2020 was an incredibly bizarre year with US elections, division between people, rioting, protesting, big tech censorship, and of course the pandemic – it was all a bit much.
The reality is that while the elections have finally concluded, the rest of the issues have not and unfortunately small businesses have paid an incredibly high price across the globe.
This change in the economic landscape means that businesses will be forced to change the way they do business.
One of those big changes will be protecting revenue to ensure your business continues through regardless of what’s going on.
One of the smartest ways for businesses to protect themselves is by creating a list of customers that they can reach out to.
While email marketing has (and still is) the weapon of choice and should continue to be we’ve seen a massive growing interest in bulk SMS. Learn more about available solutions at https://www.thryv.com/features/text-automation/.
“Our client base has exploded during the 2024 pandemic. Businesses have been much more open to trying out different ways to reach consumers on their mobiles. The feedback has been great from our clients on how bulk SMS has been helping their businesses grow.” – Angus Barrett, SMSpapa.com.au
In this article, I’d like to share with you the top reasons why businesses are adding bulk SMS to their marketing mix in 2024.
Bulk SMS Is Direct
While companies are still investing in brand style marketing campaigns that speak to no one smart business owners are using text messaging as a way to speak one-to-one with customers.
Asking for feedback and taking polls has been a great way for businesses to gain highly personal data that they can then use to craft well-tailored marketing messages not just with SMS campaigns but across all media.
Reliable Delivery Rates
One of the major issues with email marketing is that more than 20% of your campaign won’t even get delivered.
Let me get this straight. You invited people to subscribe to your email list, which they did and then when you send them an email 20% or more don’t even receive your email? That is not a good deal especially since you are paying your email service provider for everyone on your list.
No Spam Folder
While we are on the subject of deliverability, did you know that of 100 emails you send out only 20% will actually open and read your emails?
That means 80% of your campaign is being flushed down the toilet.
The main culprit here is of course spam algorithms that will detect whether or not you’re trying to sell something to your list of subscribers (who opted in to receive special offers from you) only to have those emails placed inside the spam or “promotions” folder.
Bulk SMS doesn’t have a spam folder or spam algorithms that can interfere with your business’ ability to generate revenue.
This means that your SMS promotions get virtually 100% delivery rates.
Low Competition
Bulk SMS services have been around for quite some time and there are a ton of options available but even with all of this it’s fairly uncommon for you to come up against any direct inbox competition.
Especially when compared with email where you’re competition with so much traffic it makes it incredibly difficult to have your email stand out.
With Bulk SMS your message always stands out, there’s no tricky or advanced tricks and tips that you need to use with all other marketing channels, SMS just works out of the box.
The other reason why there’s a lot less competition to deal with when using SMS is because people are much more likely to hand over their email address than their personal mobile number.
People are much more protective of who they give their mobile number to which means that you have a lot more exclusivity.
High Open Rates
When it comes to marketing campaigns the open rate is the most important metric.
The reason for this is simple, if no one opens your promotion then you can’t make any sales.
You can have mediocre copy and a mediocre offer but you will still get some sales as long as you can get enough people to open the message.
SMS has up to 97% open rate which means you are giving your campaign the highest chances of success.
Compare that to email which only has a 20% open rate which ultimately means your campaign NEEDS to have killer copy and offers to regain what was lost through the low open rate.
Speed
When I was working in online retail we had a piece of software that allowed us to see which parts of the country were making purchases along with where they were on our site, what they had loaded into their cart, etc.
One of the coolest things was sending out an SMS campaign and almost instantly watching parts of the country light up as people clicked on the link inside the text message promotion.
There was no other marketing channel that had this fast of an impact.
This is obviously great for businesses like restaurants who need to fill tables on slow nights, just send out a text message with an offer and shortly thereafter start booking tables over the phone.
SMS Is Not An Online Advertising Channel
Bulk SMS is an incredibly versatile solution but one of its greatest advantages is that fact that it is an offline channel.
While ad costs continue to skyrocket upwards with no clear end in sight and with big tech continuing to place annoying restrictions on advertisers continuing to limit the performance of marketing campaigns the text messaging space is going in the opposite direction.
There are no strict advertising policies, no algorithm that can demolish your account overnight, no spam filters that can send your SMS into the gutter.
Instead of SMS prices going up, they are coming down due to new bulk SMS services entering into the space making SMS an exciting “old” technology.
