As a retail brand, you’ve probably shifted your spending in recent months—and you want to make sure your marketing dollars are put to good use.
Whether you’re new to text-message marketing or were one of the many retailers prioritizing investment in this channel last year, here are five hot tips you can use to perfect your SMS marketing strategy.
1. Create a seamless sign-up process.
Your ability to grow your subscriber list is the single most important factor in the success of your SMS marketing program.
Make sure it’s as painless as possible for users to opt into your program—and use every tool at your disposal to let shoppers know they can connect with your brand 1:1 on this channel. In addition to greeting website visitors with sign-up creatives, promote your text messaging program across email, social media, paid ads, and in-store signage.
And remember the value of incentives. Whether you’re providing one-time discounts, free shipping, or some other type of offer, sign-up incentives are proven to lead to 77% higher conversions.
2. Leverage automation to drive transactions and loyalty.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could automatically engage consumers based on their shopping behaviors and at the most relevant touchpoints on their buyer journey?
Great news—you can! Whether you’re welcoming new subscribers, reminding high-intent shoppers of products left in their online carts, or driving repeat purchases by promoting a loyalty rewards program, data-driven triggered text messages enable you to take the guesswork out of customer engagement and boost sales across the entire customer lifecycle. Make sure automation is on your list of SMS marketing best practices.
3. Treat subscribers like VIPs.
Text messaging is a personal, highly visible communication channel. That means the people who sign up to receive text messages from your brand are likely among your biggest fans. Treat them to subscriber-exclusive sales and early access to new or back-in-stock products to make them feel like VIPs.
Not only will this encourage high-intent shoppers to spend more with your brand, it will also help you strengthen long-term loyalty. You can give your brand fans another reason to buy by using buy now pay later (BNPL) messaging in your texts. BNPL providers like Klarna allow shoppers to split purchases into four payments at checkout—helping you mitigate cart abandonment and increase overall order value by giving your subscribers an easy way to make items more affordable.
4. Personalize shopper experiences.
Regularly send text messages to your entire subscriber list, but do so in a way that’s tailored to individual subscribers.
Explore how you can drill down and strengthen connections with your subscribers by segmenting them based on purchase history, product browsing data, geolocation, and more. Segmenting your subscriber list based on different criteria will help you ensure your text messages are always relevant, helpful, and impactful.
5. Optimize performance with data analysis.
Drive better results by measuring the metrics that matter most: subscriber growth, message engagement, and revenue attribution.
Data points related to sign-ups, clicks, and conversions will help you understand how different content, frequency, timing, and even days of the week impact the performance of your SMS marketing program. Consistently A/B test different elements of your SMS marketing strategy to find out what resonates most with your target audience.
Text messaging has evolved into a premier performance marketing channel thanks to the rapid growth of both e-commerce and mobile-first shopping. By putting these SMS marketing best practices to work, you can ensure you’re prepared to maximize the opportunity.
Attentive® is a personalized text messaging platform for innovative brands & organizations that can quickly become a top 3 revenue channel—with results like 30%+ click-through rates and 25x+ ROI. Contact Attentive for more information, view recent case studies, or check out Attentive Outlook 2021 for data-driven insights to help you maximize the revenue opportunities of text message marketing in 2021 and beyond.
Eric Wendt is a Content Marketing Manager at Attentive®—a Klarna Technology Partner and the most comprehensive text message marketing solution.