With open rates over 90 percent, it’s no wonder that there’s an increasing buzz around text message marketing. But what kinds of results are really possible? We asked just that to brands who are using it. Here's what we heard back:
How businesses are using text message marketing
1. To increase sales
Zach Hendrix, Co-Founder, GreenPal: "When we first launched last year we relied solely on email and noticed that 40 to 50 percent of our emails were never getting opened ... After we implemented SMS texting of bids and discount offers to our customers, we noticed an 80 percent increase in sales. It was one of our best moves to date, and I only wish we had done [this] from the start."
2. To get more customer reviews
Matt Casady, Marketing Manager, STOR-N-LOCK Self Storage: "We were sending out review request emails to our customers and with just those were getting an average of 30 new Google reviews per month for our storage facilities. When we implemented text message review requests we started averaging 70 new reviews per month. So our SMS marketing improved our average number of new reviews per month by 133 percent."
3. To generate greater foot traffic
Jeff Moriarty, Digital Marketing Strategist, Moriarty's Gem Art: "Our company has been using SMS marketing for about 9 months now. We started doing more through texting as we saw email opens dropping. While we don't see as much in terms of sales online, we do have more people come into our store due to our SMS marketing than email. We went from only sending marketing messages, to now using it for order updates, customer pickups and more. It's been a great additional platform to stay in touch with our customers."
4. To ensure a higher contact rate
John Holloway, Co-Founder and Director of Digital Strategy, NoExam.com: "We added text messaging to our marketing efforts a few years ago, and the results have been amazing. Many of our prospects will not answer the phone due to the robocalling problem. They have been much more responsive to SMS messaging. We now use calling, email, and SMS together to let the prospect choose how they wish to communicate. We saw roughly a 20% increase in contact rate when we added text messaging to our outreach efforts."
5. To acquire new subscribers
David Hooper, Podcast Marketing Expert, BigPodcast.com: "Now that my focus is on broadcasting/podcasting, I've been using [text message marketing] with good results to get crowds to subscribe to podcasts. Works great for speaking engagements, radio interviews and other places where you want people to respond for more info or to keep in touch."
Ready to hone in on your SMS marketing strategy, so that you can start achieving similar results? Here are some tips on how to get more text subscribers, and this free webinar recording can help you accelerate your text-marketing ROI:
(Note: The quotes in this post have been edited for length and clarity.)