SMS Marketing Guide

2/23/2021 SMS Marketing Guide - The Essential Guidebook for Growing Sales with SMS
SMS Marketing Guide

The Essential Guidebook for Growing Sales with SMS Marketing
1. What is SMS Marketing?

The hardest problem for marketers in 2020 is simple: No one actually hears what you’re saying.
Why is that?
We have ad blockers (https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/global-ad-blocking-behavior-2019-infographic/551716/) that prevent us from

seeing undesired ads.
When most businesses post on Facebook their posts are seen by… no one (https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/facebook-organic-reach-
declining). (Unless you buy ads, that is.)
Email isn’t a solution—a highly successful email marketing message will be opened by about 25% of the people that receive it. Average open
rates are even lower (https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/) according to email marketing rm MailChimp.
Marketing and advertising open rates hover at around 17%!
Streaming services have allowed people to skip ads (https://www.adweek.com/tv-video/most-tv-viewers-wait-streaming-services-avoid-ads/)

altogether and have broken apart television audiences, making TV ads less attractive (https://adage.com/article/opinion/net ix-n-spills-how-
streaming-wars-could-hurt-advertisers-consumers-and-platforms/2209931)—and people can always skip ads or buy ad-free subscriptions
anyway.
And on top of all that: ad blindness continues to be a problem for marketers. The respected NN Group, experts in web usability, have
published extensively (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-old-and-new- ndings/) on the problem of consumers being blind
to ads. According to marketing tech giants Hubspot, the overall average click-through rate (https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/horrifying-
display-advertising-stats) on banner ads is .06%. You’re actually more likely to win the lottery (https://www.businessinsider.com/its-more-
likely-you-will-survive-a-plane-crash-or-win-the-lottery-than-click-a-banner-ad-2011-6) than you are to click a banner ad.
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So that is the problem. You’re a business. You, understandably, want to get the word out about your product. And all the technology we have
to help you do that… mostly fails at doing that.
Well, that isn’t quite accurate.
Text messaging is an intriguing exception to the rule.
According to CrazyEgg, a company specializing in analytics software, open rates for text messages (https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/sms-
marketing-program/) from marketers are as high as 98%! This is why SMS marketing is such a promising channel for marketers.
What is SMS marketing?

SMS marketing is using text messages to market your products to potential and past customers. The reason why it is so valuable is likely
apparent by now: Unlike virtually every other advertising channel, which is either highly ine cient or simply a straight-up waste of money,
text messaging still reaches most of the people you care about reaching.
Why does SMS marketing work?

One thing that makes SMS marketing (/articles/sms-marketing-tools-lead-generation) uniquely e ective is that it reaches a highly de ned
audience that has already opted in to receive your messages. This is sometimes called “inbound marketing,” because you are contacting
people that have already come to you and said they are interested in learning more about your business. Inbound marketing is generally far
more e ective than what many call “interruption marketing” or “outbound marketing” in which you send out a general marketing message to
a broad, unde ned audience.
If you create banner ads or even a text-based Google Ad, your audience is ‘anyone that uses Google.’ Narrowing that down to reach your
ideal buyer, is di cult. The same problem applies to Facebook ads and TV ads. Email marketing and SMS marketing are unique because the
only people who receive messages from you are people who, at some point, asked to receive messages from you. So you know you’re
reaching warm, engaged people with both. That said, whereas consumers often have cluttered inboxes and thus do not read your email,
they almost certainly will read your text.
Signi cantly, this is likely to continue to be the case in the future as well: Text messages are subject to the Telephone Consumer Protection
Act, which strictly regulates text message spam. If companies ever started spamming their customer base, they would be vulnerable to a
major lawsuit. As long as TCPA is enforced, as it has been up to this date, a person’s text message inbox is likely to look much cleaner than
their email inbox. And a cleaner inbox, translates to higher open rates and engagements.
How does SMS marketing work?

As with email marketing, you will need to build a list of contacts to receive your text messages. You need two things to build your SMS
marketing list:
📱 Shortcode
🔑 Keyword
“Shortcodes” are the ve- or six-digit numbers that users will send a text message to in order to subscribe themselves to your list. “Keywords”
are the words that users text to the shortcode in order to subscribe. These are the most common methods, but Mobile Text Alerts (/) users
can add subscribers through other methods as well, including an online landing page and a manual option inside the MTA control panel.
Learn more about how to add SMS subscribers here (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010969213-How-do-I-add-

subscribers-).
How do you use SMS marketing?

Let’s look at a couple examples of how you can use shortcodes and keywords to grow your business. If you run a small clothing boutique,
you can invite people to sign up for your list by asking them to, “Text ‘clothes’ (keyword) to 55566 (shortcode) to receive updates on when we
have sales.”
Try it out! Text TRYIT to 74121 to see how the mobile opt in feature works. ×
By using keywords and shortcodes, you can build your text messaging list for your business.
For example, Camille, a clothing boutique owner in Utah, uses this feature to collect leads for her business. She regularly sends out discounts
after a lead opts in. She says,
“I love how easy it is for people to opt in and how fast I can send a text alert out!”
— Camille
You can also use multiple keywords to add people to di erent lists. For example, if you own a mechanic’s shop, you might have one SMS
marketing list to remind people when it’s time for an oil change. You might have another to remind people when it is time to do less routine
maintenance like checking the brakes or steering and suspension. Learn more about keywords here (https://mobile-text-
alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011165773-Keywords).
How effective is SMS marketing?

Often what happens when marketers nd a new channel to promote their products is fairly predictable: The channel gets ooded, it starts
getting abused, and becomes less e ective. Once upon a time Facebook was a great marketing channel. Once upon a time SEO was a great
marketing channel. Then they got popular, they got ooded with marketers, and your returns dropped dramatically.
There are two things we can say about SMS marketing as it relates to this problem.
1. Higher Targeting 🎯
First, the most important point is that SMS marketing messages only go to people that have opted in to receive messages from you. So,
unlike Google or Facebook, your list will never get ooded as it did on those platforms. Additionally, because you’re sending it to people who
already came to you (instead of interrupting people as they are doing something else) engagement rates are always likely to be higher.
2. Higher Intent
Second, it is harder to accidentally end up on an SMS marketing list. Emails get sold all the time. You end up on lists you never meant to. Plus
you use your email to sign up for various services all the time and whenever you do that you’re probably getting added to a list. In contrast,
laws regarding phone numbers and unsolicited messages to phones tend to be much stricter. For these reasons, it is unlikely that a person’s
text message inbox will ever become as ooded and overwhelming as their email inbox.
Conclusion
Text messaging is a fantastic opportunity for businesses of all kinds to more e ectively let prospects and customers know about their
products. If you would like to learn more about how SMS marketing can help your business grow, sign up for a free trial (/signup) to try
Mobile Text Alerts for yourself.
2. What are the Benefits of SMS Marketing?

We have already said that the de ning challenge for many businesses today, especially small businesses, is how to make sure their message
stands out in a very loud and crowded marketing space.
For one reason or another, many marketing channels o er relatively limited engagement:
💾 Traditional media is ine ective in a digital world.
💲 Google Ads are complex and can be very expensive.
😏 The same applies to SEO.
😕 Social media is unpredictable and can be quite expensive.
✉ Email marketing can work for some, but even with email the open rates (https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-
benchmarks/) on any one marketing email likely will hover between 15 and 25%, which when you stop to think about it is not great.
Once you understand this problem, the bene ts of SMS marketing become more apparent.
Let’s begin with the obvious.
SMS Marketing Boosts Engagement

Text message open rates hover between 95% and 98% on average (https://moosend.com/blog/sms-marketing/). To fully capture how big a
di erence this makes, let’s put it this way.
Suppose you want 50 people to see your message about an upcoming sale.
🔍 SEO isn’t a great strategy because that’s a long-term investment and it’s not the kind of marketing channel designed for event-based
marketing. So you can’t use SEO.
👎 On Facebook, your brand page reaches around 5% of your fans with each post. This means that if you want to reach 50 people via
Facebook, you would want to have around 1000 likes on your business page. Or you can, of course, run ads—which simply becomes
another marketing expense. Of course, if you don’t have 1000 fans to broadcast a message to on Facebook, you aren’t going to reach 50
people without advertising.
💸 On Google Ads, 3% of people (https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/02/29/google-adwords-industry-benchmarks) who see

your ad will click on it. So your ad will need to be seen by around 1,650 people to get those 50 clicks. At an average cost of $2.69 per
click, those 50 clicks will cost you $134.50. But if you’re a tech company, the average cost-per-click is $3.40, which would make those 50
clicks cost $170. As with Facebook, this ad expense is on top of all your normal marketing costs and is only the cost to promote one sale
or discount one time. So the costs will add up quickly.
📧 With email, assuming a 20% open rate, you would need a list of 250 email addresses to hit your goal of reaching 50 people. The
good news is if you’ve been building your email list all along, then this won’t incur any additional expenses. But you still need 250
people to hit your goal of reaching an audience of 50. Learn more about email vs. SMS here (/articles/email-marketing-sms-marketing-
lead-generation).
📱 With SMS, assuming a 95% open rate (the low-end estimate), you need a contact list of… 53 people.
In chart form, it looks like this:
If you care more about actually reaching your audience then you do about broadcasting to a huge audience of completely unengaged people
who will never buy from you, then SMS is for you.
SMS Offers Greater Personalization

In addition to o ering stronger engagement numbers, SMS allows for more customization of your messages to suit your particular audience
members.
This is often called ‘segmentation’ and it means breaking up your contact list into smaller segments (https://mobile-text-
alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010882614-Can-I-organize-subscribers-into-groups-) of similar people. By segmenting your list, you
can send more relevant, valuable messages to your followers.
For example, if you are running a sale on one particular product, you may not want to push that announcement to your entire list.
Depending on your business, the product you have on sale may not be of interest to a large number of your followers.
Suppose you own a shoe store. You probably don’t need to inform your entire list about a sale on women’s athletic shoes.
But if you can identify women on your list or even people who have purchased women’s athletic shoes from you in the past, then you can
send out a message about the sale that only goes to those people.
In addition, if you are segmenting your list correctly, you are likely to see increased engagement from your followers over time. Why is that?
Because we live in a saturated media environment, people naturally tend to skip or block most messages that come their way.
You don’t begin with people’s trust and then lose it.
Rather, you start without trust and you must earn trust over time by actually providing real value to your followers.
Once you gain trust, then your followers start opening your messages more consistently because your messages stand out. You’re not just
spamming them with content; you’re sending them messages that are actually relevant to their daily life. So e ectively segmenting your list
in order to send more relevant messages will actually help you reach your entire list more e ectively.
SMS Allows for Greater Versatility

Your audience is made up of di erent people with di erent challenges and needs.
Likewise, your business is made up of di erent products with di erent appeal to di erent buyers. So you need a method of marketing that
not only does justice to the diversity of your audience, but also does justice to the diversity of your business.
What does that mean?
Well, if you are a local retailer, there will be times when you want to let people know that you have new products in-stock. In other cases,
you’ll want to send along a discount code or special deal, and in still others you will want to ask them if they are happy with their purchase.
Because it can be so customized and is, inherently, so personal, SMS messaging (/articles/how-to-generate-more-leads-with-sms-marketing)
is a great way to do all of these things.
As we have already noted, most marketing channels are more limited in terms of what they do well. SEO is not going to work for time-
sensitive messages or event updates. Email can do just about anything, but has sub-optimal open rates. Social media is going to struggle with
personalization and segmentation. But SMS does all of these things well without compromising on user engagement. Indeed, if you are
targeting your messages e ectively, your engagement rates will go up as people learn that you are a trustworthy brand.
Conclusion
E ective marketing is e cient marketing. The biggest problem with most traditional and early-digital marketing strategies is that they
ultimately become volume games. Because engagement on those channels, Google Ads, Facebook, even email, tend to be lower, you need
very large audiences to reach even a small portion of your potential customers. With SMS, that problem is solved. You don’t need 2000
people on your list in order to actually reach 50 prospects. You can, instead, be con dent that the people actually on your list actually see
your message. And that kind of e ciency can make a huge di erence for your bottom line and for your business.
Start for Free (/signup)
3. How to Get Started with Bulk SMS Marketing

So far we have argued that the de ning problem for most marketers today is simply how to stand out amidst all the noise of the 21st century
marketplace. We live in a world of content shock (https://businessesgrow.com/2014/01/06/content-shock/) and this puts enormous stresses
on every marketer.
We have also argued that SMS marketing is a unique marketing channel in that, despite all the challenges facing marketers, it still has very
high engagement numbers. To demonstrate this, we compared the engagement rates across various marketing channels. Then, using those
rates, we asked, “How many people would you need to broadcast your message to in order for 50 people to actually see your message?”
This is the result:
The di culty, now, is how to begin your SMS marketing campaign.
Obstacles to Implementing an SMS Marketing System

The primary challenge many companies run into when attempting to launch an SMS marketing strategy (/articles/how-to-integrate-sms-
marketing-into-your-broader-marketing-strategy) is two-fold.
SMS Marketing Technology ⚙
First, many marketing software platforms do not have robust texting capabilities built into them. This means businesses interested in using
SMS marketing must begin working with SMS-speci c marketing partners. That in turn requires becoming acquainted with new product
o erings and new marketing tech partners. If this describes your situation, we want to help. We have created a chart that compares the main
companies in the SMS marketing space (click here to view the comparison chart (/sms-software-comparison-chart)). By using this chart, we
hope you can identify the company that is the best t for your business’s needs.
There are any number of common features you might want from an SMS partner. Amongst those include:
🌐 Do they allow you to add contacts via an online form?
📱 Do they o er a mobile app?
💧 Do they o er marketing features, such as list segmentation and drip campaigns?
Building an SMS Marketing List 📋
Once you have your SMS marketing software gured out, you must address the second di culty: collecting phone numbers and launching
your SMS marketing strategy.
Let’s begin by talking about building your list.
The rst thing to say is that sending text messages to people who have not consented to receiving texts is against the law. If you do this, you
will potentially end up paying heavy nes. Don’t do it. You can view the full statement on texting compliance with anti-spam laws here:
(https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-16-1299A1.pdf)
That said, there are a variety of ways of building a list of people who have consented to receive text messages from you.
Texting In 📲
The simplest way is via texting itself: Through the use of a shortcode (a ve- or six-digit number that users send texts to) and a keyword (a
short word that triggers a response when sent to the shortcode) your customers can add themselves to your SMS marketing list. Learn more
about texting in (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011165773-Keywords).
Sign-Up Page 🌐
There are other methods as well. You can use a form on your website to allow users to opt in to receive texts while on your business’s
website. Learn more about editing the sign-up page (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012910953-Sign-Up-Page).
API Automation 🤖
Third, you could theoretically add their phone number to a list upon purchase of a product just as you do with an email address, provided
you include a checkbox that customers use to opt in to receive text messages from you. Learn more about API access (https://mobile-text-
alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037540394-Can-I-send-messages-through-API-).
Import Spreadsheet 📥
Finally, if you have a spreadsheet with phone numbers of past customers who have consented to receive texts, you can simply upload the
spreadsheet to most SMS marketing platforms and import phone numbers that way. Learn more about importing subscribers
(https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010882714-How-do-I-import-a-spreadsheet-of-existing-subscribers-).
So that is the technical problem of how to build a list.
There is a background question as well, obviously: Why would people opt in to receive texts in the rst place?
Incentivizing SMS Signups 🧁
Ultimately, prospects and customers will only opt in to receive messages from you if they think you are o ering something they value.
So you will need a high-quality product that genuinely helps your customers solve a problem they face on a regular basis. If you do that, then
they will have reason to be interested in you and may want to receive communications from you about other product o erings, sales, and so
on.
What this means for your SMS strategy (/articles/how-to-integrate-sms-marketing-into-your-broader-marketing-strategy) is that you want
there to be a fairly close connection between the moment a person is bene tting from your product and the moment you are asking them to
opt in to receive texts from you.
For example, if you are a restaurant, then you might text receipts to customers and include a note with the receipt inviting them to sign up to
receive texts from you by texting a shortcode. If the customer enjoyed the meal (or is currently enjoying their meal) when they get a message
from you, they are more likely to sign up.
Conclusion
In the next chapter, we will share with you some examples of how other businesses have used SMS marketing to improve their sales, grow
revenue, and build loyalty with their customers. If you wish to continue reading, you can continue on to chapter 4.
4. Best SMS Marketing Use Cases

SMS marketing is multi-faceted, which means there are many plausible use cases.
When planning your own campaigns, the best way to proceed is to begin by laying out the ideal way a person would move from rst learning
about your business to becoming a loyal, repeat customer. When you have gured out how that process would happen, ideally, then you can
plan what marketing channels you intend to use and at what points in the process you will use them.
Of course, sometimes the easiest way to make these kinds of decisions is to see examples of how other people have used SMS to promote
their business. So in this chapter of our SMS guide, we’re going to share examples of how our customers have used SMS.
Appointment Reminders 📅
You might not think of a service like this as being part of marketing’s work.
But marketing exists to help build your company’s brand and to guide people from the time they rst discover your business through to the
nal sale—and the sale isn’t complete until the appointment has been completed.
A reminder alert (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360038031453-Appointment-Reminders) like this, especially in

B2C business, is an easy marketing feature to add that can make a huge di erence for your bottom line.
There are many types of businesses that can use these reminder alerts. Tutors, as in the example above, are one use case. But salons,
barbers, mechanics, counselors, other healthcare practitioners (dentists, doctors, chiropractors, etc.), or even restaurants that accept
reservations could all use SMS marketing to send out reminders to people who have scheduled a time for receiving some form of good or
service.
Remarketing to Past Customers ↪
Technically, ‘remarketing’ refers to advertising to people (via Google Ads or Facebook Ads) that have already visited your website. That said,
the basic goal of remarketing—to get back in front of people who have interacted with you before—can be accomplished via texting as well.
For example, if you have a past customer you haven’t seen in a while who you’d like to try and win back, texting is likely to be a far more
e ective means (/articles/email-sms-grow-revenue) of reaching them than an email campaign or some kind of broad advertising campaign.
Why? Because texting’s engagement rates are so much higher, as we have already discussed.
What should you say in your message? The above is one example: O er some kind of special deal or discount to incentivize people to come
back.
Seasonal Announcements ⛳
Many businesses will have a certain degree of seasonality baked into their operations and sales. Golf courses, as in the example above, are
only open certain times of year. In other cases, there may be certain seasons when particular services are highly in demand.
For example, a pharmacy might be especially busy in the fall when they are o ering more u shots. Or perhaps a sporting goods store sees a
sales spike in the weeks leading up to hunting season. Or a multifamily housing property might see a spike in leasing activity during the
summer months.
In all these cases, texting can be a great, simple way to get in front of your prospects and customers with valuable information. It could be a
reminder to renew their lease or to schedule an appointment (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360038031453-
Appointment-Reminders) to get their u shot.
In any of these cases, the simplicity of the information to communicate combined with the e ectiveness of texting makes for a fantastic
marketing combination.
You can also use SMS to send out alerts about birthday specials you may o er someone on their birthday every year. This could be especially
useful for restaurants, but other businesses may also nd uses for it.
Follow-Up 🤝
For many B2B businesses as well as some B2C, simple sales follow-up can be one of the best ways to improve sales performance. If you’re in
an industry with certain sales models built around conferences or lots of travel and sales meetings, then texting can be an excellent tool for
following up with people after the event.
In the case of conferences, especially, it can be easy for a person to lose track of who they spoke to and forget to follow up with someone,
even if they were genuinely excited about the conversation at the time. In those situations, what you need is some way to get back to the
front of that person’s mind. You and everyone else will be emailing them. They’ll be getting hit by ads on Facebook. Texting, however, may be
a way to both stand out from the crowd (depending on how common SMS marketing is in your eld) and to immediately return to front of
mind with the prospect.
Event Announcements 🏁
Finally, just as you can use texting for follow-up after an event, you can also use it in the days leading up to the event (https://mobile-text-
alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011411793-Scheduled-Messages) to let people know what’s happening.
If you are going to be attending a conference or trade show, you can use texting to tell people what booth number you’ll be at or even to
include a link that they could use to schedule a time to talk to one of your sales reps.
If you’re o ering a major sale, you can send out a text to let people know about the sale and include a link that will take them to a webpage
where they can learn more about what is going to be on sale, what the discounts will be, and so on.
Conclusion
Again, don’t overthink things with your SMS campaigns. SMS excels at simple messaging (https://go.mobile-text-alerts.com/sign-up-free).
So this is not the place to build out some huge educational marketing campaign to train people on your newest product.
Rather, SMS is where you should be informing people about valuable information that can be quickly and easily conveyed in the format of a
text message. The use cases above are just some of the possible examples of how you could use texting to promote your work.
5. Best SMS Marketing Tools and Pricing

So far we have covered the following things:
🤔 Why marketing is so hard these days and how texting can help
👍 What kinds of bene ts SMS marketing can o er your business
✅ How to get started with SMS marketing (https://go.mobile-text-alerts.com/sign-up-free)
📋 Examples of successful SMS marketing
Now let’s talk about some of the practical tools at your disposal once you begin using SMS marketing software to promote your business.
List Segmentation
The people your SMS marketing list are already deluged with marketing messages. How can you know that? Because basically everyone is.
And because we’re so slammed with content, many people do not need much of an excuse to unsubscribe from a list they’re on.
Sending too many messages that are irrelevant to them would certainly qualify as a good excuse to cancel.
So one of the most basic things you can do to improve your marketing and simply treat your prospects and customers more kindly is
segment your lists.
List segmentation (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010882614-Can-I-organize-subscribers-into-groups-) means

breaking your list of message recipients into smaller segments.
So, for example, if you are a clothing store, you could segment your list based on past purchases or various demographic factors (age, sex,
etc.). By doing this, you can send more targeted, relevant messages to the people on your SMS marketing list. If you are running a sale on
one particular item, for example, you could text an alert to people who have bought that item in the past or bought a similar item.
What is great about list segmentation is not simply that it makes your messages more relevant to customers, but that it actually is more likely
to contribute to sales as well.
Without segmentation, you go one of two ways—you can send out messages to everyone on your list about every sale, discount, etc. that you
run. This will lead to unsubscribes as the messages will not be relevant to most people. Or you can never send out messages for fear of
burning out your list.
Segmentation allows you to have a more precise, sophisticated strategy built around messaging people with content they actually care
about, that they actually want to see. And, unsurprisingly, when you give people that kind of content, you get better results.
Mobile Text Alerts allows you to easily send and schedule messages to your segments with our Manage Groups feature.
Mobile Text Alerts tutorial - Manage Groups. (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010882614-Can-I-organize-

subscribers-into-groups-)
Drip Campaigns
Drip campaigns (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011325834-Drip-Campaigns) are another valuable SMS
marketing tool you can use.
Drip campaigns are any kind of multi-message campaign in which you slowly release a series of messages over a period of time—dripping
them out like water dripping from a faucet, thus the name.
The idea of drip campaigns is simple: Sometimes persuasion takes a long time. For one reason or another, the prospect or past customer is
not ready to buy. In that situation, the answer is not to pressure them into a sale; if anything that will just alienate them.
Rather, the solution is to be patient. Then you need to take the time to understand the person’s objections and to think about how best to
counter them as part of your marketing message. By breaking this task out into multiple marketing messages, you can make the task a bit
easier. You don’t need to overcome every objection in one message, after all. You can take your time and slowly walk the prospect to where
you want them to go.
Drip campaigns allow you to do this.
This makes them best suited for selling someone on a more complex or risky product, of course. But there are also ways to use them for
other products. You could pair drip campaigns with a reminder alert and set up a series of reminder messages to go out when a customer
has an appointment coming up with you, for example.
The big idea, though, is that drip campaigns allow you to slowly persuade people by breaking your message out into smaller, more digestible
chunks that are easier for readers to understand and follow.
Mobile Text Alerts tutorial - Drip Campaigns. (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011325834-Drip-Campaigns)
Mobile Surveys
Mobile surveys (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011325974-Mobile-Surveys), or polls, are one of the most
exible and most powerful ways to use SMS marketing.
The use cases for surveys are many, too many to list out in this guide. But here are a few examples to get started. You can use surveys to:
🗳 solicit feedback on a webinar or group coaching session.
🎄 invite customers to give input on what kinds of deals you o er for a certain holiday or occasion
📅 give customers options for scheduling regular appointments or necessary maintenance
Mobile surveys excel in two important areas.
First, they encourage prospects and customers to interact with you. Consumer research suggests (https://us.epsilon.com/pressroom/new-
epsilon-research-indicates-80-of-consumers-are-more-likely-to-make-a-purchase-when-brands-o er-personalized-experiences) that
shoppers are 80% more likely to make a purchase when brands personalize their service. By making it easy to interact with a person on an
individual basis, you make it easier for that consumer to trust you and be willing to buy from you in the future.
Second, they make it easy for consumers to respond. You are not asking for their “thoughts” on an issue, which would require them to sit
down, think about the issue, and type out a response. Rather, you’re asking them to simply send a one-character response in which they
select their preferred choice from a eld of prede ned options. This is both less intimidating and less mentally demanding than many other
ways a business might invite a customer to respond to them.
Between their versatility and their unique ability to provoke responses from customers, mobile surveys are a fantastic tool for any SMS
marketer.
Mobile Text Alerts tutorial - Mobile Surveys. (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011325974-Mobile-Surveys)
Reminder Messages
Reminder messages are a very particular feature and use case, but that doesn’t make them any less valuable.
If you have a business where customers make appointments for services, like a mechanic's shop or dental o ce, think about how often you
get no-shows and the time and money that costs you.
Or if you do a lot of webinars as part of your business’s marketing, how many people sign up to attend and then don’t show up? On average
the answer is “over half.”
Reminder messages are a fantastic way to try to bring that no-show rate down.
Reminder messages are also one of the primary situations where texting is far superior to email. Because texting excels at simple messages
and because everyone reads their text messages, your reminder alerts sent out via text are dramatically more likely to be seen than similar
messages sent via email or social media.
So while reminder messages may be simple, they have the potential to solve a major problem facing many businesses.
Mobile Text Alerts tutorial - Reminder Messages. (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010970933-Send-a-Message)
MMS
The biggest limitation with SMS marketing is that text messaging is very limited in terms of both message length and design elements.
There’s no coding to do to make the message look nicer. You can’t create templates on which your messages will be seen. You’re at the
mercy of text messaging apps and their very limited design features.
That being said, there is one thing you can do to help with this problem: Use MMS messages. MMS messages include photos. If you’re trying
to create a sense of desire or perhaps intrigue, including a photo with your message can be a great way to further incentivize the recipient to
buy.
Obviously even MMS is relatively limited in terms of design capabilities. But it is important to keep in mind that ultimately you care about
sales, not winning beauty contests with your marketing materials. The bottom line is that texting works, if by ‘works’ we means ‘conveys the
information you want to convey.’ What MMS does is it allows you to retain the strengths of texting while also incorporating some limited
visual elements in your message. Given that, it’s a highly valuable tool to use as you are marketing to prospects and past customers.
Mobile Text Alerts tutorial - MMS. (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010882194-Can-I-send-images-in-my-

messages-)
Pricing
How much will you pay for software that allows you to do all these things? Typically the answer is going to be anywhere from $250-$300
annually to as much as $1000 annually. If you want to get a better handle on who the options are in SMS marketing and what kind of prices
they charge, we have created this chart to help you:
(Click on the thumbnail below to view the full chart)
(/sms-software-comparison-chart)
6. SMS Marketing vs. Email Marketing

Though there are many marketing channels a business can use to promote their brand and products, two in particular are unique: 📧 email
and 📱 SMS.
What makes email and SMS distinctive?

All forms of marketing are about conveying a message to an audience. But most forms are built around broadcast audiences rather than
targeted audiences.
What is the di erence?
Broadcast Marketing 📢 & Targeted Marketing 🎯
Broadcast messages can be valuable. If your goal is raising awareness, then you want to broadcast.
But broadcast messages are also wasteful. You’re paying to reach a large number of people, many of whom have no interest in your brand
and will never be a customer. In some situations, the waste is the cost of doing business. Building awareness of a brand inherently means
reaching a large number of people who will never buy.
In other cases, though, broadcast-based marketing is the wrong approach.
This is particularly true for companies who sell a more high-risk product. If you sell something that is expensive or has a major impact on a
person’s quality of life, then awareness alone isn’t going to move products for you because people do not buy those kind of products based
only on awareness.
They buy burritos based on awareness. They buy a bottle of wine based on awareness. They might buy some cheap clothing item based only
on awareness.
But if it is a more expensive B2C product or almost any kind of B2B product, you need more than awareness to make the sale. You need
trust.
How do you build trust?
The Value of Targeted Marketing
Trust is built over time. It’s built by patiently overcoming objections and demonstrating your competence, honesty, and value.
You can’t do that kind of work over broadcast-based marketing channels. You need opt in channels in which you only send messages to
people who have opted-in to receive marketing content from you.
When you focus on talking to the people who have already opted-in for marketing content, via both email and SMS, you’re able to think more
expansively about your marketing. You don’t have to simply chase after attention; you get to think about how to keep your audience’s
attention.
And if you do that the right way, then you can build trust with your prospects, generate sales, and create loyal, long-term customers.
What targeted messaging channel is best?

Both email and SMS can help you educate, inform, and build trust with your prospects. It’s too simplistic to suggest that one is “better” than
the other.
Email does a number of things well: Emails allow for longer-form content, which allows you to say more. They also allow for design elements,
which can be great for branding, and including things like videos, photos, and so on.
Where email struggles is where most messaging channels struggle: engagement. According to email marketing software provider MailChimp,
marketing emails only average a 17% open rate (https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/). So you can write fantastic
content to promote your business. Only 17% of the people you send that content to will actually see it.
SMS, in many ways, mirrors email: Where email struggles with engagement, SMS does not. 95% of SMS messages are read
(https://moosend.com/blog/sms-marketing/). If you send a text to your prospects, they’re going to see it.
Where SMS struggles is where email is strong—because texting is a very simple messaging format, you do not have as many possibilities with
SMS as with email. You cannot write a large amount of text. You cannot include most design elements. You cannot include videos. If you use
MMS messaging, you can include some limited design elements, though not video.
NOTE: If you need to send a video via text, the best method is to share a link to the video and, using MMS (https://mobile-text-
alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010882194-Can-I-send-images-in-my-messages-). Fortunately, most phones will show a preview
image of your video.
What this means is that the best approach is to utilize both marketing channels. For longer form messages that are needed to explain the
value of the product or how it works, email is still an excellent choice.
SMS can and should be used to provide support for the long-form email content and to provide shorter forms of content as well.
Thus it is not really a question of saying which of these two media channels is “better.” Rather, the issue is what your particular needs are as
a business and what marketing channel will be most e ective at meeting that need.
In most cases, the answer will be to use a combination of marketing channels to do di erent things within your overall marketing strategy.
SMS marketing (https://go.mobile-text-alerts.com/sign-up-free) is usually not going to be about replacing email, social media, or SEO. Instead,
it’s about adding another tool to your marketing toolbox, another option to help you solve the various marketing problems that confront
your team.
Interested in reaching your customers through SMS marketing? Click here to sign up for a free trial (https://go.mobile-text-alerts.com/sign-
up-free). Send 50 messages free and get access to full account features.
To compare SMS vs. email in other ways, we invite you to check out these additional topics.
[More Articles] Email Marketing vs SMS Marketing:

1. 🎁 Which is best to reward loyal customers? (/articles/email-vs-sms-customer-loyalty)
2. 💸 Which is best to drive more repeat purchases? (/articles/email-marketing-vs-sms-marketing--which-is-best-to-drive-more-repeat-

purchases)
3. 📈 Which is best to grow revenue and sales? (/articles/email-sms-grow-revenue)
4. 🤝 Which is best to generate more leads? (/articles/email-marketing-sms-marketing-lead-generation)
5. 💻Which is best to drive webinar success? (/articles/email-marketing-vs-sms-marketing--which-is-best-to-drive-webinar-success-)
7. Bulk SMS Marketing Tips

Once you have your SMS software set up (https://go.mobile-text-alerts.com/sign-up-free), you’ve begun building out lists, planning messages,
and guring out how you can use SMS to support your email marketing and other marketing e orts, it’s time to start re ning your approach
and making improvements.
So far much of what we have discussed concerns why SMS marketing is e ective as well as what kind of broad strategies should inform your
approach to SMS marketing. Now we need to zoom in a bit more and talk about speci c tips to help improve the performance of your
campaigns.
Event-based messages produce higher engagement.

We recently completed a study (/articles/common-words-sms-case-study) analyzing over 2.6 million SMS marketing messages sent by
thousands of di erent businesses. One thing that stood out to us was how messages that were reminding recipients of upcoming events
consistently produced the highest click-through rates of all messages studied.
New Study Reveals the

Top 5 Words Sent By SMS
Marketers
By Jake Meador | 24 Aug 2020
Read the article 

(/articles/common-words-sms-case-study)
In fact, 93% of text messages including the word “update” were clicked. While that number is uniquely high, it’s consistent with the data more
broadly. Messages that included the word “hour” were the second most clicked. The words “details,” “time,” and “happening” also produced
consistently high click-through rates.
This shouldn’t be too surprising when you think about it. While smart marketing messaging can produce small changes to how a campaign
performs, the most reliable way to attract high engagement from your marketing list is to send them highly relevant messages.
If you have a list of people who signed up for an event of some kind, you can be fairly con dent that those people will be interested in texts
giving them information about the event they already signed up for.
Broad, open requests produce lower engagement.

We can see the mirror e ect of the above tip when we look at messages that produced fewer clicks. Only 15% of messages including the
word “hey,” received a click. Likewise, messages that included the word “sale” were only clicked 21% of the time.
Why the lower engagement?
In both cases, we’re dealing with messages likely to be less targeted to speci c segments of a business’s marketing list and more likely to be
relaying some broader message that the user is less likely to be interested in.
What this means is that the closer your message is to the already-de ned interests of your recipient, the more likely they are to respond. In
other words, your goal with SMS marketing is not necessarily to change someone’s mind - that’s hard to do anytime and especially over a
medium like texting--but rather to help them connect something they already value with what you are o ering.
Get to the point quickly.

Texts generally are only 160 characters or fewer. Additionally, the preview text that people can view in most text messaging apps is only
around 40 characters.
What that means is you need to get to your point quickly. Someone should be able to have a good idea of the message’s topic based only on
the preview text.
By keeping messages short, you can be sure that recipients understand whatever it is you’re communicating and you lower the chance that
the message will be ignored or forgotten.
Keep messages specific.

Recall: We already know (/articles/how-to-integrate-sms-marketing-into-your-broader-marketing-strategy) that messages o ering a more
de ned bene t or speci c information perform better than generic, broad messages that are simply promoting a brand or product. What
can this tell us about SMS messages more generally?
It tells us that people expect a text message to be about something speci c. What this means is that when you plan an SMS marketing
campaign you need to ask yourself “what do we want to tell people with this message?” and you should be able to answer that question in
one or, at most, two sentences. If you cannot concisely answer the question, you’re not ready to write your SMS marketing campaign.
Get a free Mobile Text Alerts trial account by clicking the button below and start sending SMS marketing messages to your customers today.
8. What is SMS marketing best for?
All marketing channels have the same basic purpose: They help close the gap (/articles/the-bene ts-of-using-sms-marketing-to-grow-your-
sales-and-revenue) between a prospective customer and the company marketing to them.
This means that di erent marketing channels can have di erent uses across di erent companies.
Why?
Because that gap existing between the customer and the business can take a lot of di erent shapes.
If you are a fast casual restaurant chain, the gap is relatively simple to cross. If you have a good location and a reasonably decent reputation,
that’s all you probably need to move someone from prospect to customer.
On the other hand, if you’re a drug company, the gap is much more complex.
In between those two extremes, you’ll nd a thousand variations too.
So the rst step to knowing how to use a speci c marketing channel is understanding what, in your unique situation, prevents a prospect
from becoming a customer.
In most cases, it will be a combination of factors—timing, cost, how strongly they feel the need or problem that your product solves, etc.
Without knowing your particular situation, we cannot get too speci c in making recommendations as to how you ought to use SMS
marketing in your business.
That being said, there are some general principles that usually apply to how a given marketing channel is used.
The Top 3 Marketing Channels

Email Marketing 📧
Email, for example, does long-form communication well. It does trust-building well. It builds con dence with the consumer. So in businesses,
when the primary obstacle to conversion is a prospect’s uncertainty, email can be a fantastic channel.
Social, SEO, PPC 🎯
Social media, SEO, and paid search, in contrast, all excel at the same basic thing: audience reach. If brand exposure is a high value for your
company, these are all good channels to consider using.
SMS Marketing 📱
SMS marketing is distinct from both of these types of channels. The things it does well are things that no other channel does at nearly the
same level.
To begin, SMS excels at quick, immediate communication with prospects. Social media, SEO, and paid search fail here because they cannot
reliably communicate to single, speci c prospects. Email, likewise, fails because email boxes are hopelessly cluttered, open rates aren’t that
reliable, and people don’t check their email constantly anyway. If you need to get information to someone quickly and be con dent that
they’ll see it, texting is the only way to go.
That brings up the other unique strength of texting. Because everyone reads their texts, you can be con dent that prospects will actually see
the marketing messages you sent them.
Recall the chart we shared earlier that shows average open or engagement rates across distinct marketing channels:
How does this kind of strength t into your business’s broader marketing program (/articles/how-to-integrate-sms-marketing-into-your-
broader-marketing-strategy)?
Well, again, much depends on your particular case. But here are some potential instances where an SMS message is the best possible way to
promote your business:
🛒 Ecommerce stores may use SMS in cases of cart abandonment by shoppers on their site.
📅 Appointment-based businesses, anything from a counseling service to pet groomer, could use SMS to remind people of their
appointments.
💻 Any company that uses webinars as part of their marketing strategy can use texting to send out reminders about the webinar or
send out a replay of the webinar after it is complete.
🥡 Restaurants and bars can use texting to alert customers to special deals or discounts.
View a more comprehensive list of industry-examples here.
SMS Marketing Use Cases (/sms-marketing-guide/use-cases)
In short, when you have a relatively simple, straightforward message to communicate and you need the person to see it promptly or to at
least be sure that they will see the message, then texting is the way to go.
If you think SMS marketing is right for you, we invite you to sign up for a free trial account. It takes about 60 seconds, just click below!
mobile text alerts  531-739-8280 (tel://1-531-739-8280)
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Become a Reseller (/become-a-reseller)
Try a Free Test Account! (/signup)

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2/23/2021 SMS Marketing Guide - The Essential Guidebook for Growing Sales with SMS

1. What is SMS Marketing?

We have ad blockers (https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/global-ad-blocking-behavior-2019-infographic/551716/) that prevent us from

Streaming services have allowed people to skip ads (https://www.adweek.com/tv-video/most-tv-viewers-wait-streaming-services-avoid-ads/)

Well, that isn’t quite accurate.

Text messaging is an intriguing exception to the rule.

What is SMS marketing?

Why does SMS marketing work?

How does SMS marketing work?

Learn more about how to add SMS subscribers here (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010969213-How-do-I-add-

How do you use SMS marketing?

How effective is SMS marketing?

2. What are the Benefits of SMS Marketing?

💾 Traditional media is ine ective in a digital world.

💲 Google Ads are complex and can be very expensive.

😏 The same applies to SEO.

😕 Social media is unpredictable and can be quite expensive.

Let’s begin with the obvious.

SMS Marketing Boosts Engagement

💸 On Google Ads, 3% of people (https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/02/29/google-adwords-industry-benchmarks) who see

In chart form, it looks like this:

SMS Offers Greater Personalization

SMS Allows for Greater Versatility

What does that mean?

Start for Free (/signup)

3. How to Get Started with Bulk SMS Marketing

This is the result:

The di culty, now, is how to begin your SMS marketing campaign.

Obstacles to Implementing an SMS Marketing System

SMS Marketing Technology ⚙

🌐 Do they allow you to add contacts via an online form?

📱 Do they o er a mobile app?

💧 Do they o er marketing features, such as list segmentation and drip campaigns?

Building an SMS Marketing List 📋

Let’s begin by talking about building your list.

So that is the technical problem of how to build a list.

Incentivizing SMS Signups 🧁

4. Best SMS Marketing Use Cases

A reminder alert (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360038031453-Appointment-Reminders) like this, especially in

Remarketing to Past Customers ↪

5. Best SMS Marketing Tools and Pricing

👍 What kinds of bene ts SMS marketing can o er your business

✅ How to get started with SMS marketing (https://go.mobile-text-alerts.com/sign-up-free)

📋 Examples of successful SMS marketing

List segmentation (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010882614-Can-I-organize-subscribers-into-groups-) means

Mobile Text Alerts tutorial - Manage Groups. (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010882614-Can-I-organize-

Drip campaigns allow you to do this.

Mobile Text Alerts tutorial - Drip Campaigns. (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011325834-Drip-Campaigns)

🗳 solicit feedback on a webinar or group coaching session.

📅 give customers options for scheduling regular appointments or necessary maintenance

Mobile surveys excel in two important areas.

Mobile Text Alerts tutorial - Mobile Surveys. (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011325974-Mobile-Surveys)

Mobile Text Alerts tutorial - Reminder Messages. (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010970933-Send-a-Message)

Mobile Text Alerts tutorial - MMS. (https://mobile-text-alerts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010882194-Can-I-send-images-in-my-

(Click on the thumbnail below to view the full chart)

6. SMS Marketing vs. Email Marketing

What makes email and SMS distinctive?