Bulk SMS is one of the best tools for engaging with customers – as far as I’m aware there are no other marketing channels that can come even close to the results this technology which was created back in the 90’s can achieve in 2024.
In this article, I’ve share with you 3 simple reasons why if you are a business owner or marketing professional you should be using this tool to get the highest engagement and sales conversions from your customers.
1. Open rates
One of the toughest challenges’ businesses face when it comes to getting sales conversions is winning the attention of their customers. The assumption amongst the average business owner and even marketers is that customers are waiting by their inbox frantically refreshing to make sure they don’t miss one of your emails.
They’re doing the opposite.They’re actually apathetic when it comes to their emails, they know that it’s likely there is going to be little value every time they check in.
“Just because you send an email doesn’t mean to say they’re going to open it.” Angus Barrett, smspapa.com.au
In fact, the average open rate for an email is an embarrassing 20% across all industries, this means that 80%+ of your emails are not open, seen, noticed by your customers at all.
Why are the email open rates so low for email?
Here are the main reasons:
- Reputation score
- SPAM algo’s
- Competition
Reputation score is the trust-ability score you have with the email service provider you are using. The more they trust you the more of your emails are actually delivered. Yes, just because you sent an email doesn’t mean that it was actually sent. SPAM algorithms are designed to interpret what they think your email is about and then place into the right inbox.
If your email is using words like “click here”, “interested” or “follow this link” then you could be placed into the spam folder never to be seen by your customer. Here’s a tip, on your initial email to your customer ask them to reply back, this will increase the chances of your emails landing inside their primary inbox.
Finally, competition. People receive so many emails on the daily that you need to fight hard just to get their attention, again, in most cases your customer may not actually “see” your email even though it is right there in front of them, the more emails they receive the tougher it is to stand out due to the powerful filtering part of the brain.
So, if 80% of people are not opening and your messages, how does that impact your sales?
What if you were to get 97% of people to read your messages?
first off, this is virtually impossible to achieve even with just on email, and 100% impossible to maintain this level consistently long-term.Bulk SMS allows business owners to achieve a near 100% open and read rate on messaging.
How would having 97% of people reading your marketing message do for your sales?
At least double? Very possible.In fact, if you’re targeting the right person, at the right time, with the right offer then you could easily expect a 3x+ in sales volume.When you receive an SMS, it grabs your attention instantly, it’s actually quite hard to ignore an SMS message.This is what makes SMS unique above virtually all of other marketing channels.
2. No spam algo to worry about
We touched on this earlier and it is one of the greatest obstacles that email marketers need to deal with.Did you know that there are 400+ words that can trigger the spam algorithm sending your email into the spam folder?Some of them of quite normal for example, if you’re using the words “click here” then your email could get flagged.
We see this all of the time, even with non-promotional emails, harmless business to business communications or order confirmations get binned frequently.With SMS there is no spam algo scanning messages looking for any reason to send your SMS to the sin bin.The delivery rate is 100% unless the person you’re trying to send the message to is out of range, their phone is switched off, or they’ve changed their mobile number.With 97% open rates and virtually 100% delivery you can see why SMS is incredibly powerful for SMS marketing.
3. Super affordable
“Bulk SMS is expensive.”This is a common complaint and to that I’d say that it depends from which angle you view it from.On the surface, it does seem expensive, especially if you’re sending out to 5 thousand people it may cost around $200.But let’s look at the real cost of email marketing.
For example, when I used to work as an email marketer it would takes hours to put a simple email together, the process was long and painful.
You had to:
- Come up with a promotion
- Write out at least a dozen subject lines
- Write the copy and try to find a good sales angle
- Come up with the graphics
- Send the copy around for proofing and make additional copy edits based on feedback
- Run a test send to make sure that the email looked good on mobile, tablet and desktop, and for the main browser types.
- Check that the buttons were working, etc.
Think about how many people are involved and the time it takes just to send out a single email that generates a 20% open rate.That is expensive!
Compare that to an SMS.
- You are limited by 160-450 characters so there’s not a lot proofing required.
- There are no graphics you can embed
- There is no coding
- You don’t need to worry about what browser the person is using
It’s simple, fast and incredibly effective.For a fraction of the time you can get out a marketing campaign with 97% opens and loads of sales.We used to receive at least 3x the sales from an SMS than our email campaigns.
