Although bulk SMS marketing is fairly new, the principles of marketing apply to it. There is no magic in that. If you do the right things, you will succeed, if you do the wrong things, you will not see the results you want. It’s that easy. Want to see a significant return on investment in your bulk SMS marketing? Design a plan that puts these critical principles into practice …
1. Get phone numbers
It’s common sense, right? You need people’s phone numbers first to market them. The best way to get phone numbers is to let people provide them with your permission. You can achieve this through registration forms on your website, where you give away something valuable for free. You can buy or rent other people’s phone lists, but be careful who you buy from.
As a business or marketer, capturing the phone numbers (and even names) of your prospects and customers should be one of your priorities; in fact, their number one priority. Listen, if you don’t have a phone list, you shouldn’t be talking about bulk SMS marketing.
2. Segment your phone list
Make no mistake about it, everyone on your phone list doesn’t have the same needs, they don’t respond the same way. So communicating and marketing them in the same way is a waste of resources.
You need to segment your phone list into different categories. Sometimes the list will be segmented by their behaviors. Sometimes you will need to poll them. Another very powerful way is to offer free highly specialized and targeted information and see who is responding and who is not.
3. Ensure deliverability
If your bulk SMS is not going to be delivered, there is no point in sending them in the first place. To make sure your SMS are delivered, test the bulk SMS service provider you want to use if they are delivered. Second, know the words that, if included in your SMS, will cause them to be undeliverable and avoid them. Some bulk SMS services ban certain words in messages in an attempt to block scammers who use their service for their malicious activities.
Again, you want to make sure your phone numbers are entered in the format stipulated by your bulk SMS service provider. And basically make sure the phone numbers you are collecting exist in the first place.
4. Participate for maximum impact
The more you interact with your subscribers, the more they know and like you. And the more they like you, the more they will respond to you and ultimately patronize you. You can engage your list by asking them questions and requesting their response. You can send them to your social media pages and ask them to contribute to the things that directly affect them. Tell them to ask you questions that bother them.
5. Track, track, track
Understand that no marketing succeeds or lasts without a follow-up mechanism. Tracking your bulk SMS marketing lets you know whether or not your efforts are paying off, and to what extent.
You can track your bulk SMS marketing based on the number of responses you receive. You can track how many people clicked on the link you posted in your message using a URL shortening and tracking service like bitly. And when they’re on your site, you can use Google Analytics to see how customers from your bulk SMS campaigns are responding compared to leads from other traffic sources.
6. Test, test, test
The great philosophers have said that all of life is an experiment and nowhere is it more true than in marketing. To find out what works, you need to combine monitoring with testing. Test your initial phrases and words, test your call to action, test sending SMS on different days, test the response at different times of the day, test your offers, test everything important to your overall success.
7. Be frequent
People don’t start to notice it until you answer them at least seven times. Putting your message in front of your prospects frequently helps you stay on top of their minds. And if you consistently provide quality content, they will be waiting for your SMS. When that happens, you become a welcome guest rather than a pesky pest.
Don’t worry if they don’t respond right away, the goal is to get you to the top of their minds so that when they need your services, your name is the first to appear on their minds.
There are the seven pillars of SMS marketing success. If you want your bulk SMS ROI to increase, put these principles into practice and we’ll see you at the bank.