Despite the rise in alternative messaging apps like WhatsApp and Messenger, text messaging is still ubiquitous. That's why many businesses put their focus on commercial text marketing. This article highlights why SMS is still so effective (even though the technology is decades old) and explains how it's used across different industries to attract and retain customers.
If you're curious about the use cases of commercial texting, we've got you covered. As more businesses begin to explore the potential of SMS marketing, now is your time to begin experimenting with a commercial text messaging service. With a variety of business solutions for SMS messages on the market, it's never been easier to leverage the potential of SMS as a marketing channel.
When it comes to marketing, SMS offers several benefits over other channels. Firstly, texts are accessible to most people, young and old. Text messaging is a feature native to all mobile phones, even feature phones. This means that anyone with a mobile phone number – 7.33 billion people worldwide – can send or receive text messages without downloading an extra app or relying on wi-fi for transmission. SMS relies only on a basic cellular connection, making it very reliable.
Furthermore, commercial text marketing provides great value when you consider the direct impact texts have and the fact that you only pay for the number of messages you send. To give you an idea of costs, with Messente, you'll pay €37.50 to send 500 texts to Germany. Pay-per-click ads can end up costing much more to reach the same number of people.
Further reading: The Psychology of SMS Marketing
How different industries use SMS messages for marketing
Commercial text messaging can be used by any business to increase sales conversions, generate brand awareness, or build loyalty. Across a wide range of industries, businesses are eager to leverage SMS to tap into high open rates.
There are mainly two types of commercial texts that businesses send.
Mass or bulk texts - these are usually one-way and serve to inform or remind large groups of people at once. Mass texts may or may not be personalized. Examples include event reminders, special promo offers, and product launch announcements.
Conversational messages - these are two-way messages exchanged between a business and a customer. Conversations are generally highly personalized and held one-on-one. Scenarios such as customer support requests or product information queries involve this type of commercial texting.
Those are two broad categories of commercial text messages. Now, let's go over some industry-specific examples of how they're used.
E-commerce
FinTech
SMS is frequently used in the fintech industry throughout the entire customer journey, including for marketing purposes. Texts are sent to attract new customers looking for a loan and existing customers that might benefit from an increase in borrowing. And to encourage more people to download an app.
Hospitality
Hotels, restaurants, and fast-food chains can leverage the power of SMS to promote deals and send out transactional messages like booking confirmations and updates. Papa John's pizza delivery chain is one example that uses commercial text messaging as a practical way to keep customers informed about the latest special offers and when their order is en route.
Food retail
SMS can cut through the noise in a competitive advertising environment, which can be the case in the food retail sector. FarmFoods, a British frozen food supermarket chain, uses text messages to drive sales. In one case, the company text a list of customers who had stopped interacting with its emails and, in just 24 hours, managed to achieve $4,000 of sales for a cost of just $60.
Commercial text messaging: Best practices and tips
Follow these best practices to ensure your commercial text marketing campaigns get the best results possible in terms of engagement and revenue.
1. Ensure your texts are relevant
Only promote products or services that your subscribers are likely to be interested in. For example, if you run a hardware store and a particular regular customer likes to buy paint, they will probably be interested in paintbrushes or rollers but not necessarily door handles or hinges. With a good commercial text messaging platform, you should easily be able to divide your audience into smaller lists based on shared interests or characteristics.
2. Keep your text messages short and snappy
This is critical to utilizing SMS as a marketing channel. When your text messages are focused and to the point, it potentially increases the likelihood of a response. Recipients may have little interest in reading through lengthy unsolicited text messages from brands.
3. Add personalization
Texts can have even more impact when they include the customer's name and your company name. Fortunately, with the right software at your disposal, it's easy to customize various aspects of your SMS messages and add a personal touch. Learn how to create a custom SMS.
4. Be mindful of timings
Sending your campaign too early in the morning or too late in the evening can annoy subscribers. Be aware of when they like to interact with your business (a CRM tool can provide insights) and send texts at those times. The best thing you can do is split-test different strategies to identify the best time to send commercial messages to your audience.
5. Include a call-to-action (CTA)
Tell your subscribers what you want them to do after reading your text message. You can include a phone number to call or a URL to a specific landing page within your text. Offering a value-driven CTA is critical to driving recipients to complete the desired action.
Text marketing regulations
If you don't get commercial text marketing right, your messages could be viewed as intrusive or even spam. And that could lead to hefty penalties. Read how EE got fined £100K for sending marketing texts without recipients' permission.
There are rules and regulations to protect consumers from spam texts (and phone calls), including getting express written consent from subscribers to receive marketing-related texts.
Consent can be provided in different ways. For instance, you could ask individuals to text a number to opt-in or offer an online form where people can submit their phone numbers to receive marketing-related texts.
The main regulations and guidance to check out for commercial text marketing are the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the CTIA Messaging Principles and Best Practices and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).
To succeed with bulk SMS marketing, you must familiarize yourself with all the latest rules and regulations. This will enable you to build robust campaigns that are fit for purpose and ready to scale. The last thing you want to do is build a campaign only to discover that it is not compliant with the latest consumer protection laws.
How to get started with commercial text marketing
Most businesses looking to text commercially need a bulk SMS messaging solution. This is where you compose one text message and send it to many subscribers simultaneously. For this type of service, you'll need to select an SMS provider - a gateway to many different mobile network operators.
Once you've selected a provider, the process is straightforward. You can log in to an online application and upload a list of phone numbers or create a signup form to capture new SMS subscribers. Then it's simply a matter of creating your commercial text campaigns and hitting the send button to distribute them.
What to look out for when choosing an SMS provider
There are many SMS providers around, and it can be challenging to work out which one best suits your needs. So as a starting point, think about your requirements. Ask yourself:
How many subscribers do you want to text each month?
Are your subscribers local or global?
Will one-way texts suffice, or do you need individuals to reply (two-way messaging)? Note that you can include a call-to-action in a one-way message.
Do you just need SMS, or would an omnichannel solution be better?
Once you've worked out what you need, you should have a good idea of what to look for when selecting the right SMS provider for your business. As a minimum, however, check that your preferred provider can offer:
Access to an extensive network of mobile operators - this ensures you have a greater and more reliable reach if your subscribers are worldwide.
Adaptive routing - intelligent routing algorithms lead to the quickest text delivery.
Comprehensive analytics - so you can analyze your commercial text marketing campaigns and see how to improve them.
Excellent support - ideally, you'll want to talk to a human if anything goes wrong.
A scalable solution - one that grows with your business.
Easy integration with CRM tools - for deeper customer insights and increased flexibility with your commercial text messaging campaigns.
Messente offers all of the above features and more. Getting started couldn't be easier. Simply create a free account and get access to Messente's dashboard, where you'll see how to upload phone numbers, create opt-in forms and compose SMS campaigns.
