If you’ve been following us for a while, you know we’ve been sharing our expert tips on how to get the most out of various areas of retention marketing. We’ve talked all about the opportunities of brand building and revenue increase with the help of email marketing and Messenger marketing, and now it’s time to put SMS Marketing in the spotlight!
First step: understanding how SMS marketing works
Similar to how emails work, you can communicate with your subscribers using SMS flows and campaigns. Here is a brief explanation of how both works:
1. Flows
Flows are automations that get sent out when an action is triggered. Just like with email, you can set up:
Abandoned cart flows
New customer flows
Winback flows
Welcome flows
Upsells and cross-sells
Shipping notifications
And much more
2. Campaigns
If you wish to share some news with your subscribers, a product launch, your latest sales event, or a simple update, you can send them a campaign. While in an email, your brand personality truly gets to shine through visuals and engaging text, in the world of mobile text marketing, you need to keep things short and sweet!
Although the pricing varies for each provider and the country where you are sending your texts to, the general guidelines remain the same:
1 text fits into 160 characters, if you exceed that limit, your campaign will count as 2 or more texts, which means the price increases as well.
Don’t worry though, your campaigns show up as one text to your customers, so it won’t be separated into 2 or more messages when sent out, it’s just the cost that grows if you go over the limit.
Busting the myth: Is it worth it?
The short answer: YES.
Time and time again, our clients have seen massive ROI. Having the SMS infrastructure set up means this is running in the background of your business effortlessly, generating revenue while you sleep. You can look at a few examples here:
As the images demonstrate, the ROI is very strong. Due to the cheap SMS costs (about 1-2 cent), even if you send out campaigns or your flows are running to a large audience, the revenue generated makes up for it with nearly 800-1500% return on investment.
SMS etiquette: 5 best practices for SMS marketing
SMS mobile marketing has its own recommended rules and guidelines.
1. Respect the hours.
Make sure that you are aware of where the majority of your customers are located and plan your campaigns accordingly. No one wants to receive marketing messages on their phone at 2 AM, so try and schedule your campaigns at a time that fits most time zones.
You can also set quiet hours with certain providers, like SMSBump, which won’t send out text messages to your customers in the time period you set (eg. from 8 PM to 9 AM)
2. Stay Compliant
Make sure you have a clear SMS opt-in where your customers can consent to receive marketing messages from you. There are multiple ways you can collect phone numbers (e.g through the checkout process in your online store, or subscribing through a popup/form), so with these opt-in methods, you collect your phone numbers in a legal way.
Don’t worry, your SMS provider provides guidance on this.
With that said, for your text messages, you should always add a “Reply STOP to opt-out” / “Reply STOP to unsubscribe” at the end, to let customers know that they can always stop receiving your texts.
3. Mention who you are
Always add your business name in the message, either at the beginning or somewhere throughout the text, as the customer otherwise might not know who you are.
4. Make it personal
With the help of SMS apps, you can customize your messages. You can mention the subscriber’s name, what they ordered before, what country they live in, so with these variables the message can feel more personal rather than a generic one.
5. Make it easy to read
Don’t cram in text, try and add space between the sentences, and add a clear CTA so people know where and why to click. With text, you’re meant to keep it short and clear, so only write the essentials.
Best SMS Apps
At Budai Media, we have worked with lots of different Shopify apps, including SMSBump and PostScript. Klaviyo also offers an SMS service, which is great if you want to keep it all in one place with your emails, however in terms of pricing it is much higher compared to its competitors.
SMSBump and PostScript have very similar features and pricing, however, using PostScript, you are only able to collect contacts through popups or signup forms, whereas with SMSBump, you can start building your list by collecting phone numbers at checkout.
Short case study: a real example of an SMS marketing strategy
While our clients have a strong Abandoned Cart flow in place, you can see how setting up a similar abandoned cart sequence in SMSBump has resulted in thousands of dollars of extra revenue.
And here you can see in action how even a relatively small list can generate extra revenue with a 160 character text message.
Conclusion: is your store a good fit to have SMS marketing?
No matter what your store’s volume is, we recommend you set up at least the core SMS flows (Abandoned Cart, Welcome Flow, Post Purchase Upsell, Winback Flow, Shipping Notification) and start building an SMS list early on.
You only need to set it up once, and this will be running on automation for your business.
Trust us, your store will thank you for it!
You can learn even more listening to the 13th episode of The Ecom Show: Revealing the Basics and Advanced Tricks for SMS and Messenger Marketing for Ecommerce Businesses
Most common Q&A when it comes to SMS marketing
Is SMS Marketing effective?
Yes! With your flows and SMS campaigns working together, you can generate massive ROI on each message you send out. Don’t miss out on setting up this essential part of your retention marketing strategy.
How to do SMS Marketing?
First, start building a list! Either through popups, signup forms, or through Shopify checkout. You can implement flows to capture your new subscribers, and retarget them with SMS campaigns when you’re running a promotion, launching a product, or want to share any other information with your audience.
How much does SMS Marketing cost?
It varies, depending on what provider you’re using. Normally SMS messages sent to US or Canadian subscribers cost around 1-2 cents and can be 3-10 cents internationally.