Reach your audience with text message marketing

Want to learn more about text message marketing? Well, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we will be using SMS marketing and text message marketing interchangeably. In this article, we’ll be going over everything you need to know about SMS marketing, including:

• What is text marketing?
• Text message marketing best practices
• SMS marketing services and examples
• Text message marketing stats
• How to send a video by text
• Texting software for business

What is SMS marketing?

Many marketers are always looking for new, innovative, and practical approaches to add to their marketing strategy. While many of you are familiar with email marketing, text message marketing is not as universally used and is not frequently used by marketers. SMS text marketing is highly effective because you know your message is being delivered straight to your audiences’ mobile devices. It’s essential for marketers to spend some more time learning about text marketing platforms for several reasons. One of those is that Americans check their phones on average 96 times a day, which’s nearly every 10 minutes, and texting is the most widely used function of all smartphones.

For starters, it’s important to define what message marketing. SMS marketing is sending promotional messages to a phone, but you have to receive consent from the users first before sending these messages. There are so many different use cases in which text marketing is valuable, some of those being time-sensitive offers and promotions alerts or updates. You can essentially use SMS marketing software for a campaign to promote something relevant or applicable to your users. You can also use text marketing for surveys, appointment reminders, etc. Marketers can opt for using SMS marketing to help grow brand awareness and brand image in a more personalized way.

How effective is text message marketing?

Text message marketing is so effective because of its direct-to-consumer marketing and usually has super high engagement from users. Individuals typically prefer receiving text messages over emails, especially millennials and Gen Z users. We wanted to include some exciting SMS mobile marketing stats about SMS direct marketing that might motivate you to consider using that platform:

• 83% of millennials open SMS messages within 90 seconds of receiving them.
• SMS messages have a 98% open rate compared to 20% of emails.
• SMS messages have an average click-through rate of 36%, while email click-through-rates are a dismal 3.4%.
• SMS messages have a 209% higher response rate than phone calls, email, or Facebook.
• 90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes of being received.

If those statistics haven’t convinced you yet, we also wanted to include some successful text message marketing examples below from some brands that you might’ve heard of:

Jamba Juice
This text message marketing campaign is one that you might’ve even participated in. Jamba Juice encourages users to sign up to receive their text messages by asking customers to text ‘Jamba’ to a number, and in return, these users would receive a coupon for a free smoothie! In just two months, the company grew its contact list by over 1000 at only one store’s location.

Dunkin’ Donuts
Dunkin’ Donuts decided to run a marketing campaign encouraging customers in the Boston area to sign up to receive text messages, prompting over 7,500 individuals to sign up for these texts to receive additional promotional offers and coupons. This case study states that 17% of customers went on to forward or show their friends the text message after receiving the first text message. They were encouraging even more customers to sign up to receive these text messages.

Best practices formarketing with text messages

When using SMS marketing services, you’re sending messages directly to the users’ personal devices. Therefore, you should keep a few things in mind to avoid annoying them or overstepping any boundaries. To avoid overstepping these boundaries, make sure to:

• Get permission: Before you send any marketing text messages, make sure you receive approval from the user you’re marketing to. This will help you avoid frustrated customers who don’t want to receive messages from you.

• Pay attention to frequency: Paying attention to how often you send your marketing messages is especially important. You don’t want to overwhelm your customers to a point where they start to get annoyed with you.

• Text during regular hours: Most free text messaging services for businesses allow you to select what time you want your messages sent out. We recommend sticking to regular business hours (9 am – 5 pm).

• Opt-out options: Make sure always to give your customers an opportunity to opt-out of receiving text messages if they change their minds. Usually, users can just text the word ‘stop’ to the number to stop receiving marketing messages.

• Offer value: To truly make your marketing efforts effective, offer value in your text messages. Offer a discount or an additional message that gives a customer a reason to click on a link or read what you have to offer.

• Personalize your message: Personalize your text messages with a first name or an additional personal detail to enhance your text messages. This will help you stand out amongst other automated text messages for businesses that your customer might be receiving.

• Add video: When you add videos to your text messages, you make them a lot more interactive and personalized.

Video text messaging service for business

Using videos in your marketing campaigns can make them 10x more powerful and effective. By adding it to your text marketing strategy, you can effectively combine two marketing forms for ultra customer engagement. Text message videos aren’t always easy to send or put together, but using Covideo, a video messaging platform, makes it easy to send videos via email and text. Covideo is an excellent tool for both large and small businesses. If you want to personalize your marketing outreach more, Covideo is a perfect avenue to text customers videos.

Business SMS platforms, like Covideo, are commonly used in a variety of industries, including the automotive industry. It can be used when sending customers videos of cars, and it can also be used in the real estate industry to provide house tours. However, in the use case, your options are endless. Individuals have used Covideo to sell furniture, jewelry, and many other types of products. Text marketing services can help you add additional information and product value without getting too wordy or adding too much text to your messages. In the next section, we’ll go over how to send a video via text with Covideo.

How to text videos

To use Covideo as a text message marketing software, you’ll have first download Covideo’s mobile app. You can download the mobile app through the App Store or the Google Play store. Below, we’ve outlined the steps to show you how to send a video through text message on iPhones and how to send a video via text message on Androids.

Step by step: How to text a video with Covideo

1. Log into your mobile app. Once logged into the Covideo mobile app, you can either record a new video or press the “X” at the top right to access your library.
2. Locate the video you want to text in your video library. Once you find the video, you want to text out and select the “Share” icon.
3. Check your video landing page and calls-to-actions. Select your template and exit links, and then click “Share” at the top right.
4. Select your texting application. Enter in the contact or phone number in the “To:” field
5. Click send!

Free text message marketing

If you’re just getting started with text message marketing or interested in stepping up your SMS marketing game – a few popular subscriptions and free platforms to try are Covideo, Slicktext, or Simpletexting. These text message marketing software will allow you to text automated messages to your customers and guide you through creating text message campaigns. There are so many various platforms to try out; there are free SMS marketing platforms and free text message marketing for small business software and applications with subscriptions. SMS marketing pricing varies from software to software.

If you’re interested in adding video to your outreach and into your sales and marketing strategies, give us a shout at Covideo. We can show you more about it! With Start a free trial, you’ll get instant access to all of our standard features, and you’ll be able to upload, record, send, and track video emails within minutes.   Start a free trial; no credit card required! Learn more about our demo now!