SMS Marketing for Business

The internet has helped and ease marketing in a lot of ways with its ability to target specific geographical area to specific people in a small amount of price and effort. While more and more businesses and companies are entering the internet for increasing their brand recognition, there are still many businesses and companies that rely on a more traditional marketing approach: using Short Message Service or SMS.

SMS is one of the cheapest and the easiest way to approach customers and maintaining contact with them. SMS marketing has been used in many ways that businesses and companies may get enough advantage comparing to other means of digital marketing. SMS marketing engages customers who have opted-in to receive information. Some other marketers may send blind messages to random numbers

SMS marketing is also permission based and it is expected from a good SMS marketing campaign engages with only those customers who have opted-in to receive information, communication, or promotional messages. A good SMS marketing can be a professional, innovative way to connect with customers and boost your ROI from advertising. SMS marketing is also popular when it’s used to enable SMS entry into competitions, surveys, and giveaways. Instead of making customers fill out a paper form, businesses encourage text message entries. A good SMS marketing also needs to give the customers the ability to opt-out.

Because SMS marketing does not always start with advertising. Businesses and companies can also send regular informative text messages to their existing database of opted-in customers. This type of SMS marketing is a more instant of an email newsletter, and can be used to send out updates, news, appointment reminders, etc..

SMS marketing allow customers and marketers to communicate through short messages. Businesses and companies can create advertising which uses an SMS marketing call-to-action to encourage audiences to respond by SMS. The customer then receives an automatic thank-you text which sets up a dialogue that can be continued in future marketing communications.

SMS marketing is also popular when it is used to enable SMS entry into competitions, surveys, and giveaways. Instead of making customers fill out a paper form, businesses encourage text message entries. SMS marketing doesn’t always begin with advertising. You can also use an existing database of opted-in customers, to send out regular ‘push texts’. This type of SMS marketing is the text message equivalent of an e-newsletter, and works to send out updates, news, appointment reminders, etc..

SMS marketing has recently emerged as a very low cost, highly targeted, effective means of marketing. SMS Marketing has an average open rate of 99 percent compared with email open rates which can be as low as 30 percent, or even less. This means that people only receive your messages if they want to; increasing the likelihood that the message will be successful in its aim.

Today, SMS is becoming a place where spam is growing rapidly. Because the ease and the least cost it provide, people can use SMS for spamming other people's inboxes with unwanted messages and ad links. Since SMS is one form of communication that many people are tethered to 24/7, and because messages are immediately delivered directly to the targeted phone number, there is no solution to effectively avoid them. SMS marketing was possibly the first ever used as mobile usage began to shine a couple of decades ago.

A single short message can be up to 160 characters of text in length. Those 160 characters can comprise of words or numbers or an alphanumeric combination. Non-text based short messages are also supported. These are used for ringtones and logos services for instance.

SMS marketing can be invasive to many individuals. This is one reason many businesses and companies should ask their customers if it is acceptable to contact them via text messaging.