eCommerce SMS Strategy: How Can It Impact Customer Acquisition?

Posted on

September 24, 2020

A great SMS strategy is essential for every business and is even more important in the eCommerce world. So if you’re looking for a new and revolutionary way to get customers, you need to create an SMS strategy. However, you shouldn’t just stop with SMS. You really need to incorporate SMS into other marketing strategies in order to get the most out of your marketing budget, get more website traffic, and earn more revenue.

Why Do You Need an SMS Strategy?

Let’s face it. In 2020, you need an SMS strategy if you want to be successful. Gone are the days when email was the best method to contact customers. In fact, 75% of millennials prefer to receive things like special promotions, order updates, and customer satisfaction surveys via text rather than via email. If the number is that high for millennials, just imagine how high it is for Generation Z! These are also the demographics that are more likely to purchase from eCommerce sites rather than traditional brick and mortar store locations. A study from 2019 found that millennials in the United States now do 60% of their shopping online through eCommerce websites. So if these younger demographics are your target customers, you need to create a marketing strategy that’s going to be relevant to them— and when it comes to millennials and Generation Z, that’s SMS.

Furthermore, eCommerce businesses need to implement an SMS strategy because it’s just more effective than old-school email marketing. Here’s where the statistics really speak for themselves. 90% of SMS messages are read within three minutes of receipt, and 98% of SMS messages will be opened eventually. SMS marketing messages have a 45% response rate, which is 7.5 times higher than the 6% response rate for email marketing messages. Finally, 19% of the links in SMS messages are opened by the recipient, which is 9.5 times higher than the 2% of links that are opened from within email messages.

Finally, you need an SMS strategy to complement and work alongside your other marketing objectives. As an eCommerce business, you need to cover all your bases when it comes to marketing since you cannot connect with your customers in-person. While this might seem like a weakness at first glance, you can easily use this fact to your advantage with the right comprehensive marketing strategy that can incorporate all the different areas of direct response marketing. In addition to SMS marketing, a complete marketing strategy will also include social media marketing, email marketing, and print advertising. Leaving out any of these elements is really just doing your business a disservice.

SMS Strategies for eCommerce

Depending on your target audience, there are several different ways that you can use SMS marketing to reach your customers in the eCommerce arena. Some of them you may already be aware of while others might be brand new. In any case, these are all solid strategies that are worth investigating and implementing into your business.

Abandoned Cart Recovery: One thing that eCommerce businesses really struggle with is a high cart abandonment rate. This can be a really frustrating issue to deal with as it can leave you with inaccurate inventory counts and short of actual revenue! And even though you probably thought that there’s no way to really address this issue in your online store, now there is thanks to abandoned cart recovery SMS services.

Services like Cart Text use live representatives to reach out to your customers who have abandoned items in their online shopping cart before completing the purchase. They have an app that is easily installed into your Shopify account so that they can access all of your information and begin contacting your customers! A live representative will reach out to each customer, remind them about the amazing items in their cart, and ask them what it will take to close the sale. Sometimes it’s as easy as offering free shipping or answering a question about your return policy! However, you would never know this if you didn’t ask in the first place. If it sounds easy, that’s because it is. Services like Cart Text can help you save up to 21% of your abandoned carts, thanks to high engagement rates spurred by personalized messaging. Just think about all the money you could earn if you could have 21% of your abandoned carts in your pocket instead of floating out there in cyberspace.

Loyalty Programs: Offering a loyalty program through SMS is a great way to increase your customer acquisition. You are offering them an incentive to join your list! In turn, you get their contact information and can offer them periodic rewards and incentives to visit your website and make a purchase.
Flash Sales: Advertising flash sales through SMS is a great way to finally get that new customer inside the virtual door! Basically, you are providing them with an opportunity that they cannot afford to miss. The most important thing, in this case, is to set a fast-approaching expiration— usually within the same day! That way, you can benefit from the person’s impulses that are pushing them to buy because of the “limited time offer.”
Coupons: Another way that a cohesive SMS strategy can impact customer acquisition is to send out special coupons for birthdays and anniversaries. Not only is this a great way to get customers to spend money in order to actually use the coupon, but it also helps to build a sort of virtual relationship with your customer because you are following up with them and personalizing your content for them specifically.

How to Build the Perfect Text

Your SMS strategy needs to be just that— a strategy. Not you coming up with random texts on the fly and firing them out without a second thought. So how can you utilize your tailored strategy in order to build the perfect text message that people will actually respond to?

The first thing that you need to do when building your perfect SMS marketing message is to include your company name! Marketing texts are usually sent from random five or six-digit numbers that don’t necessarily show “caller ID.” So unless you include your name right off the bat, your customer will have no idea who is texting them!
The next thing that you need to do when building your perfect SMS marketing message is to personalize it! Address your customer by name and make them feel special. Engaging with them in this way will help build rapport and make your overall SMS strategy more effective in the long run.
When it comes to the actual content of the message, you need to keep it as short and direct as possible. Even though texts are obviously shorter in general, odds are the recipient won’t want to read through 160 characters just to get the point of the message. Be really upfront about what you are trying to communicate or what you are offering them. SMS marketing is part of “direct response marketing,” so think about what you want the person to do as a response to your text. Thinking about that will help you write a great message.
Finally, you need to include the option to opt-out in each one of your SMS messages that you send out. Just as people need to have the opt-in, they need to be able to opt-out.

How to Incorporate SMS Marketing With Email Marketing

Just because email marketing isn’t the hot new thing that it was about 15 years ago, that doesn’t mean it’s totally useless. In fact, email marketing should be used in concert with SMS marketing to really take advantage of each one. This is especially true if you’re in the eCommerce world -- you need to reach customers in every way you can in order to build your brand and build a connection with that customer.

Emails are seen as slower, longer, less personal, and can include fancy graphics to pull you in. Text messages, on the other hand, are almost instant, shorter, more personal, and rarely include any fancy media effects. Emails are a great way to communicate non-time-sensitive information with people, whereas text messages are more urgent and always include a call to action. For example, an email might alert your customers about an upcoming sale. An SMS message, on the other hand, will alert your customers of a flash sale that’s only going on for the rest of the day. See the difference? Your eCommerce customers do, which is why it’s so important to use SMS texts and email messages together.

Conclusion

If you’re in eCommerce and don’t have an SMS marketing strategy yet, this is definitely something you want to get moving on as soon as possible. Not only can it help with customer acquisition, but it can also help with customer retention, which might be even more valuable!

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