One thing that separates pro marketers from amateurs is that the pros carefully select the marketing channels they’re going to use and ensure that they’re fully integrated into a coherent marketing mix that is designed to hit various KPI’s.
It doesn’t matter how many marketers I talk to when I ask them about SMS I hear nothing but crickets.
Yes, even though bulk SMS delivers 98% open rates, that doesn’t seem to even “click” for them, according to smspapa.com.au.
I get it. SMS (short message service) is not the sexiest marketing tool out there, far from it.
Look at Facebook, you can use images, videos, carousels, etc. you can get super granular on who you want to target and once you get enough conversions you don’t even need to target anymore your pixel just goes out there brings in fresh new customers – it’s amazing.
The downside of course are the ad policies, they’re incredibly strict and are designed to satisfy the political correctness crowd – I’ll save that rant for another article.
In this article, I want to share with you exactly why I think Bulk SMS MUST be a part of your existing marketing mix moving forward.
1. SMS Is Not Saturated
One thing that we marketers are always on the lookout for are channels that are underexploited.
This simply means finding a place to advertise that has super low competition with a large audience reach.
SMS is one of those channels.
The great thing about SMS is that when send a text message to a mobile phone your only competition is grandma asking Shirly if she’s coming over for a family dinner on Sunday evening.
In terms of direct competitive threats, you will find virtually none.
And when they read your text there are no distractions, with ads, landing pages, and even emails there are links and flashing images all over the place tempting the recipient to go down a rabbit hole – with an SMS message it’s just characters and maybe a link.
2. Bulk SMS Isn’t SPAM
One of the main reasons why business owners haven’t taken to SMS messaging is because they think their customers will complain about being spammed but if you follow the rules of SMS this will never happen.
The rule with bulk SMS is to always get permission so people know that they are going to receive SMS messages from you.
Never just slam all of you customer mobile numbers into your online SMS contacts book and start sending text messages.
3. SMS Is Cheap
People love email because it’s “free” it’s not. Email subscriptions can be incredibly expensive especially when you get into the thousands of subscribers.
The problem with email subscriptions is that you pay based on the number of subscribers you have whether they’re active or not.
For example, most of your emails will likely end up in the spam folder if you’re using it to send promotions which means most of the subscribers will not see it which means they will not unsubscribe which means your list will continue to grow which means your monthly subscriptions costs will continue to grow.
With SMS you only pay when you send an SMS AND that SMS is received by the recipient, if it is not delivered then that money goes back into your online SMS account.
4. SMS Is Cheap
Yes, I’m repeating point no. 3.
Have you noticed that your paid advertising always seems to go up in price? The reason for this is that more and more businesses are using paid advertising channels each and every year which naturally drives up the pricing because there is only so many impressions they can sell.
This is bad news for small businesses with tight marketing budgets.
SMS on the other hand has actually reduced in price over the years because there are more bulk SMS providers entering into the market all of the time making this a fantastically cheap way to reach customers for only a few pennies per SMS.
5. Gary Vaynerchuk Is Using SMS
Recently Gary Vee was videoed talking to a small group about SMS as a way to reach customers and followers. Not only does he recommend SMS but he has invested his own money into two bulk SMS companies.
Gary mentioned that he is getting a big fat 98% open rate along with 90% engagement rate.
Show me another social media platform that is delivering anything close to those numbers.
You can’t.
Because it doesn’t exist.
As far as I’m aware there are no paid or free marketing channels offering anything close to these kinds of numbers.
If you are astute then you’d be asking yourself, why are these numbers so important?
This brings me to my next point.
6. SMS Has Huge Open Rates
Why is it that marketers obsess over the perfect subject line, the perfect clickbait YouTube title and image, the perfect paid ad headline, etc.
Why do they spend sometimes up to 80% of their attention into this part of the campaign?
Because they need to get those open rates.
They need people to watch the video, see the promotion, etc.
If they don’t get the click then they don’t get the money.
While a lot of marketers will say that the offer is the most important part of a marketing campaign, I disagree, I think the open rate is most important because if the campaign doesn’t get opened there’s no money…zip.
Give me high open rates and a mediocre offer and I’ll make money all day long, give me high open rates and an excellent offer and I’ll retire rich.
Bulk SMS gives you a massive 98% open rate without A/B split testing, without digging around for the perfect headline, without any work at all you will get higher open rates than the most advanced Brainiac marketers on the planet just because you’re using SMS.
This allows complete marketing noobs to outperform their bigger competitors who have teams of marketing specialists.
All you need to do is put together an offer and click send and you can be sure that you’re going to have close 100% of your subscriber list open and read your message.
