Even with the massive boom in mobile phone usage and with that the rise of mobile marketing it constantly surprises me how low on the priority list bulk SMS marketing is.
In countries like the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Hong Kong, Japan you have more than 80% mobile phone usage with New Zealand coming in with 100% mobile phone user penetration!
This explains why big companies are investing millions of dollars into mobile marketing and have done so for quite a number of years.
Small and mid-sized businesses are now starting to see the importance of a mobile first world.
Angus Barrett from SMSpapa.com.au says that one of the most powerful benefits to building an SMS customer list is that you have 100% control – you are in essence creating your own platform.
We’ll get to why this is critically important in a moment as most business owners never give this much thought.
When you consider a few of the compelling advantages bulk SMS has over pretty much all of the other marketing channels available it should definitely be included as a part of any serious business’ marketing mix.
What are the “advantages” of bulk SMS?
1. Beginner Friendly
Most bulk SMS services are incredibly simple in nature, the basic components are:
- Select contacts
- Type text message
- Send or schedule
There are other features but there is no steep learning curve required like other marketing channels.
For example, with email marketing you select your contacts, type your message and send or schedule but you need to worry about things like reputation scores and spam filters that block your emails, you also need to write effective subject lines to deal with massive inbox competition.
These are skills ordinary business people will need to learn.
What about paid advertising? Forget it, it’s not really for the beginner, you can lose your shit very quickly especially since paid advertising platforms tend to ‘precheck’ boxes that add little benefit to the user and can dramatically increase spend.
Bulk SMS is incredibly friendly for beginners in that you know exactly what it’s going to cost to send out a campaign, it’s very transparent.
2. Open And Click Through Rates
SMS has an incredible 97% open rate with email only averaging 20% ad paid ads 2-4% and the click-through rate tends to be higher than email too but this mostly depends on the call to action.
The most important first key metric in for any campaign is how many people can I get to open my marketing message? The more people who open my marketing message the more sales I’ll make.
This is why marketers work tirelessly testing subject lines, headlines, copy angles, images, videos, etc all so they can get the attention of their customers.
By using bulk SMS it’s possible to get almost everyone to open your message, no other marketing channel can do this that I’m aware of.
Thanks to these impressive engagement rates savvy business owners and marketers have been using this to boost their other marketing channels.
3. It’s Mobile But Not Online
Mobile marketing is skyrocketing. Most people today have a mobile device and can receive text messages. There are some people who have “dumb” phones these are phones that don’t use the internet which is a downside for online mobile marketing but even these people can receive text message marketing campaigns.
The other downside to online marketing is that it is hampered by things like:
- Super high competition
- Strict ad policies
- Quality scores
- Spam filters
- Penalties
- Algo updates
- Expensive
Any of these can end your advertising campaign or worse end your business.
Bulk SMS doesn’t have to deal with any of these pitfalls, SMS has not changed much since it’s inception back in the 1990’s.
While people will say that platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, etc. are also good and are free it won’t be long before these platforms become ‘pay to play’.
Remember when Facebook allowed businesses to send out a post and have virtually everyone see that post? There was a lot of money made from Facebook but with the flip of a switch, Facebook crushed its user’s reach overnight and suddenly businesses who were making money now weren’t.
4. You Own The Platform
If you are currently using social media because it’s “free” and you are generating money from it you need to be careful because the fan base you’re creating doesn’t really belong to you or your content.
Since you are not the owner of your platform you are at risk of losing everything with the flip of a switch just like with Facebook.
These channels have also become political in nature so you can’t just voice your opinions on there without taking on the risk of being banned.
Even with email marketing you build a giant list of subscribers but thanks to spam filters and other factors only 20% of your emails will get opened, a lot of the emails you send out get binned.
SMS is different. There are no spam filters, political correctness, platform policies or anything like that. The platform is 100% yours which means that when you send a bulk SMS message they all get delivered – that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Conclusion
Bulk SMS is an incredibly powerful tool that gives unmatched engagement rates along with complete platform control.
This offers great peace of mind knowing that there is no single tech tyrant with the ability to change the algorithm that could literally end your business overnight.
By taking the time to build up a large bulk SMS customer list you are building a true business asset, something that will protect when hard times fall which invariably will happen.
That said as good as SMS is you should never place all of your eggs in one basket, grow your social channels and email marketing lists as well this diversity will definitely help you thrive during any environment.
