Properly built and managed SMS broadcast lists are a lifeline for businesses to maintain engagement in a mobile-first environment. If you’ve just turned your focus to building and nurturing your SMS subscribers, we’ll walk you through the right strategies to ensure you’re not just reaching out to your customers, but ensuring they act upon your text message.
The Impact of Expanding SMS Subscribers on Business Growth
These days, you don’t need to look far to find some business coach or influencer telling you that you have to expand your subscriber base. What they like to leave out is that those subscribers don’t always translate to actual business growth. A lot of times, they’re vanity metrics.
And while we don’t like to toot our own horn, texting has often been the exception to that rule, as you can tell by the way it’s often shown to enhance customer engagement.
No matter your industry, statistics clearly show that SMS marketing is a powerful tool for enhancing customer engagement and driving sales.
Benefits of SMS Broadcast Lists:
- Direct Communication: A text message is a highly personal and direct communication channel. That makes it even more surprising that a notable 83% of consumers prefer receiving appointment reminders via text. Businesses who can deliver this personal touch will see measurable business value, with every dollar spent on SMS marketing worldwide generating $71 in revenue.
- High Open Rates: SMS lists boast an impressive open rate of 98%, outperforming emails and social media direct messages. This effectiveness contributes to the SMS marketing sector’s projected growth, with an expected CAGR of 20.3% until 2025.
- Broad Reach and Immediate Response: Never worry again if an algorithm stands between you and a client’s inbox. SMS marketing offers access to a vast audience, with an estimated 7,516 billion users by 2026. The advantage of a text blast lies in its immediate delivery and high engagement, as people engage with mobile text alerts more frequently than any other platform like Facebook Messenger.
- Feedback and Personalization: Personalized marketing, known to cut customer acquisition costs by up to 50%, is crucial in today’s market. 60% of customers expect immediate use of their personal data across departments. SMS surveys and polls are efficient ways of gathering swift customer feedback, enhancing engagement and guiding business strategies.
- Fewer No-Shows and Happier Clients: Once they gave customers what they wanted, 96% of marketers have found that marketing text messages have helped increase revenue. Higher response and open rates simply mean easier planning and fewer no-shows, making scheduling easier for your team.
- Your Shield Against Recessions: During the pandemic, the SMS messaging market has actually grown. While you certainly can’t bet on any marketing channel to be bulletproof, it’s good to know text marketing thrived during past challenges.
Diverse Strategies For Your SMS Broadcast Lists
Once you’ve realized SMS marketing can give you a competitive edge, you may want to dive in before any of your competitors hear about it. Still, it’s important to have a plan. Here are some tried and true strategies that have helped expand and enhance SMS signups and performance regardless of your industry.
Manage Your Opt-In Through Migrating from Transactional SMS
You cannot broadcast SMS from marketing lists from other channels (i.e. email lists). You must have a specific Opt-In from your recipients that they are expecting your SMS. This is a proper SMS subscriber list.
A great way to build a SMS subscriber list is gaining trust and authority of your current customers by first adopting SMS in your service routines and business administration systems, such as; customer alerts on their service or scheduled appointments, or using SMS as a secondary security factor for login routines to their account profiles in your business services. This is typically sending them an authentication pin to respond back to provide better security for them. These uses of SMS are called Transactions SMS and by first enhancing your service routines and business administration systems to improve customer service, these same customers are more likely to welcome further contact from your business via SMS.
You will get a high adoption rate to your marketing SMS subscriber list by doing this.
Offer Exclusive SMS Deals and Discounts
Offering exclusive discounts and deals to SMS subscribers creates a compelling value proposition. Highlight the uniqueness and immediacy of these offers to encourage more sign-ups.
“Sign up for SMS alerts and receive a 20% off coupon for your next purchase!”
Add a Sign-Up Form to Your Website
Place your SMS sign-up form prominently on your website, such as in the header, footer or as a pop-up. Ensure the design is eye-catching yet seamless with your site’s aesthetic to draw attention without disrupting user experience. To truly leverage website traffic, you’ll have to pitch the value of SMS updates, either through testimonials or examples of past exclusive offers to showcase the benefits of signing up.
Ensure your SMS sign-up form stands out by integrating it into key areas of your website. Use clear, enticing language.
“Join our SMS list for exclusive deals you won’t find anywhere else!”
Convert Your Existing Email Subscribers
If you can craft a convincing SMS campaign, that knowledge will translate to email marketing. Still, you’ll want to think of an offer your subscribers can’t refuse. Make sure it’s something you can maintain from a business perspective, with high perceived value for customers and low cost to deliver.
If you send an email invitation that reads,
“Exclusive SMS-only deals! Unlock a special 15% discount on your next purchase.”
This will be more convincing than if you just write, “Join our SMS list to receive updates,” offering the same content everywhere.
Create a Referral Program
SMS marketing is more effective than email, or social media. If you throw a referral program on top, you can put your marketing on autopilot. Make sure your program rewards both the referrer and the new subscriber, and design the referral process as easy as possible, with clear instructions and shareable links or codes.
You can easily start a referral program with a message like this:
“Refer a friend and both of you get $20 off your next purchase! Text REFER to start sharing the love.”
You can even use SMS to update participants on their rewards:
“Thanks for referring John! You’ve earned $10 off your next buy. Keep referring for more rewards!”
This keeps participants informed and engaged.
Partner With Influencers and Other Brands
While this is a bit of an advanced strategy, it can boost your results tremendously.
However, the key to results lies in identifying influencers and brands that share your target audience and values. A partnership should always feel natural to your audience and enhance the trust in your organization. Otherwise, you hurt your brand reputation.
You can announce your new partnerships and make the benefits tangible for your subscribers:
“We’ve teamed up with [Brand/Influencer]! Text JOIN to 12345 for a special offer curated just for you!”
Campaigns like this ensure the partnership feels authentic and deliver value to both subscriber bases.
Swift SMS Gateway Takes Your SMS Broadcast Lists to the Next Level
Swift SMS Gateway stands at the forefront of revolutionizing SMS marketing campaigns, catering to businesses of all sizes with its comprehensive suite of features.
From advanced segmentation and support to help you ensure your message connects to your audience, Swift SMS Gateway equips you with everything needed to optimize your SMS broadcast lists.
Book a free demo now to see how you can elevate your SMS campaigns beyond mere messages for sustained business growth.
