Did you know that every person in the US receives around 32 text messages per day?
In today's digital age, we rely on SMS to inform our family and friends about our plans, share laughter, and navigate our busy lives. Our smartphones are never far from reach, ensuring we never miss an important message. So, if we're constantly connected through text messages, why aren't you using SMS marketing to reach your customers?
Picture this: your e-commerce store leveraging the simplicity, speed, and convenience of SMS ecommerce marketing to inform your subscribers about exciting new products, time-limited offers, and exclusive discounts. Your competitors have already embraced a range of SMS marketing strategies for ecommerce, captivating your potential customers with every message they send. They are on a mission to lure your loyal customers away from you, one SMS at a time.
But fear not. You hold the power to reclaim your customers and reignite their excitement for your ecommerce store. It's time your marketing team harnesses the incredible potential of effective SMS marketing.
Benefits of ecommerce SMS marketing
Throughout the years, marketers relied on email marketing and social media marketing to reach their clients. Whereas those are still great strategies, text messaging is easier and more powerful.
Consider: it’s enough to push the “send” button and a moment later, your customers’ smartphones are already vibrating in their pockets, as if they were shouting, “Hey! You’ve got a new message! Check it!” And what do your customers do?
Well, curiosity always wins.
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High open rates
If you receive sms messages, see your phone flashing that blue light every 5 seconds and can’t check it... Well, it’s like an itch you can’t scratch. So, you do it at the first chance you get. Simple human behaviour.
SMS for ecommerce offers the advantage of instant delivery, ensuring that your messages reach customers promptly. With remarkably high open rates, an SMS channel ensures that your target audience reads and engages your text message. By providing a direct communication channel, businesses can foster stronger connections with customers, leading to increased engagement and response rates. Not to mention that many individuals prefer SMS as a means of communication for non-urgent messages
According to research, SMS open rates are more than three times greater than email open rates.
That’s right!
SMS open rates equal a staggering 98%! Also, SMS-based surveys have a high conversion rate. Smart Insight confirms that 31% of consumers respond to such invitations within 5 minutes making SMS a great way to gather feedback promptly.
Better feedback
Another great way to improve customer experience is to ask customers for feedback via text messages. By conducting SMS surveys, you’ll learn how to improve your products and services and make your customers feel happy and appreciated. Once they learn you care about their opinion, they’ll perceive your brand more positively. Also, they’ll see a human being behind your brand, not a corporation.
Remember what David Ogilvy once said: “The public is more interested in personalities than corporations.”
Increased engagement
Text messaging is a perfect way to keep in touch with your customers from when they purchase a product until they receive it. Engagement with SMS messages is always high, owing to its convenience and simplicity.
Remember, a well-informed customer is a happy customer. And, when a customer is happy with your services, they are more likely to make another purchase. Also, satisfied customers are more open to receiving more promotional messages from you in the future. Thus, improving customer experience is crucial to the development of your company.
Immediate communication
Imagine you’ve just ordered a new limited-edition book in an online bookstore. You can’t wait to get it, unpack it and put it on your shelf. The more precious an item you order, the bigger your desire is to get it; thus, it is more difficult for you to wait until it’s delivered.
Has it already been shipped out? When will I have it? What if it’s lost? These are just a few questions that can be answered with transactional messages via SMS.
Now, what if you received text messages with updates about your order’s status? That would be great, wouldn’t it?
Discover how Amazon benefits from SMS marketing strategies to boost their customers' experience, for example, boosts their customers’ experience.
When you order an item on Amazon, you can enrol in SMS updates. Thus, they’ll be informing you about the status of your package:
Cool, isn't it?
Personalization & Customer Engagement
Customizing SMS messages based on customer preferences enhances the overall shopping experience. Two-way communication through SMS allows businesses to interact with their customers, addressing inquiries and resolving concerns in real-time. By building customer loyalty through personalized offers and recommendations, eCommerce brands can create a lasting impact.
Increased customer loyalty and sales
In addition to creating a better customer experience, text messaging is a great way to enhance sales as well as the loyalty of your customers towards your brand.
Consider: once your customers provide you with their phone numbers, you can start gathering information about them. For example, about their hobbies and interests. Thus, if you figure out that one of your customers likes rollerskating, you can send them an SMS about your new roller skate accessories that have just arrived. Clever, isn’t it?
Let’s take a look at two main ways you can use text messages to boost sales and customer loyalty:
Abandoned cart recovery
According to Shopify, 67.45% of online shopping carts are abandoned before a customer closes a sale. Your sales numbers equal only one-third of what they could actually be.
Research proves that many customers don’t manage to purchase an online product because of a variety of other reasons:
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24% of customers say that “Website Crashed,”
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15% of customers admit that “Website Timed Out.”
Thus, in many cases, cart abandonment happens due to problems with the Internet provider. Also, many customers abandon their carts because something unexpected happened, for example, they could have received a phone call with disturbing news or had to run to work. Consequently, by the end of the day, they no longer remember they wanted to buy something in your store. It slipped their minds.
The good news is that you can encourage your customers to finish the purchase. A friendly follow-up text message can do miracles.
With SMS, you can employ effective strategies to recover abandoned carts, such as sending gentle reminders, personalised discounts, and limited-time offers.
Consider: the Thorpe Park used SMS to inform their customers about unfinished bookings and thus, boosted their online sales by more than 5%! Pretty decent, isn’t it?
By enticing customers back to complete their purchases, SMS significantly increases conversions and revenue.
Use SMS marketing with special offers, discounts and coupons
SMS is a perfect tool to send your customers weekly notifications. In fact, 66% of consumers admit that they prefer to be reached by brands via messaging over such means as email, social media or phone calls.
Thus, to boost sales and customer loyalty send your customers promotional messages. It’ll encourage them to make more purchases. For example, you can inform them about special or time-limited offers, discounts or give them coupons. There are many possibilities!
A small remark: don’t send your customers any notifications against their will. Inform them that they can receive messages from you if they want to. Also, teach them how to sign up for such text alerts.
Check out how Cabela does it:
Or… Ashley Stewart:
Does it work? Statistics don’t lie. Prospects who receive text messages convert at a rate that is 40% higher than those who don’t receive any text messages.
Best Practices for an SMS Marketing Campaign
Just like writing great blog post content is crucial for your content marketing strategy to work, writing effective text messages is vital for your SMS marketing strategy to bring the desired results: more conversions and more sales.
Here are several useful tips and tricks that will help you create unique, meaningful and powerful text messages:
Compliance and Regulations
SMS marketing regulations are a crucial aspect that businesses must adhere to when utilising text message campaigns to reach their audience. These regulations, such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), are in place to safeguard consumers' privacy and prevent unsolicited messages. Obtaining explicit consent from recipients before sending SMS campaigns is a fundamental requirement, ensuring that customers have willingly opted to receive promotional messages, and to help you avoid legal issues.
Segmentation and personalization
Segmentation is the key to successful SMS marketing. Categorize your audience based on factors like purchase history, preferences, and demographics. By tailoring messages to specific groups, you can deliver relevant content, driving higher engagement and conversion rates.
Did you know that message personalization boosts conversions by 27.5%? It means that if you personalise your messages, your outreach will be more effective. Here’s how you can do that:
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Include your customer’s name in the message.
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Add your company’s name as well (make sure your customer knows who the message is from).
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Include any other personal information about your customer as long as it’s relevant to your message (e.g. favorite type of wine or shoe size).
Crafting Compelling SMS Content
SMS messages have limited characters, so it's essential to convey the message concisely and clearly. Effective use of persuasive language and strong call-to-action (CTA) encourages customers to take desired actions promptly.
Research proves that power words, for example, attention grabbers or words that evoke emotions in the reader, increase conversion rates. Make sure you use them in your text messages.
Here are several of the most powerful words in English. Use them to your advantage!
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You,
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Free,
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Instantly,
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Because,
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New.
Include a call to action
Let’s go back to high school for a moment. Do you remember Newton’s 3rd Law? Don’t worry if you don’t. Most of us take the basic laws of physics for granted. Basically, Newton said that for every action there’s a reaction. Every cause has an effect.
Now, in a perfect world, when your customer receives your message, they convert. However, that doesn’t always happen. To turn your prospects into customers, you need to write your messages in such a way that they’ll cause the desired reaction: clicking on a link and purchasing your product.
To make sure it happens, you need to include a call to action in each and every message you send. After all, how can your customers know what to do if you don’t tell them? Remember, a message without a call to action is a worthless message.
Timing and Frequency
Strategically choose the timing of your SMS campaigns to maximize their impact. Avoid bombarding customers with excessive messages, as this may lead to opt-outs. Finding the right balance in frequency is essential but will take some experimentation. Trial and error will be your best teacher for maintaining a positive customer experience.
SMS marketing Automation for eCommerce
SMS automation streamlines your marketing efforts, saving time and ensuring consistency in communication. It offers benefits such as personalized welcome series for new subscribers, automated order updates, and tailored product recommendations.
Welcome Series for New Subscribers
A simple 'welcome' text message can let your customer know that you've got their number and that they can expect messages from you. Welcome new subscribers with enticing offers and onboarding incentives, but don't go overboard.
Order Updates and Shipping Notifications
Real-time updates on order status and shipping details reduce customer anxiety and enhance their overall shopping experience. The customer knows what day they need to work from home to take delivery of their purchase as soon as it arrives. Automated shipping notifications provide convenience and improve customer satisfaction.
Personalized Recommendations
Leverage SMS automation to send personalised product recommendations based on customers' past purchases and preferences. It's been proved that personalised recommendations increase AOV by 11%. This approach drives upselling and cross-selling opportunities, ultimately boosting your revenue.
Measuring your SMS campaign
As a business owner, tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) helps you show what's working and what's not in your SMS marketing campaigns. Keeping a close eye on crucial metrics like conversion rate, click-through rate (CTR), and return on investment (ROI) provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your messaging efforts.
CTR measures how many people clicked on the links included in your texts, indicating their interest and engagement. ROI evaluates the financial returns generated from your SMS marketing compared to the costs involved.
By consistently analyzing these metrics, you understand what aspects of your campaigns are performing well and what needs improvement.
A/B testing presents a powerful opportunity for small business owners to optimize their SMS marketing strategies. Through A/B testing, you can experiment with different variables, such as message content, timing of delivery, and calls-to-action (CTAs). By creating two or more variations of your SMS and sending them to different audience segments, you can identify which version resonates best with your customers. This approach allows you to make data-driven decisions and refine your campaigns to achieve better results.
Combining the insights gained from KPI tracking and A/B testing, you can develop highly targeted and engaging SMS campaigns that drive meaningful results for your small business.
Using SMS marketing with Other Marketing Channels
As you've just seen, SMS marketing for e-commerce is a powerful marketing strategy. But email combined with other common marketing channels is going to have a serious impact on your business.
SMS and email marketing
Combining email and SMS marketing can create a powerful omnichannel strategy. Coordinate your SMS and email campaigns to reinforce messages and create a unified customer experience for subscribers of your marketing list.
For instance, you can send an SMS alerting customers about an upcoming sale and follow up with an email containing more detailed information and enticing visuals. This integration helps strengthen brand recall and encourages customers to take action. Consistent marketing messages over multiple channels create an eCommerce business that knows how to communicate well.
Social Media and SMS Integration
Integrating SMS with social media marketing can boost your online presence and drive traffic to your social platforms. Use SMS to share exclusive social media promotions or encourage customers to engage with your brand on social platforms. This synergy between text message marketing and social media helps expand your reach and fosters a community around your brand.
15 Useful SMS Templates for your eCommerce Brand
It’s time for some practice now. Here are 15 SMS templates for eCommerce that will help you write your first powerful messages. Use these message templates as guidelines and as a source of inspiration.
Order Confirmation
(name of your business): Thanks for shopping with us, (name of the person)! Your order’s confirmed. To check the status of your package, click here: (insert link).
Shipping confirmation and details
Hi, (name of the person)! Your package has been shipped. You can track it here: (insert link).
Hi, (name of the person)! Your new (product name) has been shipped to you. Estimated date of delivery: (insert a date). Track your package here: (insert URL).
Delivery confirmation
Hi, (name of the person)! Your package has been delivered and waits for you in our shop, (insert address). You can collect it Mon-Fri, 8.00 A.M-9.00 P.M.
Ups, it looks like your package from (name of your business) has been dropped off at (name of the Post Office and the address). You can collect it any time after 9 A.M. Don’t forget to bring a document confirming your identity!
Your package has been successfully delivered. Enjoy your new (product name), (the person's name)! Thanks for shopping at (your website’s URL). Have a lovely day!
Asking for feedback
I hope you’re enjoying your new (product), (name of the person)! Would you recommend us to your friends? 1-definitely! 2-yes, 3-maybe, 4-not really, 5-no.
Thank you for visiting our online shop (name of your business) and purchasing (product name)! On a scale of 0-10, how happy are you with our services?
We’re sad to see you go. You are now successfully unsubscribed from (name of your business). Would you help us improve? Here’s a 5-question survey: (insert URL).
(name of the person), we value your feedback! Tell us what we should improve: 1-delivery time, 2-payment options, 3-customer support, 4-categorization, 5-updates, 6-search in the sidebar.
Special offers, discounts and coupons
Christmas is approaching. Have you already bought presents for your loved ones, (name of the person)? If not, check out our new limited-edition winter accessories here: (insert link). Write “love it” to receive 10% discount.
End-of-season sale in (name of your business)! Get up to -50% off leather jackets, bags and wallets. Hurry! The offer lasts until Sunday (insert date).
(name of a person), thanks for shopping with us for over a year now! To express our gratitude, we’re sending you a $10 coupon for your favorite books. Here’s your code: (insert the code). (name of your business)
Buy 3 and get 1 for free! Hurry! The offer lasts till Monday (name of the person)! Sign up now and shop online for your favourite (product names) on (your website’s URL).
Hi, (name of the person)! Don’t miss our new winter collection! Type in (insert code) to receive 15% off: (your website’s URL).
Connect with customers
LiveChat is a complete customer service platform that delights your customers and fuels your sales.
Trusted by 36,000+ companies
SMS marketing for eCommerce: Use, Use, But Don’t Overuse!
Whereas text messaging is a great strategy to increase sales, you need to be mindful of how many messages you send to your customers. Nobody likes receiving dozens of messages daily on their phone, email and social media. There’s a limit to everything. If your customers decide you’re pushing things too far, they’ll unsubscribe.
Remember to make sure your SMS marketing campaign works: be effective but not invasive!
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