SMS Marketing Integration with Digital Marketing
As more Nigerian brands look to target customers in Nigeria on the move, SMS is becoming an increasingly essential part of effective multi-channel marketing. However, with few digital marketing agencies featuring SMS as a core offering, their clients are potentially missing out on communications with customers and increased ROI.
Organisations mistakenly believe that mobile marketing requires heavy investment in apps and does not allow for personalised, targeted communication and lacks strong analysis to support ROI.
The reality is that access to mobile communications is far easier than perceived and gaining access to mobile consumers (smartphone and non-smartphone) can be as simple as sending a personalised, targeted text message.
The means to instigate two-way SMS messaging between a company and their mobile users is essential to building a Nigerian brand in households around the world provided consumer privacy is protected through legal requirements for opt-in.
In this post we would discuss the importance of SMS marketing and how it affects your marketing communication.
Direct Channel Communication
SMS is one of the most immediate channels available; with a read rate of 97% within 15 minutes delivery, you can be reassured that your time critical messages will be read almost instantly. A significant 45% of SMS campaigns generate a successful ROI, reaching over 50% when combined with other popular channels such as email and social media.
Shortcodes Simplify Response and Builds your Database
Have your customers make the first move by adding a shortcode or keyword to print collateral, advertisements and advertising boards as well as social media. This strategy means that customers soon become familiar with a brand’s code and keyword and are therefore more likely to interact and respond.
Support and Integrate with other channels
It is important that all channels work well together within the marketing mix and SMS is no exception. SMS is a great standalone channel, however it also has the ability to enhance and support other marketing mediums, such as social media and email.
As well as being great on its own, SMS can also function to enhance and support other popular mediums among consumers, such as social media and email.
For example with a smartech drip marketing campaign leads, you can send sms to unopened emails with the same offer.
Learn more about your customers
SMS Marketing is a great channel to get feedback from your customers via surveys. Research shows that on average 31% of consumers will respond to a survey via SMS with the average response time for users being just over 5 minutes. Meaning you can get great results in a short period of time.
You can increase customer engagement
Think of SMS as a way to enhance how your brand engages with your customers across the entire customer lifecycle. Businesses should remember to vary the type of content they send out – while customers may value updates and news on forthcoming developments within the brand, this information is best delivered via email where longer, more creative messaging is more appropriate.
At WSI-Axon we use a tool for our SMS and email marketing solution called Smartech. Netcore’s Smartech is a cloud based, marketing automation DIY platform that helps you streamline digital communication, increase engagement, automate cross channel workflows, deliver data driven personalization and improve operational efficiency.
