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SMS Marketing Automation for Better Engagement
SMS Marketing Best Practices

SMS Marketing Automation for Better Engagement

Today, startups and small businesses want to maximize efficiency while enhancing the effectiveness of their sales and marketing efforts to achieve higher ROI.

April 12, 2019

How can marketing automation help your business?

Today, startups and small businesses want to maximize efficiency while enhancing the effectiveness of their sales and marketing efforts to achieve higher ROI.

Marketing automation enables them to do just that - businesses that adopted marketing automation saw:

  • 86% improvement in lead management
  • 73% more measurable results
  • 66% better targeting and personalization with campaigns
  • 64% better campaign execution and tracking

(Source: “How small businesses can benefit from marketing automation”, Constant Contact, 02/24/2016)

By combining marketing automation, SMS, and other channels like email or social media, businesses can run effective drip campaigns. Unlike a regular campaign which needs to be scheduled manually for every message, a drip campaign sends timed messages automatically.

Contrary to the general assumption that automated messages lack the personal touch, analytics and automation allow marketers to create drip campaigns to reach their customers with personalized messages and discounts to upsell or cross-sell to them. Such campaigns are also perfect for servicing leads, greeting new customers, and educating customers about their products or services.

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Why is SMS marketing automation necessary?

As a marketer for a small business or a startup, you face the huge challenge of cutting through the noise to make your brand stand out. Simply converting leads into customers is not enough - you also need to provide enough value to keep them on board. Using the wrong strategy or tools for engagement can cost you money, time, and credibility.

SMS is extremely effective in grabbing the attention of customers. 64% of consumers prefer that businesses communicate with them through texts, which is why it’s critical to leverage SMS to the maximum to get your brand and message out there.

(Source: "Integrate text messaging with your CRM", Clockwork, 01/29/2018)

Although businesses can easily send personalized and targeted messages to customers and prospects with SMS, creating and delivering those messages at scale can be tricky. That’s where SMS marketing automation can help by taking the guesswork and extra effort out of the equation. The result? More data-driven, tailored, and engaging messages for your audience.

Before launching a new marketing campaign, it is important to map out your objectives clearly since they will drive the effectiveness of the tools and methods you use. Begin by integrating your most fundamental marketing channels like SMS and email into your CRM and marketing automation system. Eventually, as your business grows, you can include other channels like social media into the automated ecosystem to scale up your marketing and engagement efforts.

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Advantages of SMS Marketing

Cost-effective

SMS marketing can deliver substantial returns on investments for businesses of all sizes without making a huge dent on the budget. For startups and SMBs in particular, text marketing can deliver higher and faster sales conversion rates than email marketing campaigns. At just a few cents per text message, you can run highly targeted campaigns and truly leverage mobile as a channel to boost engagement and sales.

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Faster deployment

Using an SMS platform, businesses can send bulk SMS messages almost instantly that have higher open rates than messages sent from other marketing channels. At least 90% of SMS messages from businesses are read within three minutes of being sent.

(Source: "SMS Open Rates Exceed 99%", Tatango, 04/10,2013)

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Personalized and targeted messages

With most other marketing channels, businesses are often just taking a shot in the dark hoping their message brings traffic to their store or website. However, text messages can be a highly personalized way of communicating with customers or leads, especially by addressing them by name.

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Easy to create and deliver messages

Since SMS messages have a 160-character limit, composing one is faster and simpler, requiring lesser resources and time. With marketing automation, the process becomes even easier. Since customer data and analytics are already fed into the software, the automated platform works on its own to create relevant and personalized messages for customers or leads. Once you have selected the right marketing automation system and integrated it with your CRM platform, you can access more detailed insights into your customers and prospects which will help you create the right strategy to engage with your audience.

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