We live in an online world, we all know it. Therefore in this new digital world it hardly matters what you do or even where you go you will be involved in some form of marketing whether it’s as a marketing professional or as a consumer being ‘guided’ towards certain buying decisions.
The downside as a marketer is that when you are trying to use digital marketing there are a TON of obstacles that reduce the performance of your campaigns at every turn and it can be frustrating.
For business owners and marketers in the know they are turning to another form of marketing that is incredibly effective for reaching customers, what is it?
Bulk SMS.
Bulk SMS uses a thing called an SMS gateway to push out and receive SMS messages and could be the most important consumer marketing tool available today according to Josh Bennett from SMS gateway provider 160.com.au.
Here are the main reasons SMS marketing should be a part of your marketing campaign.
Source: sendinbulk.com
Contents
SMS Gateway Allows For Higher Open Rates Than Emails
Let me ask you something – how often do you click on the “promotions” tab inside your Gmail? Probably never, why? Because that’s where all of the junk ends up and not may people are interested in reading junk.
Unfortunately for email marketers Google decides on what is and isn’t junk and to be frank they mess this up all the time with order confirmations, important company newsletters, etc. ending up in the Jun.., uh I mean “promotions” tab.
This happens with our ecommerce company all of the time, people calling up wondering where their invoice is only to discover it has been sitting inside their promotions tab.
If you are not using Gmail then chances are those emails are going to the SPAM or junk folder.
This is one of the reasons why email open rates are so poor.
Using an SMS gateway to send your SMS marketing messages is not hamstrung by spam folders, every time you send a message it gets delivered and just as importantly opened.
Many marketers will say that open rates aren’t the most important factor but let me ask you this, if no one opens your marketing message how many sales will you make wit that campaign?
The answer is zero.
If you get 20% of people to open your marketing message then now you will start getting “some” conversions but bump that open rate to 97% and now you are cooking!
Text messaging your customers is just better in terms of maximizing the number of eyeballs you get on your marketing.
Source: oneclick.rs
An SMS Gateway Uses Mobile Technology
Google recently became a ‘mobile first’ medium which means that it places mobile ahead of all other devices.
This makes sense since on average 84% of the population own a smart phone.
This trend and forced marketers organize their marketing efforts in a different way, they need to build a mobile version of their website, ensure their email newsletters were mobile friendly, create mobile versions of their ads, etc.
This created a TON of work.
Guess what businesses needed to change with SMS marketing? Nothing.
SMS is a mobile channel organically so no change was needed, it was business as usual.
What about people who are still using ‘dumb phones’ these are phones that do not connect to the internet? Doesn’t matter SMS marketers are still able to reach them because SMS does not use internet technology, even though the SMS gateway uses the internet the text messages themselves work in exactly the same way as send a text message from one mobile phone to another.
Source: text-local.com
An SMS Gateway Is Fast
Sending an SMS takes literally seconds to reach its recipient. With an SMS gateway, you are able to send thousands of text messages at lightning speed.
The best part about this is that people who receive an SMS message tend to open them up shortly after receiving them meaning that if you really need to drive sales now using an SMS gateway is your best bet.
People will tend to read their emails hours or even days later but with SMS it is instant typically around the 90 second mark.
Source: simpletexting.com
An SMS Sent From An SMS Gateway Is Cheap
Unlike every other online marketing channel where costs increase every year with 100% predictability SMS actually goes in the opposite direction.
Since the online space can only serve so many impressions and with more and more businesses using online marketing this means there is less inventory to go around.
This naturally increases the prices for those impressions.
When it comes to SMS there are no such limitations and combine that with the fact that new SMS services are opening up all of the time this drives prices down which is in favour of the consumer.
Source: rcrwireless
Conclusion About Using An SMS Gateway
Is SMS really that much better than email? I think email marketing is still one of the best ways to reach and engage consumers and will be so for quite some time.
SMS and email are not actually competitors, they complement each other very well.
For example, you can’t send out and SMS every day without having an angry mob show up outside your door but you can send daily emails without issue.
If you have an important campaign complaining up and you need maximum exposure then email is probably going to fall short and should at least be accompanied by a text message letting people know that you have sent them an important email and that they should read it, this means that virtually everyone will be aware of your email.
This is not a case whether you should use SMS or email a smart marketer will understand the strengths and best uses for each and use them accordingly.
