Converting visitors into loyal customers sometimes requires a little push from your side. No matter how good your product is, or how well your online platforms function, you have to turn every marketing channel to your advantage. One such strategy is SMS Marketing. Here’s an insight into how you can use SMS marketing to elevate your Shopify sales.
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‘Short message service’ marketing – or SMS/text messaging as we call it, is exactly the kind of marketing strategy that will help you grab your users’ attention in this bustling online world.
The SMS marketing tactic typically involves sending text messages to customers directly to help promote products or services, offer discounts, provide order updates, and enhance overall engagement.
It is important to know that customers must willingly opt in to receive SMS messages from an ecommerce store. This can be done through various channels, like website pop-ups, checkout pages, or a specific opt-in campaign.
Fortunately, an ecommerce platform like Shopify allows you to integrate an SMS marketing tool so that you can automate and manage your SMS campaigns more seamlessly. There are many available - and we look at 3 of our favourites later in this guide.
Important SMS Marketing Considerations
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The first is a misnomer we want to clear up: SMS marketing is no longer restricted to mobile text messages. You can apply SMS marketing to any platform with messaging capabilities, like Facebook, or to any device that allows push notifications like mobile or desktop, including both Apple and Android devices.
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The second is a critical rule that you must always keep in mind when building an SMS marketing campaign: send your messages with extreme strategic intent.
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This seems like the obvious answer for anything you do in marketing, but in this case it’s of prevailing importance that you do not flood, interrupt or annoy your users. Keep your message short, powerful and tactical.
Key Tips For SMS Marketing
Now we can dive into the tips and tricks that make SMS Marketing actually work. Whichever forms of SMS marketing you start getting involved in, your three core goals will be:
- Increase brand awareness
- Boost engagement
- Generate sales
You may ask - aren’t those the same standard goals you apply to any marketing strategy? Of course they are. But SMS marketing is unique because the goal acquisition is instant, the effort you put in is minimal and the cost is highly effective for ROI.
There are dozens of reasons for you to send out an SMS campaign (and creativity will always be rewarded) but here are a few of the most common reasons for short messages:
- Coupon offers
- Abandoned cart reminders
- Sales and promotions
- Festive season updates
- New product or inventory update announcements
- Notifications (for example delivery progress)
- Customer feedback
Plenty of strategists are incorporating these same messages into their email campaigns already and might think that’s good enough. It’s not.
The average open-rate for email is 20%. The average open-rate for SMS is 98%. If reading that wasn’t enough to convince you, then we can add that only about 2% of links within emails actually get clicked, whereas almost 20% of links through SMS get clicked.
There is a very fine line between successful SMS marketing and downright annoying spam. To be part of the growing success of it all, there are a few rules you need to follow:
Segment Your Audience
Segment your subscriber list based on customer behaviour, preferences, or purchase history. This allows you to send more targeted and personalised messages. For example, your business would be able to tailor your SMS content, such as offers or promotions, to the preferences of each audience group based on their previous interactions with your brand, which leads to higher engagement and CTR (clickthrough rate).
Customer Opt-In Permission
Of course you already know that you can’t send a marketing SMS if the user didn’t opt-in for it. If that happens, you’re breaking strict Data Protection and GDPR laws! You also need to include an opt-out option in every one of your text messages.
Don’t worry, opt-out works in your favour because if people choose to opt-out, you at least know that you’re keeping your database clean of uninterested subscribers. This will increase the accuracy of performance results and reveal where you should be placing more focus.
Intent
Never send a marketing SMS without valuable intent. Remember, users can see snippets of an SMS on their screen before opening it. If they can tell by the first few characters that you’re sending out nothing worthwhile, you will damage your open-rate and waste a good opportunity.
SMS Personalisation
Personalise your messages to the best of your ability. Simply using a customer’s name isn’t always good enough – you should also consider elements like location, past activity, recent purchases and other behavioural cues when tailoring your messages.
Message Length
Keep it as short as possible. You have about 160 characters to work with, but that doesn’t mean you have to use all of them. It can be tricky to make such a short message compelling, so don’t rush the process – rather refine and perfect!
Timing Matters
Getting an SMS from a business in the late hours of the evening – or even first thing in the morning - is highly invasive and can turn a customer off instantly. Consider time zones when setting up your automation and try to stick to the general marketing rule of sending out a message between 10:30 and 11:30, or 14:30 and 15:30.
SMS vs Email Marketing
We’ll never tell you to stop email marketing. It has its own powerful, somewhat irreplaceable advantages (as we highlight in our article on email marketing for ecommerce stores) but it definitely doesn’t fulfil all the same objectives as SMS marketing. It’s highly recommended that you incorporate both into your budget and strategy if you want to see the full impact on your customer engagement.
Now that you understand what sort of communication short messages are used for, we can start looking into where exactly they are used and why, because your strategies and outcomes will most certainly differ across platforms.
SMS Marketing for web push notifications
We’re using PushOwl as an example to explain the benefits of SMS marketing on mobile and desktop. It also has a 5-star rating from Shopify and is trusted by over 10k Shopify stores worldwide. So we can say with great confidence that it shows results for any industry, product or service!
PushOwl allows you to send push notifications straight to your customer’s screen, giving you the opportunity for direct and instantly visible marketing.
Here’s how PushOwl works:
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Install the app onto your online store. You can even start with a basic package, which is free, and move onto a more advanced package later once you see results for yourself.
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When users start browsing your store, PushOwl will ask their permission to send web push notifications to their devices. From visitor to subscriber in just one click!
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et up automated notifications for anything from discount notifications, flash sales, product promotions and back in stock alerts to simple greetings, festive updates, review requests and abandoned cart reminders (the list goes on).
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Customise your notifications to suit your brand’s own style and voice. You only have a few characters at your disposal so bring out your best content crafting skills and creativity here!
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Include captivating hero images onto your notification to catch users’ attention and interest even more. Content with compelling images receives 94% more views than ones without pictures.
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Gain in-depth knowledge of your campaign performance with highly insightful data and analytics. This will reveal which promotions are generating sales, help you uncover market opportunities, and identify areas of revision to help steer you in the right direction for even more successful campaigns in the future.
Another exceptional advantage that PushOwl offers is the ability to integrate extended apps and further enhance your notification strategies.
Now Back in Stock, available in the Shopify App store, allows you to send automated alerts to your customers when their desired items are back in stock. This way you can recapture lost revenue and build a stronger relationship with your consumers through thoughtful communication. Plus, it’s the only app available that lets you send SMS notifications straight to their phones - which we’ve already mentioned has a 98% open-rate. Success you simply can’t refuse!
Be sure to check it out, or reach out to us for expert advice on getting started.
Yotpo is a marketing platform we work with regularly that has an SMS Marketing module. It enables you to easily craft, personalize, and A/B test SMS campaigns to notify subscribers about product releases, sales, exclusive offers, and more. It even enables you to strike up two-way conversations with conversational SMS automations, in-app SMS chat, and help desk integrations to maximise loyalty and engagement.
Klaviyo is another marketing automation platform that is also one of our key partners. It began with email marketing and has expanded its offering over the years, and now has a sophisticated SMS product as part of its offering, which enables you to create personalised, cross-channel experiences that engage your audience faster.
SMS marketing for text messages - Key facts
SMS marketing may be old-school, but to this day it’s mighty powerful. In fact we’ve deployed high-performing SMS strategies for some of our own clients. Check out this SMS case study which shows how we spent just $90 on an SMS campaign which returned over $55,000 for our client.
Tech Jury is a team of software experts that test and review software and other online products to give the public transparent reviews and answers. They’ve gathered over 35 compelling facts and stats about the success of SMS marketing today, and we’d love to bring some of their findings to your attention:
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Nearly 6 billion people will be able to send and receive text messages by 2025, and a whopping 61% of the world’s population will have access to mobile internet. This means mobile marketing will continue bringing success in the future. So even with web push notification capabilities, standard text marketing will live on strong.
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The average American checks their phone approximately 47 times a day and states that they will open a text message within 15 minutes of receiving it. In fact, 90% of SMS are actually read within 3 minutes. That’s quite a lot faster than an email lingering in the dark depths of a spam folder!
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Just last year there were over 7.9 billion mobile subscriptions across the globe, which helps explain why as many as 23 billion text messages are sent each day worldwide. Yes, each day. That’s insane.
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On average it takes a person about 90 seconds to read and reply to an SMS message but over 90 minutes to respond to an email - when they eventually get to reading it, that is.
So why these facts specifically?
Well because they serve as a great reminder that SMS marketing holds a massive part of the market and if you’re not getting involved, you’re losing out on the potential to reach thousands – or even millions - of people as you grow your business.
Benefits of SMS Marketing For Shopify Merchants
There are a whole variety of benefits SMS Marketing offers to Shopify store owners. From increased customer engagement and boosted sales, to creating a more positive customer experience. You also have the opportunity to create direct and personalised consumer touch points, drive a higher conversion rate and gain customer loyalty.
The reason SMS marketing has such high success rates is simply because of how time-efficient and affordable it is as a marketing channel. Things like event-related promotions and flash sales require instant delivery for lightning-fast reach and interaction. Text messages allow you to do just that with a cost that’s next to nothing.
More so, you get to spend minimal time working on the campaign itself, giving you more freedom to focus on other marketing areas that require manpower and close attention. Much like PushOwl, you can use automated text messaging capabilities to follow up with contacts, set exact delivery times, send text messages triggered by particular behaviours, or even bring customers back to an abandoned cart.
Are you ready?
Now is the time to start building on and improving your rounded marketing strategy. With so many tools and functions at your fingertips, you can start immediately and grow exponentially. Let us know if you want us to jump on board. We’ll kit you out and guide you all the way to success. Get in touch with us for expert advice on SMS marketing today and take the next step to a brighter future for your business.
