5 Ways to Personalise Your Next SMS Marketing Campaign
Many businesses use SMS marketing in their outreach strategy thanks to how powerful it is as a way of quickly and easily communicating with a large number of individuals. It was reported in 2013 by Forbes that, at the time, more people have mobile phones than toilets. Additionally, research has shown that text messages have an open rate of around 95%, compared with e-mails at 20%. On top of this, it has been found that 44% of consumers actually prefer to receive marketing messages through business text messaging, over any other kind of communication.
However, there are always ways in which this type of marketing can be optimised further. One such way is through personalisation. This may seem like an insurmountable challenge when you are trying to communicate with so many people at the same time. The last thing you want to do is have to send out one message at a time to thousands of numbers. Yet this isn’t necessary – in fact, it is more than possible to add several layers of personalisation to your SMS marketing. It can go a long way towards building up customer loyalty and their desire to buy from you or use your services over another competitor.
Emojis
Reports are showing – perhaps unsurprisingly – that the use of emojis is rapidly increasing across a variety of marketing channels. With the types of graphics available for use constantly expanding, there is an ever-growing repertoire of ways in which they can be used. Not all brands are using the same emojis, so there’s plenty of room to craft out your own identity with these. For example, when people talk with each other in a standard conversation, face emojis are the most popular as they help emphasise self-expression and emotions.
Emoji messages are not picture messages or MMS. They’re about adding a small graphic into the body of an SMS message in order to add further dimension and clarification to what is being said. They can help you enforce a point, or communicate much quicker and easier with your audience. They help to simplify messaging and ensure that the meaning of the communication isn’t lost. This can have a huge impact on ensuring you get the response you’re looking for with your SMS campaign. They also help in catching an audience’s attention, especially as they start to receive more messages from various brands.
It has been found that the use of emojis within marketing messages has increased by 20% each month, on average, during 2017. If you’re not already doing this, it’s time to catch up with the rest of your competitors. Some of the best ways to integrate this in your SMS messaging is to match up the emoji to your business. For example, if you sell pizza, make pizza your emoji. If you are a greengrocer, use the new array of vegetable emojis. If you are a holiday company, use the aeroplane emoji. However, it’s also important to know your audience. Younger people will understand and appreciate the value of emojis more so than an older generation will.
Adding the customer’s name
When sending out online SMS messages, another way of personalising your campaign is through adding the contact’s choice of name within the contact list for your SMS marketing campaign. This is one benefit of sending out via online software, rather than direct from a mobile phone. When using an online application to send out your messages, you can (very cleverly) add the customer’s name automatically into the body of the text message using merge tags. This just requires an extra amount of organisation, ensuring you have their names accurately listed in a spreadsheet with their numbers prior to mailing out to them.
The message sent out will then be different for each user, so it will feel as though you are communicating with them directly on a one-to-one level. This is also something that can be done with e-mail, although it isn’t seen as often in business text messaging.
Adding someone’s name always helps to make a campaign stand out, and can quickly grab their attention. It will also feel as though you are speaking with them directly. It is always worth running a few tests before you send anything, however, as it has the potential to go wrong – and this could look much worse than not doing it at all. The last thing you want is a text message to go out that says ‘NAME’ where it should be personalised.
Location, location, location…
Another great way of personalising your campaign is through audience segmentation, if possible, and then messaging them based on their demographics or location. This does require a level of data capturing at the point of getting their phone number – e.g. finding out their age, gender, and address.
However, it can then help you reach them in a much more meaningful way. If you are based in various places all over the country, it will allow you to send them offers or deals that only relate to their area, so they’re not having to read a lot of unrelated material. It can also help you track which areas are most profitable for you, or what each area responds to best so that you can continue doing this or can improve on it.
Calls-to-action
In splitting out your audience in this way, you can also target them based with specific calls-to-action, for example, based on whether they have shopped with you recently, whether they haven’t signed up yet, and so forth, to make the message mean something to the action you require from them. It will also make more sense to them that you’re sending the message and will relate to their relationship with your brand.
Key phrases
When personalising your campaign, it is also important to think about your audience and what key phrases would jump out to them most. Consider their interests, hobbies, typical places they’d shop or visit, and try to reach out to them in a considered way. You might find that your website analytics play a key part in finding out what these phrases and trigger words might be. For example, if you are a fitness centre reaching out to members who haven’t visited in a while, you may want to include words such as ‘lose weight’ or ‘healthy weight-loss’ to capture attention.
Get in touch
To find out how we can help you run your next SMS campaign successfully, contact us now.
Related Articles
How to Turn SMS Messages Into Better Reviews for Your Hotel
Hotel guests use review site ratings like TripAdvisor to make decisions about where they’ll stay. If your hotel doesn’t rate well, you’re in trouble. Find out how you can get more positive reviews when you use SMS messaging to communicate with guests.
SMS Messaging Streamlines Corporate Accounts for Private Hire and Taxis
Years ago I worked for a company that required a lot of travel. Fortunately, the company arranged and paid for transportation from my home to the airport and back again. It was great, but I always felt it could have been better, and now I think SMS could have been the answer, here's why.
Proof SMS Messaging Gets Results: Customer Service
All sorts of companies are finding SMS messaging works much better than traditional customer support channels like phone calls and emails. In this post, you’ll see examples of how businesses are keeping their customers happy and seeing great results with SMS.
Event Promotion : Use SMS Marketing to Fill Empty Seats
If you run paying events - music, drama, sport or even fine dining, training courses or workshops, you'll know the hardest seats to fill are the last few and they are also the most profitable if you can sell them. SMS is an immediate and compelling means of event promotion that can shift those last few places.
An SMS alert message could have helped Farah and other athletes
Sending “Just in Time” Messages Using our SMS API
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about using SMS messaging to contact your list after some sort of trigger - they made a purchase, had a birthday, or some other event or date. I’m going to build on that concept a little bit more in this post and share how you can really offer just-in-time SMS messages by integrating with your existing systems.
SMS messaging helps both job seekers and recruiters
How does SMS messaging helps recruitment agencies? Just as importantly how does it help job seekers? This post explains several benefits for both recruiters and candidates. Perhaps the key issues are the speed of communication with SMS and also the innate privacy of SMS messaging.
5 Ways to Personalise Your Next SMS Marketing Campaign
There are always ways in which SMS marketing can be optimised further. One such way is through personalisation. This may seem like an insurmountable challenge when you are trying to communicate with so many people at the same time. The last thing you want to do is have to send out one message at a time to thousands of numbers. Yet this isn't necessary - in fact, it is more than possible to add several layers of personalisation to your SMS marketing.
SMS Marketing for Tradespeople
How Clubs Can Benefit from Using Text Messaging
Read how clubs can benefit from the use of text messaging services to reduce wasted time and increase customer satisfaction. They can confirm appointments in advance with an option to text back to cancel or re-schedule thus reducing no-shows. SMS is also great for sharing news and special offers with members.