In the last few years, SMS (short message service) marketing has gained some serious ground in the digital marketing world. Customers are more open to receiving texts from brands than ever before and since SMS marketing uses first-party data, it is a great channel for marketers to utilize as cookies become a thing of the past.
If you are new to SMS marketing or if you’ve been at it for a while, there are a number of automated text messages you can set up to market to your contacts more efficiently and effectively. While each type of SMS automation has its own benefits, today, we will explore three of the best automations to use for boosting revenue specifically.
1. SMS Welcome Series
A great SMS automation for increasing sales is a welcome series. This is a message (or series of messages) that gets sent out once a new contact subscribes to your SMS marketing. This will be the first message a subscriber receives, so be sure to craft it thoughtfully for a good first impression. If you’re providing a promotional offer, lead with that and include a link to a page where customers are likely to make a purchase.
Your SMS welcome series should not compete with your email welcome series, so if you already have an email welcome series set up, make sure your SMS automation works with it. Send your SMS message out first since most text messages are viewed within 2 minutes.
As a general rule, brands should send no more than 2–6 SMS messages per month. Keep this in mind if you plan on including multiple messages in your welcome series since they will contribute to your monthly send amount. Also, make sure your messages are being sent at an appropriate time for your recipient’s time zone (within the hours of 9 AM–8 PM).
2. Abandoned Cart SMS
If you are looking to boost revenue and you already have a welcome series set up, an abandoned cart SMS automation is the way to go. According to data collected from Klaviyo, abandoned cart is “often the first or second highest revenue-generating flow for SMS (together with welcome series).”
You can use an abandoned cart SMS as a follow-up to your typical abandoned cart email. To avoid oversending, only send your SMS to contacts who didn’t open your initial email.
Abandoned cart SMS messages should have a clear CTA with a link back to the product the customer left in their cart. Consider including a coupon to encourage recipients to purchase. Another option is to make the message an MMS with the actual image of the product within the message.
Your abandoned cart automation should only contain one SMS/MMS message and be sent within 48 hours of the customer abandoning their cart to avoid filtering by wireless carriers.
3. Win-back Automation
A win-back automation is sent to customers who have not made a purchase in a while. This is a great tool for customer retention, which is a good idea since it costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Win-back automations nurture customers and remind them to come back to your store.
Since the recipients receiving this automation are less engaged, you will want to make these messages more personal, including content that is relevant to them. Consider adding their name and/or a special discount. It is typical for customers to wait a while in between purchases, so make sure your win-back automation targets people who have not interacted with your business for longer than your business’s average buying cycle. It’s recommended to only include one text message in your customer win-back automation.
When you include SMS automation as part of your marketing strategy, you can interact with your customers and increase sales automatically. While automated text messages do require some work upfront, once they are created, automations do the work for you. For help setting up SMS automation for your business, contact the marketing experts at Hall today.
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