Your customers’ email inboxes are overflowing. The email channel and others may be effective in many ways, but at the same time, the space is extremely crowded. From vying for the top spot in organic search to trying to keep up with the social media behemoths’ complicated algorithms, your marketing efforts can certainly get lost in all kinds of ways — with one notable exception.
SMS marketing software makes tapping into the world of SMS marketing easier, more measurable, and most importantly, more successful than ever before. Before we dive into our guide into SMS marketing software, let’s consider the reasons we should explore SMS marketing as an option.
Gartner reports SMS open and response rates as high as 98% and 45% respectively — in contrast to corresponding figures of 20% and 6% for email. According to that same study, customers who receive SMS are (on average) 79% more likely to display an increase in mobile engagement over those who do not employ SMS communications.
In addition, virtually every mobile phone is able to natively send and receive SMS messages. Tech Jury reports that there are 3.8 billion people with smartphones in 2021, and Simple Texting found that 60% of customers read texts within one to five minutes of receipt.
The list of reasons to work SMS marketing into your marketing mix can go on and on. Assuming you are convinced, as you should be, the logical next step is to learn more about the tech that can support your SMS initiatives. Below, we’ve put together a list of some of the top SMS marketing software, so you can make a wise decision as to which SMS marketing software meets your needs and what criteria you need to make this big decision.
More and more businesses are tapping into the power of SMS to amp up engagement with customers from social media lead pipelines to customer experience communication to scheduling tools. The right SMS marketing software will help you not only send the SMS but integrate it with other email campaigns and ecommerce.
Seemingly countless SMS marketing software options exist from big enterprise options for global corporations to small scale apps for the tech startup on a shoestring budget — and lots in between. To begin your search for the right SMS marketing software for your unique business, here are a few factors to keep in the forefront of your mindset.
If you have to take your engineers off their big, important work to get your SMS marketing software setup, it might not be right for you. It should be easy enough to learn — even for the less technical marketing team. This may vary based on your unique needs.
For example, if you need a proprietary set up or a dedicated SMS API service or challenging ways to connect with your other tech stack, you might need more technical support. If these challenges aren’t part of your workflow, then be sure to seek out a tool that has a low learning curve and lots of support from the company.
In most cases, you want to select an SMS marketing software that offers true two-way messaging so your customers can communicate with you. Again, this may not be the right feature for your business if your goal is to send 50,000 texts with the click of a button.
As part of your decision criteria, you may want to seek out applications that allow you to have a normal back-and-forth conversation with your customers as opposed to a hands-off platform.
One of the most important features to seek out in your SMS marketing software is integration. Across the board, this may be a universal criteria to require. Even if you don’t need it at this moment, you will likely want integration capabilities as your business grows.
Planning for the future as you select your SMS marketing technology is essential to reaching your long-term goals. Pricing and budgets matter, of course, but determining whether the pricing model offers the flexibility to allow your business to scale up, scale down, and pivot as things change is critical. You’ll need to assess your busines’s unique needs in this area and determine if you should seek out a pay-as-you-go relationship or the option to get pricing advantages from a longer-term commitment as needed.
Now that you’ve identified some of the questions you need to answer before choosing your SMS marketing software, let’s define some of the common uses and goals that will help lead you to making a solid decision.
At the top of the funnel, or TOFU as marketers like to call it, prospects may have questions. The window of opportunity to provide answers to those questions is small. With SMS messaging, your interested leads can connect with you and get what they need to move closer to conversion.
Without a lot of back-and-forth that creates unnecessary and detrimental friction, your SMS tool can support follow up communication and scheduling. Your sales closing rate will surely be driven up as you work SMS marketing into your sales mix.
Get paid seamlessly and make your customers’ lives easier. Offering an easy way for customers to pay can also be facilitated with your SMS marketing software.
From shipping notifications to communications about your processes, your SMS marketing tool supports a tighter, more intimate customer experience. It eliminates confusion and creates the tight relationship with your customer that keeps them coming back to your brand.
Social proof is more and more a requirement of doing business. Capturing reviews from your customers is essential yet elusive. Sending SMS messages out to request testimonials and reviews is an extremely seamless initiative that brings results.
Repeat business is almost always easier to capture than new customers. Nurturing the customer life cycle gets much easier and effective with the right SMS marketing platform.
Omnisend, as the name indicates, offers a large range of options, integrations, and features, making it one of the most popular SMS marketing tools for businesses both small and large.
TextMagic is a top choice if you are looking for the best SMS marketing platform to meet your mobile marketing needs. Its functionality allows you to text messages to your potential customers seamlessly with features that cater to the mobile marketing-focused business.
EZ Texting is easy to use and an excellent choice for businesses focused on SMS advertising. Offering a simple yet feature-rich platform that supports a range of marketing goals for both the small business and large corporation, EZ Texting is a pioneer in the area of mobile marketing and SMS sales promotions.
ProTexting is a great option if you are looking for an all-in-one text message platform that provides easy to access insights into data. Performance data as well as customer demographics can help you optimize your SMS marketing initiatives with the use of this SMS marketing platform.
Twilio offers deep customization for companies that want to build things out the way they want them. Offering a range of APIs for businesses to build SMS messaging, phone number redirection, and more into their own apps. Twilio is used by top companies such as ber, Airbnb, and Netflix among others. Twilio will typically require the work of software engineers, but not in every case.
SMS marketing software is the key to tapping into this lucrative and effective channel. Whether you are using it for customer communications or sales prospecting or any other objective that fits your business goals, choosing the right SMS marketing software for your needs and budget is the foundation of your success. Use the form at the top of the page to get free recommendations on the best SMS marketing software for your business.