers admire businesses that make efforts to keep them in the know. When you implement the best SMS marketing strategies, you make your customers feel pampered and part of the process. This contributes to your engagement score and builds credibility and customer loyalty.
It’s Permission-Based
SMS marketing promotes targeted marketing. How? It enables customers to opt-in or opt-out whenever they want.
It might look like a negative approach at first, but it allows businesses to stop sending messages to people who don't want to receive them anymore.
Nine SMS And Text Message Marketing Strategies For Ecommerce
So we've made it clear why you're leaving lots of money on the table if text message marketing ecommerce isn't part of your digital marketing toolkit. Here are nine actionable SMS marketing strategies you can implement right now to improve ecommerce conversions.
1. Personalize, Personalize, And...Personalize
One of the most effective ways to boost conversions using SMS marketing is to personalize your messages.
Customers prefer brands that invest their time and money in researching their target audience and offer personalized solutions.
Segment your buyers based on demographics, purchase history, and buying preferences. Afterward, you will create a personalized text message that will address your customer's pain points and help you connect with them based on their preferences.
Addressing your customers with their names is also a great strategy as it enables you to establish a more personal connection with your audience.
2. Promote Flash Sales That Drive Urgency
Are you planning to launch a flash sale soon? Fuel up your email marketing strategy with catchy alerts via text messages.
You have to give your customers a reason to act on your offers. The easiest way to do so is by specifying a limit in your SMS.
Simple text alerts like 'Sale ends today' or 'Only 2 Days Left' will encourage your recipients to take timely action and make a buying decision before they miss a money-saving deal.
You can also include a link back to your landing page in your text message. Also, don't forget to mention your brand name in your message to let your customers know who you are.
3. Send Event Alerts And Reminders
Ecommerce businesses dealing in everyday items can use SMS marketing to remind their customers to refill their stocks.
Luckily, many SMS blast services allow businesses to send automated messages to multiple clients with a single click. But yes, you must not send these messages to every customer at once as you also have to keep their last purchase date in mind.
In addition to that, you must also keep the factor of personalization in mind. Remember - the more relevant you can draft your text messages, the higher the user engagement and conversions.
You can also send text alerts to notify your customers about any upcoming event or product launch.
4. Delivery Notifications
Sending delivery notifications can be stress-free with SMS alerts. While you cannot call this strategy a marketing tactic, it still adds a lot to your conversion funnel.
These messages contain value and help your buyers become more comfortable interacting with your brand.
You can provide your customers with the best user experience by keeping them informed with delivery status updates. That goes without saying that great customer experiences lead to brand loyalty, which means more customers and increased sales.
5. Collect Feedback
Customer feedback is valuable user data that can help online businesses tweak their other marketing efforts. Sadly, many ecommerce businesses still aren't using SMS marketing to collect this precious information.
There are SMS marketing services that allow online businesses to collect feedback through survey-based texts.
Here are two key areas you must focus on while conducting post-purchase SMS surveys for your business:
a) Collect Feedback On The Entire Experience As A Whole
This involves everything from how hassle-free it was to find products on your site to your customer service and return and refund policies to ease of payment, checkout, and delivery process.
Create a brief and contextual survey that does not annoy your buyers yet helps you collect actionable feedback from each respondent.
b) Collect Feedback For Individual Products
Product reviews are an essential social proof marketing strategy that gives other visitors an idea about what they can expect from your brand.
The good news is you can capture this data through text-based surveys. Make sure you mention that the text message you have sent is to collect product reviews. Incentivize your customers by offering them a cashback or discount offer they can redeem by responding to your question.
6. Birthday Rewards
Remembering your customer's birthdays and wishing them their big days can go a long way. Again, it wouldn't be too difficult with the right SMS marketing company.
You can automate the entire process and include your promo codes or a special offer to make your customers feel valued.
7. Share Seasonal Updates
The eMarketer research reveals that mobile commerce will account for up to 54% of total online sales by 2021.
The biggest challenge for marketers is to improve engagement during the holiday season. With many other brands offering more or less the same deals and discounts as yours, it can be overwhelming to get yourself noticed during those high-traffic seasons.
But don't worry. You can easily make headway in the holiday season by interacting with your customers through mobile.
8. Expand Your List At Checkout
Now that you know why SMS marketing should be an integral element of your digital marketing strategy, it is time to disclose some of the ways you can get more people to join your SMS list.&
The best way to ask your customers to become part of your VIP list is to ask them on check-out pages.
All customers have to visit these pages to complete the transaction. Doing so will also enable you to gather additional data that you can use to segment your subscribers.
9. Use SMS Analytics To Improve
Digital marketing campaigns and testing go hand in hand. Every digital marketing campaign starts with data collection. But only a few marketers are aware that they have to analyze analytics routinely and make changes to their strategy to keep it in line with their current business operations.
Analyze your engagement score, CTRs, and other key metrics to monitor how well your SMS marketing strategy is converting for your business.
All of these SMS marketing strategies are super effective and result-driven. At this stage, you must be ready to start your personalized SMS marketing campaign.
Getting Started!
Know Your Goals
The first step to creating an effective SMS marketing campaign is to decide on your goals.
What is your ultimate business objective? Is it to boost sales or conversions? Do you want to improve customer engagement?
Do not set multiple goals as it can confuse your prospects. Set SMART objectives that contribute to your results and conversions.
Seek Permission
You SHOULD NOT send messages to your customers without their consent. Always get people to subscribe to your list before you send out messages to them.
It's also crucial to respect the time of your recipients. There are many ways you can ask people to become part of your SMS list. For instance, you can ask them on checkout pages (we've already talked about it earlier). Also, you can invite them through your email list or social media pages. No matter what your choice is, make sure you do not spam people.
Decide Frequency
While it may be tempting to send lots of messages to your prospects, less is always more. It's good that you can communicate directly with your customers through SMS, but you must not spam their inboxes with your messages.
Choose the best SMS marketing tool and figure out the frequency that works best for your business.
Timing Is Critical
As an online seller, your goal is to increase engagement and sales. That's not possible without devising a winning SMS marketing campaign.
When we talk about winning campaigns, timing is critical. Here, the key is to target your customers at the right time so that they don't feel annoyed and take action.
Keep Things Fun
SMS is an informal and conversational way of interacting with your customers. Keep your tone friendly and create content that is interactive and fun. You can also include images and GIFs to make your messages look and sound more engaging.
Over To You...
Getting started with text message marketing ecommerce is easy and fun. Start your journey by figuring out what, why, how, and when you should interact with your customers using the best SMS marketing practices. Keep your messages short, simple, and to the point.
Last but not least, analyze results over time so that you can tweak your campaign according to your needs.
