Top SMS Marketing Trends

In recent years, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, people are spending even more time with their phones. Today, this usage is rapidly expanding to shopping and purchasing decisions with nearly 80% of smartphone users saying they make purchasing decisions based on SMS campaigns.

Top SMS Marketing Trends (Video)

Businesses are finding SMS marketing an excellent way to reach their target audience, build brand loyalty, and nurture long-term customer relationships. Several up and coming SMS marketing trends will help facilitate the use of the channel for companies in future months.

The Use of SMS in Customer Service

One of the best uses for SMS text messages is within customer service. Just about everyone is familiar with the frustration of dealing with automated phone trees, long hold times, and a maze of unhelpful customer service representatives.

Using SMS in customer service, however, can allow customers to bypass all that frustration by obtaining assistance much more quickly and accurately. Inviting customers to engage with your organization through a quick text message, question or comment can go a long way in increasing brand loyalty and building a relationship with customers.

Automatic reminders, targeted promotions, and chatbots are just a few tools that businesses now have at their disposal to optimize long range SMS marketing campaigns.

Automated Text Messages

Despite the seemingly reliable nature of computer-based order fulfillment and communication, customers always appreciate a quick confirmation or acknowledgement of a contact attempt.

Sending an automated text message after your business receives an order or a question can reassure your customers that they are in the queue and that your organization is aware of their order or attempts to contact you. Obviously, it’s critical that orders are fulfilled in a timely manner, and that questions or complaints are subsequently answered by an intelligent chatbot or human customer service representative.

An automated text message can also provide status updates and shipping notifications as well as solicit feedback on a timely basis.

SMS Advertising through Promotions & Offers

Many companies are better targeting their SMS advertising and using text messages in tandem with other marketing channels more effectively.

It’s easy to segment your target audiences within your SMS contact lists, giving you the ability to personalize your SMS marketing messages even further and drive conversions. Offer special discounts to loyal, long-standing customers, cross-sell a related product after an initial purchase, and reward sharing feedback or suggestions with a coupon deal.

Using promotions and offers in complementary email, poster, or online advertising campaigns can help you further expand your subscriber list as well.

The Rise of SMS Chatbots

The continued development of artificial intelligence technologies to understand human language, crunch myriads of data about browsing and shopping behavior, and make accurate conclusions about common customer inquiries makes today’s SMS chatbot smarter than ever.

By taking advantage of these chatbot technologies, companies can automatically answer many common questions posed by customers quickly and efficiently as well as perform simple tasks effectively. This saves organizations time and money while increasing the level of service customers receive.

SMS and B2B Marketing

Reaching consumers is not the only SMS marketing trend to watch as SMS marketing strategies work just as well in B2B settings. Communication and relationships are equally important in building brand loyalty when it comes to business partnerships.

Effective SMS B2B marketing applications include sharing supply chain issues, order status data, delivery updates, product or service news, upgrade information, and recalls. SMS text marketing campaigns are useful for finding new prospects, nurturing new sales leads, and keeping a brand top-of-mind for customers.

Companies may also use SMS text messages to request feedback, ideas, and improvements as well as share training, demonstrations, and webinars.

Improved Customer Retention through SMS

There’s a reason that the old adage is “out of sight, out of mind,” especially in today’s world of constant information bombardment. If a product, service or business is not engaged regularly with its target audience, it is easily replaced or forgotten.

Businesses using SMS text marketing see improved customer retention through SMS because regular text messages provide that ongoing engagement, keeping your brand and company in the forefront of the minds of your customers and prospects.

In addition, if you can create a more customized promotion or campaign that anticipates the needs and wants of customers, you’ll be able to suggest products or services that will readily be accepted. For example, knowing that a subset of customers purchase a certain brand on a monthly basis allows you to send a text reminder to reorder.

The Importance of Personalized Text Messages

Personalized text marketing is the obvious complement to predicting the wants and needs of your customer. The more you’re able to pinpoint what your prospects and customers are most interested in and offer the right price point to close a sale, the more loyalty you will build.

General text marketing messages that are off the mark may eventually do more harm than good as personalized text marketing becomes the norm. Those who embrace this SMS marketing trend will stand above the crowd for the time being; eventually, consumers will come to expect personalization on a regular basis.

Growth of SMS in Influencer Marketing

Everyone loves to follow their favorite celebrities or influencers. They trust the opinions and recommendations of these powerful individuals on social media, and that trend is expected to spill over to SMS campaigns as well.

Influencer SMS marketing is expected to grow in the future, allowing individuals to “connect” by text message to favorite influencers and receive their recommendations, opinions and suggestions on a regular basis. Influences can use text messages to send last-minute invites to online events, answer questions, or promote agendas. Some brands have even partnered with influencers on individual texting campaigns.

DialMyCalls can help you stay on top of these SMS marketing trends by providing an affordable, easy-to-use platform to connect with subscribers, prospects and customers. Sign up for a free account today. SMS marketing campaigns promise to be one of the most effective ways to connect with your audiences, build brand loyalty, and improve customer retention.