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5 Reasons Why Businesses Should Be Using Bulk SMS

Published on November 28, 2020

Business

Bulk SMS is arguably one of the most powerful communication channels available today and the truth is as great as Social Media, SEO email marketing and chatbots etc. whatever the new biggest marketing channel is today SMS online still outperforms each of these channels.

In fact, the traditional online channels have become a staple amongst business owners.

Most marketing channels (even in 2020) still don’t come close to the raw marketing power of SMS online – Tim Silvia – 160.com.au

Unfortunately, too many marketers and some business owners are attracted to shiny new things which means they are more likely to jump on a new trend then actually look to channels that can actually deliver results.

What is the latest marketing funnel? Should we use webinars? Push notifications? Spreading your dollar thinner and thinner with each new marketing experiment.

Smart marketers don’t care about what’s “new” their only concern, “what’s working”.

What is Bulk SMS?

Bulk SMS is simply sending text messages from an online platform – this is NOT an online marketing channel.

Even though bulk SMS uses the internet to push out the text message it is still received as if it came from a mobile and is treated as an offline marketing channel.

This is important, since bulk SMS is an offline marketing channel you do not have to worry about the typical online barriers like SPAM algorithms, ranking updates, reputation scores, strict ad policies, etc.

Why SMS Online Is Growing

Virtually everyone now has a mobile phone which means marketers and businesses are able to reach consumers wherever they are.

The problem for most marketers is that they are still using the same online strategies in the mobile world (i.e. push ads, email marketing, PPC etc.).

The difference between SMS and traditional online advertising is that people prioritize their text messages over all other mediums.

When a person receives a push notification, they click away from it, if they see an email they’ll get around to it (if at all) but when they receive a text message they read it almost right away.

In this article, I’ll give you 5 great reasons why you should be using SMS online inside your business.

1. Bulk SMS Gives You More Control

With other marketing platforms like Google, Facebook, Email, Publishing sites etc. you don’t really control the platform and there are restrictions on your messaging, images and even products and services that you want to sell.

With Bulk SMS you control everything with no restrictions at all.

2. Super-Fast Response Rates

It’s not uncommon to see up to 97% of people opening your bulk SMS messages, that’s huge! Not only that but when I was working for an affiliate company we would routinely see 3-5x earnings per click (EPC), up to 6x ROI over our email marketing program and up to 25% click through rates.

3. Rapid Response Times

On average it takes a person 4 minutes for a person to open their text message compared to 48 hours for email. Not only that but there is a lot less competition inside the SMS inbox vs. the email inbox.

4. Bulk SMS Can work in almost any area of your business

SMS online can be used in almost any area of your business for example, you can use SMS for:

Product fulfilment for information products
Abandoned cart recovery
Traffic monetization
Content distribution
Drive back end sales (repeat sales)
Product and event launches
List building
Appointment reminders
Two-Factor Authorization (Security)

Basically, any part of your business communication channel can benefit from having online text messaging.

5. Generate Quality Sales Leads

This is probably one of the best reasons to use SMS online if you rely on generating fresh customer leads because it allows you to attract highly-qualified leads that email or cold calling cannot match.

People are reluctant to give away their personal mobile number, it is a greater risk for them to do so.

This is a good thing if you are a marketer because it means that if they do give you their personal mobile number then chances are they are much closer to making a buying decision and ready to see and offer or be contacted by a sales person.

When I worked in sales I had an incredibly tough time trying to convert email leads into sales, at best I would be able put them on my call list to contact them in 6 months.

As a sales person 6 months is an eternity, we need to close deals today.

SMS leads on the other hand were a lot easier to convert into appointments and ultimately sales.

Getting bulksms SMS leads is actually very straightforward all you need is a short code, keyword and an offer for example:

Text 50 to 12345 and get 50% off all of our Summer Season shoes!

‘50’ is the keyword
‘12345’ is the short code and;
The offer is the 50% off deal.

Whenever someone texts 50 to 12345 they are automatically added to a contact list for you to follow up on and generate sales from for as long as they are on the list.

One of the keys to getting a lot of bulk SMS leads is making sure you promote the offer in as many places as you can for example:

Email newsletters
Floating sticky bars
Home page
Exit pop
Blog posts and articles etc.
Social media pages

Conclusion

SMS was born in the early 90’s but is still 100% relevant due to the fact that we’re living in the mobile age which makes bulk SMS one of the greatest business opportunities available especially when you combine the open and click through rates, responsiveness and the fact that you can use it in virtually any area of your business this direct marketing channel should absolutely be integrated into your overarching communication strategy.

Bulk SMS: 6 Reasons Why You Should Be Using It Now

Published on November 6, 2020

Technology

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.