💬 It's well-known that SMS marketing as a channel for eCommerce brands can be awesome for driving sales, especially for sales-focused/promotion campaigns.
Yet, some brands can experience fatigue around performance and just differentiating their text comms - so, I'm sharing some tactics that are worth trying to increase open rates, CTRs, and tracked sales/revenue via SMS.
💬 Here are some various ideas of initiatives and experiments you can try - many I've done over the years, and sharing some other areas which I haven't gone deep on, but on my list for testing in future campaigns/flows.
Assuming that customers have properly opted into receiving SMS marketing updates, setting up "thank you" offers in conjunction with 'welcome' messaging can really help create a good first-experience.
One way to capitalise on this experience is sending time-sensitive promos, like upsells (that are complementary to the purchased SKU(s)).
Make sure to send offers and angle messaging based on key segments like AOV and the product(s) they purchased to ensure the offer makes sense (to help increase chances of conversions).
Now for those who haven't opted in, whether they become a customer or simply visiting he website showing some intent signals (like visiting multiple product pages), you can run targeted pop-ups and other opt-in strategies to try get them to opt into exchanging a mobile number.
Once you've got a number, there's lots you can do from there! Such as the ideas below.
Oh, I've even got a checklist of tactics you can consider to help drive opt-ins.
There's two ways to look at this item - you've got people who are customers who have not opted in, and those who are customers and have opted into SMS marketing.
For those who have not opted in, the big focus is on sending dynamic and personalised offers, which are tied to opt-in strategies (like I mentioned in the above checklist point). Make sure to checkout the resource I shared above to help you with ideas.
As for those who are customers and have opted in, you've got even more behavioural data to play with - you can set up dynamic events based on open rates of text messages, to certain campaign links they've clicked on from texts you've sent, and loads more. You can even combine events between email and SMS (like doing automated follow-ups vice-versa).
Quizzes are one of my favourite acquisition strategies for driving new emails as well as sales, and they're also great for data collection points like gathering an SMS.
Setting up initiatives like custom quizzes with results to recommended products work incredibly well, especially combined with a tailored limited-time offer. You can combine an offer with SMS too (for greater potential discounts).
I somewhat mentioned this above already but it's good to reinforce the opportunity to turn top active readers into SMS subscribers.
Consider running dynamic content placements based on the various activities of your lists - try to aim for stronger CTAs with incentives for those who are actively reading your newsletter (as an example, opened the last 4 emails, and clicked on 2 links).
You have a greater chance of converting active newsletter subs to sign up to receiving texts.
If you've read some of my other checklists, you'll know I absolutely love everything about upsells/cross-sells, and it certainly applies through SMS marketing.
This is a great tactic for post-purchase sequences/flows, and also for large-scale list campaigns (angled as limited-time offers).
This is a bit of an obvious point, but good to bring up as a reminder - segment and tailor messaging based on various factors of your audience, in particular when it comes to offers and recommended products (based on past purchase history). Overlaying with AOV numbers is also good to know (especially good data for knowing the propensity to buy for certain segments).
Another tactic to consider for those who have opted into receiving SMS messages is to send low and/or limited stock notifications/'warnings' to create some urgency.
It's not a tactic to use often (defs use sparingly - and certainly set ruling when you're setting up flows with a max. amount of sends per subscriber), but it can be effective. It's even been effective on me personally with brands I've subbed to.
Whilst text-based campaigns are usually tied to sales periods/CTAs, another touchpoint angle to consider is sending value-add content updates. Particularly if running awesome events with thought-leaders/influencers, or some sort of cool experience for customers/subscribers.
Remember, whilst sales/revenue is the goal and that SMS can help, you want to keep in mind of building a brand that people love to keep hearing from. So my advice here is to mix up text-based marketing between sales-drive campaigns and value-add content.
A cool tactic here is to send text updates when new perks have been added to your loyalty program that people may be interested in engaging with.
People love to know when a good offer could be worth taking up - especially segments of customers who are part of these programs.
An incentive like "bonus points" to unlock some sort of reward, on conjunction with a scarcity/FOMO offer, can be really effective for uptake.
Social and viral comps are awesome initiatives for brands to build up followers, engagement and of course sales - and are also quite effective for collecting key info.
Viral comps work as a system where entrants can be rewarded with 'bonus' entries when they do certain actions, like emailing their friends to signup, make a purchase in a certain time period, and ideas for subscribing/following certain channels that a brand may have - and in this case, SMS opt-ins could be a good idea.
From here, this is the perfect audience to educate/nurture via email and SMS automated flows.
A tactic maybe worth exploring is sending texts whenever you run (or decide to run) a social UGC competition. It's a great way to announce a comp, and also a faster way to build up engagement on the post.
It's another touchpoint to get customers to engage with your brand (which isn't just sales-focused).
Assuming visitors/customers have opted into receiving text comms, ensure to have SMS messages on for cart abandonments.
Another long-hanging fruit flow you should have setup are automated texts (and are opted in to receive them) for customers to make a purchase - as you'd already pick up on the theme of the various points I've touched on, incorporate an offer to have a desired action (i.e. make a sale).
Something I mentioned via the opt-in checklist I created is being smart about how to make customers feel special on their main occasion dates, like birthdays.
Send a personalised special offer for their birthday can work really well - you could even take it up a notch in terms of personalisation by having a custom coupon code mentioning their name.
A great way to drive sales generally is to activate your top customer segments to refer more of their friends - purely for the reason that they already love your brand, so naturally there is a greater chance they'll share.
Use that motivation to offer an incentive and message them as scale. Doing it via text too makes it easy to do on their phone, and even share the message easily with their friends via text/messaging apps.
