SMS marketing – the German market still offers potential

Is the SMS really dead? If you have the impression that SMS has long been overtaken by applications like WhatsApp, this article will surprise you. This may be the case for private communication, but SMS marketing promises profitable benefits for commercial communication. We will show you how to use this often underestimated marketing tool correctly. A guest contribution by Lisa Fritzsche, Marketing Manager for the email marketing provider Mailify.

Regardless of whether it is in our pocket or in our backpack – almost all of us always have our smartphone with us. According to the computer science scientist Markowetz, the average Germans watch no matter what 88x per day on your smartphone. So it’s no wonder that the open rate of an SMS campaign is 98 % lies. Whereas that of an email campaign is only 25 % lies.

But this high open rate isn’t the only benefit SMS marketing offers businesses. In fact, it is estimated that 90 % of messages are read after the first 3 minutes of their reception.

You should already rethink your view of SMS and imagine the synergies that a multichannel strategy (e-mail & SMS) can bring you.

With the following 8 steps you can be sure to use SMS marketing:

1. Start planning

Without planning there is no strategy and without strategy there are no results. Plan your SMS campaigns carefully in advance and mark all the important dates of the year for your brand on your calendar, such as Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Black Friday, etc. Also, think about when in the customer life cycle you can use SMS to To motivate your customers to buy your products.

Here are some occasions when sending SMS is recommended:

Sending information about the status of an order to your customers is an excellent strategy for keeping them informed. It gives the customer confidence in your company. Update the order status, but also let your customers know if there are delays.

• Recover abandoned carts

Every online shop knows this problem: Customers spend time in their online shop, are obviously interested in their products, even put items in their shopping carts and end up buying nothing. You can communicate directly with your customers via SMS. Offer assistance if the customer has any questions or doubts about your products. Or sometimes a reminder with a link to the abandoned shopping cart is enough to rekindle the already existing desire for your products.

• Inform about news and offers

SMS marketing is an ideal communication channel to promote new products or services and to increase your sales. The same applies to offers or sales, take advantage of the summer and winter seasons and special occasions like Black Friday. On these dates, consumers are particularly receptive to offers, so you should not miss this opportunity. With SMS marketing, you can reach the right audience at the right time and have a very high probability that your message will be read and noticed by the majority of recipients.

2. Segment your contacts

In order to be able to segment well, you need to analyze the statistics your SMS marketing tool gives you. You will find data that will give you important information about the tastes, interests and characteristics of your contacts. Identify them and create campaigns accordingly.

For example, if you have a shoe store, you can segment by gender, type of shoes (boots, sandals, sneakers), and even by size. Assuming you have a lot of size 40 sandals, it would be interesting to send a text message to women who have bought shoes in that size.

3. Create a short, concise message

SMS messages consist of a maximum of 160 characters. They are easy to design, have a simple structure and compared to other marketing channels they are very direct. In order to create a meaningful SMS marketing message, it is important that it is meaningful as people don’t want to spend a lot of time reading a text message. So be creative and come up with a piece of text that succinctly provides the information you want to convey. In addition, the SMS should have a benefit for the recipient. Highlight it with capital letters, e.g. „30% DISCOUNT “.

4. Personalize your messages

SMS marketing enables personalization of messages. For example, you can use personalization fields to use the names of your recipients. Personalization ensures that the recipient feels directly addressed and recognized by the company as an individual. Since the smartphone is already a very personal device, you can create a personal bond with your recipients by addressing them directly.

5. Include a CTA and a link to your landing page / website

If you want to increase your conversions, include a link to your website so people can see your articles. It’s also a great way to gather more data on the behavior of your recipients.

6. Enter the name of the sender

Personalize the message with your company name so the recipient knows who is sending it. This creates more trust than a message sent from 02547, for example.

7. Automate your SMS and save time

Create automatic scenarios that are activated when contacts take a predetermined action, such as greeting, special date (e.g. birthday), updates or canceled shopping cart messages. The good: Once you have created an automated campaign, it will be sent out on its own in the future and you can concentrate on other activities.

8. Choose a convenient time for your shipment

After creating your SMS campaign, you can determine the delivery time yourself. Shipping can be done immediately or at a later date. So SMS are ideal when you need to send an urgent message quickly. Don’t forget that the smartphone is a very personal device and respect the private times of your recipients. So, don’t send messages too late at night or too early in the morning.

Conclusion: So far, only a few companies in the German market have used SMS marketing compared to email marketing. SMS marketing offers so many advantages that it can be used as an optimal addition to email marketing. Think carefully about when it makes sense to contact your recipients by SMS and when by email. With professional email & SMS marketing providers, you will be able to implement a multichannel strategy in no time at all.

SMS marketing still has a lot of potential on the German market. Take advantage of the fact that few German companies are currently using SMS marketing. Because with SMS marketing you ensure that your recipients actually hear your advertising message in the midst of today’s flood of advertising.

about the author

Lisa Fritzsche is Marketing Manager for the email marketing provider Mailify. She deals with current trends around email & SMS marketing, as well as marketing automation and likes to exchange ideas with other marketing enthusiasts about digital trends. https://www.mailify.com/de/