Everything You Need to know to supercharge your brand with this increasing trend. Today eCommerce is growing fast and trending everywhere, especially mobile commerce (Mcommerce). And while email marketing campaigns and email open rate has been one of the top marketing options, SMS marketing is rapidly gaining significant privileges. SMS marketing is a tool used by marketers to communicate offers and other important information to customers who are opting in to receive text messages. Imagine, your company’s communications were seen almost instantly by your existing customers without the need for an online connection. Well, an integrate SMS marketing tool can help you with acquiring new customers, customer satisfaction along with customer loyalty. Reasons to Use SMS service as a Marketing Tool One of today’s major marketing challenges is putting forward your product or service in front of your target audience. With so many ads on our social media accounts and unlimited information overloading our personal email inboxes, SMS finds the true targeting advantage. A recent study stated that almost 46% of people spend 5-6 hours a day on their mobile devices. 1. SMS marketing is designed specifically for mobile commerce. A recent study stated that almost 46% of people spend 5-6 hours a day on their mobile phones. And as SMS messages are designed particularly to be read on mobile screens, it makes it critical for businesses to invest in mobile-friendly marketing. With SMS on mobile devices, you can reach people within seconds. 2. High open rates for more engagement. People not only open SMS messages but they’re also getting engaged with them. The biggest benefit is the consistency of open rates. As the message gets through, it leads to strong click-through rates, conversion rates, channel intimacy, and credited revenue numbers to deliver a worthy return on ad spend (ROAS). Compared to email campaigns, SMS services help you reach a highly engaged audience that can transform to more repeat purchases and higher customer conversion rates. 3. Helps to connect with shoppers using their preferred communication method. SMS also helps you connect with shoppers in their preferred method of communication and thus people feel like they matter to brands. How to Get Started: To start with SMS marketing, most UK brands almost take two weeks to get fully ramped up. Here’s a quick guide to starting sending your first eCommerce SMS marketing message. 1. Define your goal. Like all marketing initiatives, make sure you start with a well-defined goal in mind and decide exactly what you wish to achieve with this new marketing tool. Start with customer support calls. Then, you can send text messages to notify shoppers they’ve left items in their cart, send them post-purchase order notifications and later send transactional messages and offers messages to existing customers. 2. Find the best vendor. Once you’ve determined your goal, it’s time to find the right partner. Opt for a vendor that helps with easy set-up and launch and scale with you as you grow your SMS channel over time. 3. Keep growing your subscriber base. After choosing your new SMS marketing platform, it’s time to build your list of subscribers. You can collect SMS subscribers with their phone numbers and signup keywords that customers can text to opt in. 4. Get set and Launch your first. In the beginning, you may take your time to try all aspects of this marketing tool, so find what works best for your eCommerce website. 5. Continue to review. Continue to test new messages, times and days, deals, and workflows, and review the results to identify the best SMS strategy loyalty programs for your online store. What works best in SMS marketing for UK brands? · Time-sensitive offers · Limited inventory · New or recently restocked popular products How can SMS marketing help my eCommerce brand grow? · Over 8,000 brands use SMS to drive more revenue than email marketing alone. · Create an omnichannel strategy to sell more and sell everywhere giving customers the max opportunity to convert. · SMS is a high-converting channel, promising a lot of revenue. · Almost every mobile user opens his text messages, which means SMS as a marketing channel has remarkably engaged users. · Promotional text messages enjoy an average click rate (CR) of 36% which means 16x email’s average CR is 2.25%. · Communicating with a targeted audience implies higher engagement rates. Your SMS target audience is happy to receive your messages as they’ve already let you into their personal space. · Some customers prefer texts over various types of email designs, and that audience is continuously growing. · Personalisation leads up to 20x conversions for UK brands. Since text messages are a personal marketing channel, you can deliver great customer services and experiences in no time. · SMS marketing isn’t just legal, it also gives you more control over your customers’ experience taking your marketing from compliant to compelling. · Given that SMS lists are more targeted-oriented, they typically have excellent returns. SMS Marketing eCommerce Best Practices Add value to your customers by offering something valuable like a unique or special offer, a time-sensitive deal, information that’s necessary for customers to participate in an event, or introductions to new products or services Keep it short, sweet, simple, and to the point. Be as brief and concise as possible. Personalise your SMS marketing campaigns. Example of SMS Marketing Messages to Send 1.Complement your welcome emails with a text message. 2.Send quick order confirmations and updates after a sale. 3.Automate date-triggered SMS marketing messages. 4.Deliver new arrival notifications and your hottest product drops via SMS marketing messages for a quick purchase. 5.Support your email marketing strategy with effective alerts via text. 6.Continue the conversation with content-driven communications. In short, whether you’re freshly starting with eCommerce or looking to test a money-making new marketing channel, businesses of all sizes can use SMS marketing to build better customer relationships. Thanks to how quickly UK-based consumers check their mobile; texting is the fastest way to share important updates today. Keep the messages short and relevant, and timely review your results to know how powerful this marketing tool is for your eCommerce. Last but not the least, below you can find two of our partners that are UK’s leading SMS marketing platforms: Klaviyo is the only unified marketing automation platform that includes SMS and email under one roof. SMS is also available in the UK and Australia. Other features include easy setup, multi-channel automations which include SMS and email in the same workflow, a complimentary toll-free number, SMS two-way conversations, SMS consent at checkout, A/B testing, SMS campaigns, eCommerce specialisation and pre-built use cases for brands using Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Wix, or a custom-platforms via APIs, automatic consent management, two-click text personalisation, single channel revenue attribution, email and SMS on one platform, multi-step sign up forms, best-in-class deliverability and text compliance, email and text messaging revenue and ROI tracking, and best-in-class segmentation across email and SMS. Yotpo is also the “SMS Marketing Platform eCommerce brands can rely on”. The platform enables brands to reach their customers and their goals with the most powerful, personalised and results-driven mobile messaging in the market. Yotpo features International texting, compliance protection, seamless onboarding, dedicated SMS strategist and product synergies and uses performance analytics to tract and optimise every engagement. Through subscriber collection data Yotpo enables brands to identify where subscribers are coming from and the impact of each subscription source with data-driven insights into every tool retailers use. Shortly, brands can leverage data to target customers in the moments that matter most with tailored SMS & MMS messages that drive revenue and foster relationships. Reference Ecommerce for a new era. BigCommerce. (2022, May 24). Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://www.bigcommerce.com/ Harper, A. (2022, May 9). SMS marketing for UK Ecommerce Brands (faqs): Klaviyo Blog. Klaviyo. Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/sms-marketing-uk-ecommerce
