SMS marketing allows you to promote products and services and collect rich details about your consumer base. How many other marketing applications out there combine both of these features into one? If you're trying to guess, let us help you out. The answer is zero.
As a business, streamlining your marketing activity helps you save time and money. Imagine how much more time-consuming and expensive it'd be if you wanted to introduce a new product to the market but had to go through a market research firm to figure out if it was an idea worth pursuing. As you'll see, SMS marketing software removes the middle person.
In the first part of our two-part series, we explore two unique ways SMS can benefit your company.
1. Measure and increase customer loyalty
You can't use this SMS trick immediately because SMS marketing is permission based (customers have to opt-in to receive messages), but, eventually, you can use messages to measure customer loyalty. How do you do this? There are two ways.
First, let's say you have a mature list of customers' phone numbers, and you want to know who is the most loyal. This will help you decide which customers you should market to most often. Send a mass text message offering all of these customers a discount on a new product or service. Use a CTA such as "respond with YES" and then keep track of how many respond.
After you've built this new list, you can then work on increasing brand loyalty by sending them targeted SMS messages about new products and deals. By repeatedly going back to the same well, you build brand loyalty and save money, because it usually costs less to retain customers than to gain new ones.
"SMS marketing is a perfect way to test new product ideas."
2. Test out marketing ideas
As long as the messages don't come off as too pushy, SMS marketing is a perfect way to test new product ideas. Here's an example: Say a bicycle company just released a new racing bike. The product is doing well on the market, so the company wants to begin adding accessories to its line. However, they're not sure what kind of add-ons to produce. Do they focus on developing accessories that increase performance, safety or comfort? SMS marketing is the perfect testing ground for this simple research study.
To conduct the study, the bike company could broadcast a mass text message to its list of customers asking what they value most in bike accessories (performance, safety or comfort). When customers respond, they could be entered into a contest to receive the new product for free.
This type of messaging works occasionally. However, it's important to make clear to customers when they sign up for your campaign what type of messages they'll be receiving.
