Businesses continue to look for ways to efficiently and effectively communicate with their customers, and text messages are now emerging as a leading marketing channel. Given the increasing popularity of texting in our personal lives as consumers, businesses can see that the average open rate for text messages is 98%, with 90% of texts being read within 3 minutes of being seen. Given this, SMS can be a way to send high-quality and timely promotional or informational messages.

Below are five ways SMS marketing can help businesses build their brand as it becomes an essential part of any successful marketing strategy.

Meeting customers where they are

Consumers are frequently most comfortable with receiving text communication over other forms since mobile devices have become a regular part of their day-to-day life. By communicating with customers how and where they want, businesses can better captivate their attention.

SMS marketing enables businesses to instantly and directly reach new and existing customers, incentivizing them to engage with your business whether that’s shopping in-person or online. With it’s high open rate, SMS marketing presents an opportunity for high consumer engagement.

Building a customer base and loyalty

Customers can enroll in your SMS marketing program at checkout or by texting a business’ unique phone number, sharing via social media, through email, or at a physical location. After customers opt-in to receiving marketing messages, businesses can offer promotions, coupons, and important information about their business.

With these benefits, businesses can make their customers feel appreciated and valued. Additionally, SMS messaging provides a personal touch that will build brand loyalty and keep customers coming back.

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Saving time and money 

While generally more expensive than email, SMS is still far more affordable than traditional advertising or direct mail. Further, many providers offer affordable rates and packages based on how many messages you actually send. This way, you pay for what you use.

To any independent business, time is money, and since SMS marketing is easy to use, businesses don’t have to spend hours setting up campaigns since they can use existing campaign formats like birthdays or lapsed customers that let you get started in minutes. The short form of the message itself also makes it inherently easy to create and edit messages. Finally, you can also set up automated text messages so they go out at just the right time for customers (like on their birthday) without needing to remember to hit send. This helps businesses manage their time and focus on growing other areas of their business.

Increasing open and conversion rates

One of the top benefits of SMS marketing is that text messages have the highest open rates when compared to phone calls or emails, making SMS marketing a must for businesses seeking quick and effective communication. Since consumers must explicitly opt-in to receive messages given the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), this ensures that while the audience is smaller, it is far more engaged compared to other channels like email and social media.

SMS marketing also achieves a high ROI for conversion rates. For example, Square customers have seen stronger attributable sales per text message compared to email, with SMS marketing having 3x higher revenue for the same automated email campaign, with an average of $2.52 in attributable sales per marketing text sent. Customers are more likely to visit your business and take action on promotions shared through SMS than through any other marketing service.

Using data to improve business performance

After SMS marketing messages are sent, you can see the results of your marketing campaigns in real time and understand how much it’s growing your bottom line. This includes attributed sales per campaign, along with open rates and cost per message.

By using these analytics, businesses can create further targeted campaigns and continually build a better understanding of their customers, improving campaign performance.

SMS marketing is a proven powerful tool that every industry and size of business can benefit from using. It’s important for businesses to have SMS marketing built into their POS system so that they don’t have to deal with third-party programs or additional logins and contracts. This will enable businesses to run everything all from one place, while being backed by the power of SMS marketing.

For more how-to’s on how to start, run, grow, and adapt your business, check out Square’s Business Resource Center here: https://squareup.com/us/en/townsquare.

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