SMS Marketing Best Practices · SMS Marketing Examples

28 Ways to Use SMS Marketing for Your Business

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.

SMS Marketing for Delivery Images via MMS Messaging

 

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.

SMS Marketing for Customer Support

 

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.

SMS Marketing for Contests and Giveaways

 

4. SMS Account Inquiries

Use mobile messaging to empower consumers to make their own account inquiries from their mobile phones.

SMS Marketing for Bank Account Notices and Inquiries

 

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.

SMS Marketing to Deliver Account Alerts via SMS

 

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.

SMS Marketing to Collect Consumer Feedback

 

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.

SMS Marketing to Capture Video Submissions via MMS Messaging

 

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.

SMS Marketing for Voting and Polling via SMS Messaging

 

9. SMS 2-Factor Authentication

Use mobile messaging to ensure account security by offering consumers 2-Factor Authentication when logging into their accounts.

SMS Marketing for Two-Factor Authentication SMS Messages

 

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.

SMS Marketing for Text Message Offers and Promotions

 

11. SMS Safety/Security

Use mobile messaging to enable consumers to communicate safety and security concerns to your business.

SMS Marketing for Safety and Security

 

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.

SMS Marketing for Mobile Donations

 

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.

SMS Marketing for Long Form Messaging with MMS

 

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.

SMS Marketing for Lead Generation

 

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.

SMS Marketing for Increasing Mobile App Downloads

 

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.

SMS Marketing for Email Capture

 

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.

SMS Marketing with Mobile Wallet

 

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.

SMS Marketing to Receive Images via MMS Messaging

 

19. Text-to-Screen

Use mobile messaging to engage with audiences, allowing them to post messages to any screen.

SMS Marketing to do Text To Screen Programs

 

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.

SMS Marketing to Deliver Video Messages via MMS Messaging

 

21. SMS Appointment Reminders

Use mobile messaging to send a friendly reminder to consumers about a previously scheduled appointment.

SMS Marketing to Deliver SMS Appointment Reminders

 

22. SMS Shipping Notifications

Use SMS messaging to keep consumers up-to-date on when their purchases will ship and arrive at their homes.

SMS Marketing to Deliver Shipping Notifications

 

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.

SMS Marketing to Deliver Rewards Program Messaging

 

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.

SMS Marketing to Deliver Product Information

 

25. SMS App Notifications

Use mobile messaging to send important app notifications to consumers who are using your app.

SMS Marketing to Deliver Mobile App Notifications via SMS Messaging

 

26. SMS Employee Communications

Use SMS messaging to communicate important information to employees when they’re away from their computers.

SMS Marketing to Deliver Employee Communications

 

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.

SMS Marketing to Deliver Emergency Alerts via SMS

 

28. SMS Contact Information

Use SMS messaging to get pertinent contact information about your business onto a consumer’s mobile device.

SMS Marketing to Deliver Business Contact Information - VCards

 

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.


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