If you’ve ever thought about using SMS marketing for your business, it’s a wise choice. Consumers are more likely to open text messages than any other form of mobile communication from businesses, including email and voice. And because consumers take their phones with them everywhere, 90% of all SMS messages are read within just three minutes.
The best part is: there is so much that you can do with SMS marketing — it’s not JUST about promotions. In this blog post, we’ve compiled 28 ways to use SMS marketing in your business, so that you can reach consumers faster, increase your open and click-through rates easier, and ultimately drive more revenue and profits to your business.
1. Image MMS Messaging
Use mobile messaging to send images directly to consumers’ mobile phones. Images are especially effective for restaurants and retailers, as nothing makes consumers want to check out an offer like seeing a mouth-watering dish, stylish outfit, or dream decor right on their mobile phones.
2. SMS Customer Support
Use SMS messaging to assist with customer support and get needed product information into the hands of consumers when they’re ready to buy. 83% of millennials say they would rather text a business than call a customer service helpline.
3. SMS Contests/Giveaways
Use mobile messaging to run a contest or giveaway, and collect information such as phone numbers, names, emails, zip codes, and more. 31% of consumers respond to SMS surveys, with an average response time of less than six minutes. When is the last time that your emails got a response from 1 in 3 people?! Pretty amazing.
4. SMS Account Inquiries
Use mobile messaging to empower consumers to make their own account inquiries from their mobile phones.
5. SMS Account Alerts
Use SMS messaging to send important account alerts to consumers when certain events take place within their accounts, such as bank alerts, shipping deliveries, invoices paid, and more.
6. SMS Consumer Feedback
Use mobile messaging to solicit comments and feedback about your business. SMS makes it easy for consumers to text you quick feedback, giving you valuable information about how to improve the customer experience, design new products that they would love, or offer services that they aren’t seeing anywhere else.
7. MMS Video Submissions
Use mobile messaging to accept videos from consumers for everything from customer support to fan submissions. Because sending a video is easy to do straight from a camera roll, when using text messaging consumers don’t have to deal with uploading files to email, running up against file size limits, or dealing with unfamiliar video platforms. All it takes is a quick swipe, select, and send, and you have fresh content straight from your consumers.
8. SMS Voting/Polling
Use mobile messaging to engage with consumers and solicit feedback from them. This is a great way to boost community engagement and identify what your audience is most interested in.
9. SMS 2-Factor Authentication
Use mobile messaging to ensure account security by offering consumers 2-Factor Authentication when logging into their accounts.
10. SMS Marketing Offers
Use SMS messaging to send valuable mobile offers to consumers, which can be redeemed in-store or online. Brands use SMS marketing to increase profits by sending coupons, special deals, promotions, and buy-one-get-one-free offers to incentivize consumers to buy. In fact, we’ve seen brands generate $196,000 in new sales from just one text message marketing offer alone.
11. SMS Safety/Security
Use mobile messaging to enable consumers to communicate safety and security concerns to your business.
12. Mobile Text Donations
Use mobile messaging to solicit and process donations from your most active donors. This is especially effective for politicians and non-profit organizations with passionate followers, who are just looking for a way to get involved, and don’t realize how easy it can be straight from their phones.
13. Long-Form SMS Messaging
Use SMS messaging to send long-form text content to consumers when a short message just isn’t good enough. Tatango customers can use up to 5,000 characters in their text messages.
14. SMS Lead Generation
Use mobile messaging to capture leads and collect information such as phone numbers, names, emails, zip codes, and more. This makes it easy to send highly targeted promotions, such as on a consumer’s birthday, for a local store, or based on their interests.
15. SMS App Downloads
Use SMS messaging to increase app downloads by making it easier for consumers to download your mobile app. This makes it even easier to communicate with consumers via push notifications, inviting them to take part in special deals or mobile offers.
16. Email Capture via SMS
Use mobile messaging to collect consumer email addresses, and sync them automatically with any email marketing provider. SMS marketing is one of the best ways to grow your email marketing list. Brands like Applebee’s and Redbox use text message marketing to grow their email lists. In fact, 5% of Chuck E Cheese’s email subscribers come from their text message marketing campaigns.
17. Mobile Wallet Offers via Text Message
Use mobile messaging to send mobile wallet offers directly to consumer mobile phones that are compatible with iOS and Android mobile wallets.
18. MMS Image Submissions
Use SMS messaging to accept images from consumers for everything from customer support to fan submissions. Submitting photos in this way is so much easier for consumers than uploading images to an email or sending them to another sharing platform, which makes consumers far more likely to send in their images, and for you to get the content you need. Imagine how valuable it would be to have consumers readily text in their before-and-after photos and product testimonials, so you always have more social proof to share.
19. Text-to-Screen
Use mobile messaging to engage with audiences, allowing them to post messages to any screen.
20. MMS Video Messaging
Use SMS messaging to send videos directly to consumers’ mobile phones. You already know that video is becoming increasingly popular as a marketing channel, but studies show that 54% of consumers want to see even MORE video content from a brand or business they support.
21. SMS Appointment Reminders
Use mobile messaging to send a friendly reminder to consumers about a previously scheduled appointment.
22. SMS Shipping Notifications
Use SMS messaging to keep consumers up-to-date on when their purchases will ship and arrive at their homes.
23. Text Messaging Rewards Program
Use mobile messaging to create your very own mobile rewards program to send offers and promotions to your most loyal customers. This is a great way to re-engage customers, make them feel appreciate, and offer them special deals, promotions, and coupons to increase their life-time value.
24. SMS Product Information
Use SMS messaging to get needed product information into the hands of consumers when they’re ready to buy. This can eliminate any friction in the buying process so consumers get the information they need, when they need it. It helps keep hot leads hot, instead of cool them off as they wait hours or days for the information they need to make a decision—or worse, having them go to a competitor who can text them the information instead.
25. SMS App Notifications
Use mobile messaging to send important app notifications to consumers who are using your app.
26. SMS Employee Communications
Use SMS messaging to communicate important information to employees when they’re away from their computers.
27. SMS Emergency Alerts
Use mobile messaging to alert people to the presence of danger. 90% of all SMS messages are read within 3 minutes of being sent, making text messaging the fastest mass communication channel in an emergency.
28. SMS Contact Information
Use SMS messaging to get pertinent contact information about your business onto a consumer’s mobile device.
After all those examples, is there anything that SMS marketing can’t do?! If you’re looking to add text message marketing to your marketing mix, talk to our SMS marketing experts today.