Essential SMS and Email Tips: 5 Strategies You Can Implement Now

Only if there were a way to contact your customers directly and tell them all about your company’s offers, updates, and campaigns. Well, there might just be. Online shopping is largely completed using smartphones nowadays. So why not contact your customers on their smartphones via SMS or e-mail?

SMS and e-mail are both powerful direct marketing channels which can be used to update your customers about your services/products in between purchases or generate leads and brand awareness. They can help build a relationship between your company and the customer while driving traffic to wherever you want it to such as your social media profiles, blog or e-commerce website. E-mail marketing in particular has such a great success rate because it makes the user to take some form of action even it is deleting it. Additionally, even if there is no action, your e-mail will show in your customer’s inbox until there is one anyway.

1. Know your customer

There may be general sales and promotions going on with your company that you want your every customer to know about. However, it would be better for specific promotions if you were to categorize your customers according to their purchase history, locations, age, sex, etc. The more you specialize your content for your customer, the higher the rate of conversion to sales.

2. Do not buy e-mail lists

Speaking of customers, buying e-mail lists is also a wrong way to go about e-mail marketing. They are both prohibited by many e-mail marketing companies that you would use to send e-mail in bulk and counterintuitive as reaching your ideal customer would bring you the best success in terms of sales and brand awareness. If you struggle with collecting e-mails from your customers, you can offer them a discount, freebie or a coupon for free shipping when they sign up to your mailing list. 

3. Write Smartly

You have only a fraction of your customer’s attention until they move on to the next text or e-mail thus use this time wisely. SMS need to be short, 160 characters to be precise so keep them engaging. Start with your company’s name as the sender may not be your company and do not use open-ended messages. This is true for both e-mail and SMS. There needs to be enough information and incentive. If there is an opening, a campaign, or a coupon, let customers know when it is due or where it is held. 

In order for your campaign to be successful, people need to be engaged, keep reading, value your company, and take action after reading your SMS or e-mail. This is made possible by including call-to-action phrases. Here are some examples you can add to your next SMS or e-mail: 

“Buy now.” would be the perfect call-to-action phrase for discounts, limited time offers, or even when you know someone buys your product regularly and you want to make their job easier by providing a direct link. You can add “Show this text.” to your content where your customer needs to show you the content which they got from you to get some sort of discount or gift. This would be very useful for location-based campaigns such as a restaurant or a pop-up store. Another one is “Click here.”. It might come in handy when you cannot fit all the content in your SMS. For example, it may be used to add additional information about an event. 

A very important part of SMS and e-mail marketing is that you have to give your customer the choice to opt out from your lists. They need to be able to stop receiving SMSs or e-mails from you, easily. Another useful and decent thing to do would be to tell your customers how often they should expect your SMSs or e-mails and what type of content you would likely to send them.