Top Pros and Cons of SMS Marketing for Business: An Extensive Review

Have you employed every strategy for online marketing for business growth but still have low clients? If so, SMS marketing is one of the best marketing strategies to deploy for your business growth.

These days, mobile phones are like a part of us, always close by. On average, Americans spend about 4 hours and 25 minutes a day using their phones.

In this article, we shall look at what SMS marketing is, its pros and cons, and how you can use it for business growth.

What is SMS Marketing for Businesses?

SMS refers to Short Message Service. It is a text messaging service that allows users to send and receive short text messages, commonly via phones. Messaging is one of the most widely used forms of global communication.

SMS marketing is a form of direct marketing that businesses and organizations use to send messages, updates, and instant reminders directly to the customer’s phone via a text message.

This kind of mobile marketing is mainly used to promote products and services, engage new as well as existing customers, and boost sales.

The messages are highly time-sensitive and personal to each user demographic. SMS marketing is also believed to have high open and response rates compared to email marketing.

By using SMS marketing, businesses can improve their customer service and satisfaction, increase foot traffic and online engagement, and save money on marketing.

Pros of SMS Marketing for Businesses

The advantages of SMS Marketing for business are as follows:

1. High Response Rates

According to research, more than 90% of SMS text messages are opened and responded to within minutes of their reception, while messages sent through email or social media messaging apps are responded to late.

2. Highly Cost-Effective

Compared to other marketing channels, such as billboard advertising, influencer marketing, direct mail campaigns, and television advertising,

SMS marketing is the most inexpensive. With minimal investment, businesses can reach a wide audience and gain a high return on investment (ROI) simultaneously.

3. Wide Reach

Internet access is unavailable in some parts of the world, especially in rural areas. However, traditional telecommunication networks are available in all parts of the world.

Since sending and receiving an SMS only requires a mobile signal, businesses can easily reach their customers without worrying about any network constraints.

4. Personalized Content

SMS marketing enables businesses to send personalized text messages to the user based on their location, shopping preferences, past purchases, and behavior, making promotions more relevant and effective.

5. Better Customer Experience

Users do not need to go through the hassle of logging onto apps or websites to view the messages. One can simply read these brief messages through the notification bar or open the messaging app inbox to view the message.

Since the messages are time-sensitive and personalized, SMS marketing successfully builds reliability, trust, and loyalty towards the brand.

Cons of SMS Marketing

The disadvantages of SMS Marketing are:

1. Content Limitation

SMS texts are generally limited to 160 characters. This limits the amount of information that businesses can convey in a single message. Further, SMS doesn’t support multimedia like images, videos, or graphics. Thus, SMS limits creativity and vital information.

2. Rising Costs

Companies need to set aside money for sending text messages. Even though sending one message doesn’t cost a lot, sending it thousands of times to millions of people can get really expensive. Over time, the costs can add up, especially as rules and policies change.

3. Undesirable Intrusiveness

SMS messages, although highly personal and specifically targeted, might still be intrusive to some people as they might arrive at inconvenient times. Thus, instead of reacting positively, some users might get angry.

4. Legal Issues

In many parts of the world, it is legal for businesses to send messages without asking the customer first.

However, in some parts of the world, regulation acts such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) require businesses to first get permission from phone users to send them messages. 

Further, some businesses send messages to users whose numbers they got from rival companies. This might be seen as a violation of privacy by many people and can cause unnecessary trouble for businesses.

5. Limited Reception and Response

Sometimes, SMS messages are not delivered due to factors like poor network connection, incorrect phone numbers, and so on.

The SMS messages might be categorized as spam if the messages don’t seem relevant to the customers. This can cause the consumers to opt out and so, the brand’s reputation might be damaged.

Also, there is no guarantee that all those who receive the message would be interested in purchase of the product or service.

How to Use SMS Marketing For Your Business

Here are a variety of ways you can integrate SMS marketing into your overall marketing strategy.

1. Build a Customer List

By complying with legal regulations like TCPA (in the USA) and GDPR (in Europe), businesses must first ask for the recipient’s permission to send messages. It can be done by asking the clients to fill in a form or send an opt-in text.

Once the list of subscribing clients is created, send the messages, updates, and notifications only to those users.

The users must be selected based on factors such as their interests, purchase history, and engagement level.

2. Use the Right SMS Marketing Tools

To carry out SMS marketing more effectively and efficiently, one must use the right tools, be it apps or software. Some popular and widely used SMS marketing tools are Twilio, SimpleTexting, SlickText, EZ Texting, and Omnisend.

3. Ease of Opting In and Out

Make it easy for the customers to opt in and opt out in case they no longer want your services.

4. Consistent SMS Marketing Strategy

The messages that the customers receive must be short and to the point, enough to catch their attention and keep them engaged.

You can provide time-sensitive offers and exclusive deals to your customers. To ease the marketing campaign, you can also automate messages based on certain triggers or user behavior.

The SMS marketing can also be combined with other email, social media, and website promotion campaigns to create an enhanced and integrated customer experience.

5. Compliance With The Law

Make sure your marketing campaign complies with all legal guidelines strictly so that no complications arise in the future. This ensures that the customer rights and privacy are protected.

Step-by-Step Guide to Sending SMS Campaigns with Dialaxy

Wondering how to set up an SMS campaign with Dialaxy? Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you with that.

Step 1: Sign up with Dialaxy

Visit the Dialaxy website and sign up for an account. Provide all the necessary details and verify with your email address.

Step 2: Set up the sender ID

Go to the settings section of the Dialaxy dashboard and set up a sender ID. A sender ID is a name or number, corresponding to your business name or code, that will appear as the sender of your messages.

Step 3: Build a contact list

Build a contact list by manually adding contacts or uploading files. You can also update the subscriber list by the amount of customers subscribing with keywords.

Step 4: Create an SMS campaign

• Go to your dashboard.
• Click on Message logs and navigate to the “SMS campaigns” section.
• Click on “Create New Campaign” and enter your campaign details.

Step 5: Configure campaign

Set up campaign name, choose recipients and SMS ID, schedule sending time, and review compliance.

Step 6: Test and launch campaign

Click “Start Campaign” to begin texting your selected contacts automatically. Track the delivery status of your campaign. 

Step 7: Analysis and follow-up

Analyze the review performance metrics such as delivery rates, open rates, responses, and other information for future improvements.

Effectively manage and respond to the replies from the clients. This ensures clear communication and engagement with the audience. 

Some SMS Marketing Apps To Use

To carry out SMS marketing effectively, marketing professionals and service providers mainly use the following 3 apps:

1. Simple Texting

SimpleTexting is a popular SMS marketing platform that enables marketing professionals to run intuitive SMS marketing campaigns much more efficiently.

This app is mainly used by service providers, food services, real estate agents, event organizers, educational institutions, and E-commerce businesses. 

SimpleTexting allows businesses to send bulk messages to a large audience quickly and efficiently.

It enables the marketing team to target a specific audience and automate sending relevant messages, reminders, and follow-up messages based on user behavior and specific triggers.

Its user-friendly interface allows businesses to set up text-to-join campaigns to grow their subscriber list.

2. SlickText

SlickText is an advanced SMS marketing platform that provides businesses with strong automation and engagement features.

This app is mainly used by event organizers, nonprofit and fundraising organizations, retail businesses, etc.

Customers can join by texting a keyword to a short code. For example, A user can text “Paper” to the number “56602” and receive another text message receiving a special discount.

SlickText collects phone numbers and offers quality customer engagement by allowing businesses to respond to customer inquiries and feedback through two-way messaging.

Further, Short Code Campaigns and Drip Campaigns help target only the interested demographic of customers.

3. EZ Texting

EZ Texting is an SMS marketing app designed especially for non-technical people such as new business owners, community organizations, and event organizers.

EZ Texting provides a simple and highly intuitive interface that makes it easy for users to set up and manage SMS marketing campaigns without any advanced technical expertise.

It also provides attractive customizable message templates to streamline messages professionally. Although used by non-technical users, the compliance tools of this app adhere to SMS marketing regulations and thus make sure marketing is done within legal boundaries.

The most attractive feature is probably that the new comers can operate this app effortlessly without anyones help just by reading informative help docs and Getting Started Kit provided by the app.

How is SMS Marketing Better?

The most commonly used text-based marketing strategies are SMS marketing and Email marketing. Although each has its own strengths, SMS marketing is seen to be much more effective than email marketing. Let’s have a closer look at this.

Final Words

Even though technology and communication channels are constantly evolving, sending and receiving SMS seems to be a widely used method for quick and effective communication.

Hence, businesses of all sizes must consider adopting SMS marketing into their overall business strategy to increase their customers, build brand reputation, and enhance revenue and sales.

FAQs

1. What are the best SMS marketing practices?

Personalizing SMS marketing campaigns, leveraging audience segmentation, obtaining consumers’ consent, using SMS marketing tools, and complying with legal rules and regulations are some great ways to practice SMS marketing.

2. What is SMS marketing used for?

SMS marketing is used to send short and to-the-point texts to potential customers on their mobile devices to promote products and services.

3. How can I ensure my SMS marketing is cost-effective?

To make SMS marketing cost-effective, businesses must first segment their audience, target only those who are interested, take advantage of bulk SMS packages and constantly monitor the effectiveness of SMS marketing campaigns.

4. How should I respond to customer replies in SMS marketing?

To effectively reply to a customer, marketing professionals must give out helpful and relevant information about their services and products.