If you are running an e-commerce business, then text message marketing is a powerful tool that can help you. text messaging marketing can be used to reach out to your customers and engage with them. You can acquire new customers and promote your products to your existing customers using text messaging. It is a simple and effective way of reaching out to customers, so you can boost sales. We present some useful and effective guidelines for e-commerce businesses to achieve success using text message marketing.
Guidelines for E-Commerce Success
SMS marketing is preferred by businesses and customers. This is because it is easy to implement and customers also prefer receiving text messages. The nature of text messages is such that it allows you to reach out to customers instantly and make an impact. If you are running an e-commerce business, you can use text message marketing to increase visits to your online store and boost sales. The following guidelines will help you do it effectively.
1) Subscribe to a text marketing service
When you have to send text messages to hundreds or even thousands of people, you need software for it. You can subscribe to a text marketing service that gives you software options to send messages. This is easy and cost-effective. The software comes with many features like:
• An option to schedule messages and send them.
• Personalizing messages by adding customer’s details like the name and address.
• Sending messages to everyone or a select group of customers, thus allowing for segmentation.
• Using keywords so customers can reply using the keyword allowing you to send specific information or engage with such Customers.
• Creating a database from your existing customer list on your website.
• Sending text messages even from a landline.
2) Send promotional messages
The main use of text message marketing is to promote sales of your products. Whether it is for sales of a new product or sales to dispose of stock, you can promote these sales using messaging. You can send a text message with details of new product launches a special offer. This will motivate customers to visit your website to take a look at the new products and buy them.
You can send promotional offers in the form of discount Coupons or voucher codes online. You can then ask them to visit your online store and use the coupon/code at the time of making the payment to avail of discounts. You can use such promotions to increase traffic to your online store. The more the traffic, the higher is the chance of making a sale.
For your e-commerce website promotion, you can send an SMS with a link to your website. You can inform your customers that clicking on the link will help them avail of special offers. The link can then redirect them to a landing page where product catalogs are available. Using a link will also allow you to keep a track of how many people visited the page and how many made a purchase. This data will help you evaluate your promotional strategies.
3) Follow-up on abandoned carts
One of the common problems in e-commerce is that customers add products to the cart but don’t complete the checkout. Through text message marketing, you can send messages to all customers reminding them of the items in the cart. Such reminders can help boost sales. Where required, you can use a special offer to motivate them to complete the sale. You can add a deadline to make it more effective. Eg: Buy before this weekend to avail a special offer.
4) Send greetings to customers
Customers love it when businesses offer a personal touch. You can do this by sending greetings to customers on special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. Such greetings can be accompanied by a special discount coupon. You can tell the customer that this offer is exclusively for them on special occasion. This is a good way to boost sales.
5) Use multimedia
Text message marketing allows you to use multimedia. This is called MMS that can be used to make your messages more effective. When you are sending promotional messages for your products, you can send photographs of the products or even demo videos. This will make it more effective since customers can see the product without having to visit the site.
6) Use a Call to Action
A CTA or call to action can make your promotional messages more effective. Create a sense of urgency by using ‘Offer open only today’ or ‘Offer only for first 100 customers’. Such a CTA will help to boost sales.
All the guidelines discussed were practical in nature. You can start implementing them in your e-commerce business. Subscribe to a text marketing software service and start sending messages from today. You can achieve success and boost your business by using text message marketing effectively.
