Leveraging SMS Marketing: Revolutionizing Customer Experience

In today’s consumer-driven world, creating a positive customer experience is crucial. Recent research shows that 58% of customers are willing to pay more for a good consumer experience.

To provide the highest customer service and efficiency, businesses and contact centres should consider implementing SMS messaging to confirm commitments or check in with customers. SMS marketing is a rapidly evolving tool businesses can use to reach out and engage with customers effectively.

What is SMS marketing?

SMS marketing, or text message marketing, is how businesses and organizations send promotional, transactional, or engagement-focused messages to their customers or potential customers via SMS (Short Message Service).

This strategy is highly efficient due to its immediacy and high open rates, making it an essential tool in a comprehensive marketing approach.

How does SMS marketing work?

Step 1: Set Your SMS Marketing Goals

Before launching any SMS campaign, it’s crucial to identify your SMS marketing goals. Whether it’s increasing customer engagement, promoting new products, or generating leads, having clear objectives will guide your strategy and determine your success metrics.

Step 2: Build Your SMS Marketing List

A targeted and consent-based list is the backbone of successful SMS marketing. Use various ways to get customers to opt-in, like website forms or in-store promotions, ensuring that your recipients are genuinely interested in your updates.

Step 3: Craft Your SMS Marketing Messages

Quality content is key in SMS marketing. Keep your messages concise, informative, and engaging. Take advantage of SMS’s personal touch, and don’t forget to include a clear call-to-action to drive user engagement.

Step 4: Launch Your SMS Campaign

Use an SMS marketing platform to send your messages. Monitor the campaign regularly, ensuring that your messages are delivered at optimal times, maximizing their impact and reach.

Step 5: Analyze and Optimize Your Campaign

After sending your messages, analyzing the campaign’s performance is important. Use analytics provided by your SMS marketing platform to understand user behaviour and feedback, allowing you to optimize future campaigns for greater success.

Benefits of SMS Marketing for Businesses:

SMS Marketing is an innovative opportunity for businesses to reach their customers directly in an increasingly digital world. It offers unique advantages that can significantly boost a company’s marketing efforts, such as:

• High Open Rates: Nearly every SMS message is opened and read, providing virtually assured exposure.
• Instant Delivery: SMS messages are delivered and typically read within minutes, permitting real-time communication.
• Cost-Effective: SMS marketing is relatively inexpensive, allowing businesses of all sizes to utilize it.
• Wide Reach: With the high number of mobile phone users, mass SMS marketing can reach a broad audience.
• Personalization: SMS messages can be personalized to the recipient, enhancing customer engagement.

Best Ways to Use SMS to Improve Customer Experience 

1. Personalize the messages

Personalized messaging is crucial for customer engagement, with 72% of customers preferring it.

To enhance their experience, consider these ways to personalize messages:

• Personalize messages by addressing customers using their first names.
• Categorize customers into segments before sending messages.
• Connect the message to their unique customer journey.
• Leverage data to gain insights and customize messages for better personalization.

2. Use SMS to offer customer support

SMS can be a powerful tool for providing quick and efficient customer support. The following ways can be used to harness its potential:

• Send messages for order confirmations, shipping updates, and feedback collection.
• Keep customers updated with real-time alerts about their orders or services.
• Offer a communication channel where they can contact you with issues or inquiries.
• Use two-way SMS to allow customers to raise queries or issues conveniently.

3. Use SMS to collect customer feedback

According to a recent study, the majority of customers, about 90%, read reviews before making a purchase decision. Additionally, 83% of customers believe that reviews must be relevant and up-to-date to be considered trustworthy.

This highlights the importance of collecting feedback for eCommerce stores aiming to enhance the customer experience. Like many others in the eCommerce industry, it’s likely that your Shopify store already recognizes the significance of feedback collection.

However, are you using SMS to collect feedback?

• Use text messages with a survey or review form link for customers to provide their thoughts.
• Send a short message asking them to rate their experience and leave feedback.
• Integrate SMS with your customer relationship management (CRM) software to automatically send surveys after each transaction.
• Incentivize customers by offering discounts or rewards for leaving feedback through SMS.

4. Make it easy for customers to take the next steps

If your SMS campaigns aren’t delivering results, there’s no point in running them. Ensuring that your campaigns are helping you achieve your goals is crucial. Here are a few strategies to ensure that your customers take the desired actions:

• Include clear and compelling calls to action (CTAs) in every SMS.
• Implement the click-to-buy SMS strategy, allowing customers to purchase directly from the SMS.
• Share accurate and direct links to your products.

5. Use SMS to offer shopping assistance

Offering shopping assistance through SMS marketing can significantly enhance customer engagement. By utilizing SMS, you can provide timely and personalized support to your shoppers, fostering a better shopping experience. Here are some strategies you can try out:

• Send personalized product recommendations based on the customer’s previous purchases or browsing history.
• Answer queries or provide information about products immediately via SMS.
• Use SMS to inform customers about restocking or the availability of desired products.
• Provide instant support for any transaction issues or concerns.
• Leverage SMS for post-purchase support, including delivery updates or warranty information.

6. Use SMS to conduct surveys

Understanding your customers’ perception of your brand is crucial for business growth. To achieve this, directly ask your customers for their feedback through surveys conducted via SMS.

Surveys provide valuable insights, enhance customer understanding, improve loyalty, and identify areas for improvement. Different SMS surveys, such as Net Promoter Score, polls, text-to-vote, and web-based surveys, can be used based on your goals.

Follow these steps to conduct SMS surveys and enhance customer experience:

• Determine survey type
• Create customer segments
• Craft survey questions
• Send surveys via the SMS tool
• Enable two-way conversation
• Track performance
• Optimize survey campaigns

7. Comply with all SMS regulations

Failure to comply with SMS marketing regulations and policies can lead to your contact number being blocked.

Therefore, ensure your Shopify SMS marketing app adheres to SMS compliance and policies such as TCPA, CTIA, CCPA, and more. Follow these guidelines to maintain SMS compliance while leveraging the various benefits of Shopify SMS marketing:

• Obtain consent from customers before sending marketing messages.
• Clearly state the purpose and frequency of your messaging during opt-in.
• Provide an easy opt-out option, such as “Reply STOP to unsubscribe.”
• Respect opt-out requests immediately and without any delay.
• Always identify yourself and your business in the message.
• Keep a record of consent and unsubscribed customers.
• Monitor and respond promptly to customer complaints.
• Regularly review and update your SMS marketing strategy to comply with changing regulations.

Choose a trusted SMS marketing partner now!

Using SMS marketing can have a big impact on your business. It’s important to pick a reliable SMS API marketing partner such as Airtel to get valuable insights and level up your SMS marketing strategies. Don’t miss out on the chance to use smart solutions for your business’s success. Visit Airtel IQ Hyperlocal Marketing to learn more and take your SMS marketing to the next level!

Airtel Business

Airtel Business is India’s leading and most trusted provider of ICT services with a global network across the USA, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Asia-Pacific, India and SAARC regions. We serve over 1200 global enterprises, 2000 large and 1 million medium/small businesses across India.