How
to strengthen your text message marketing strategy and drive better results
Most
marketing decision-makers started 2021 wanting to connect with consumers in a
more direct, meaningful way—and they’re relying on text message marketing to do
so.
Attentive surveyed nearly 400 retail and
e-commerce marketers to learn how impactful text messaging has been on their
businesses, how they’re leveraging this channel to engage consumers, and where
they have room to enhance their strategies. Among other findings, our research
revealed:
·
Where
SMS fits into marketers’ overall strategies
·
How
marketers rate their current text messaging programs
·
The
most common tactical and strategic challenges marketers face
Explore the 2021 SMS Marketing
Benchmarks Report to see what we discovered and learn how you can
build a successful text message marketing strategy or drive even better results
with your existing program.
Marketers are driving
exceptional results with SMS
The majority of marketers agree text
messaging has significantly or overwhelmingly increased revenue generation for
their businesses. Most marketers also acknowledged that this channel generally
performed better or much better than other marketing channels, illustrating why
brands are increasingly investing in SMS.
1.
SMS is marketers’ next most impactful channel (if not already)
Nearly 96% of marketers using text messaging
say it's helped them drive more revenue—and almost 60% say it’s significantly
or overwhelmingly increased revenue generation.
SMS is a win-win for marketers and consumers,
the majority of whom primarily use mobile devices
when shopping online. 66.5% of consumers signed up to receive text
messages from more brands over the past year, contributing to marketers’
success on this channel.
Attentive customers drive an average 18.5% of total online revenue from SMS,
and our internal research shows that, on average, our customers in the
retail/e-commerce industry generated $71 for every dollar
spent on their text message marketing programs in 2020.
The majority of the marketers we surveyed also told us SMS generally performed
better or much better than their other marketing channels during the past year.
As shoppers continue to embrace a mobile-first mindset and use text messaging
to interact with the brands they love, the bottom-line impact of SMS will only
continue to grow. This explains why even among marketers who are not currently
using text messaging, investment in this channel is top of mind.
Over 66% of marketers not currently using text
messaging say they’re likely to start in 2021.
Approximately one-third of marketers who have
yet to invest in SMS told us they’re very likely to implement it into their
strategies this year. Nearly the same amount told us there’s a reasonable
likelihood they will.
Beyond the clear revenue benefits of adopting text messaging, marketers may
also be motivated by keeping up with their competition. When asked if their
competitors were using text message marketing, 36.5% indicated that some, most,
or all of them were. 43.7% were unsure, and only 4.2% of marketers could say
with certainty that their competitors were not yet using this channel.
Diving deeper
Among those marketers who have yet to
incorporate text messaging into their marketing strategies, the biggest barrier to adoption is
uncertainty over how to best leverage this channel.
But with experts forecasting that mobile will account for nearly
three-quarters of all e-commerce sales in 2021—and more
than 90% of consumers expressing
interest in signing up to receive text messages from their
favorite businesses—marketers have plenty of motivation to continue to educate
themselves.
The first step is to choose the right tool for the job. A text message
marketing solution that ensures message deliverability, compliance with industry regulations, and the ability
to grow alongside your business is critical to long-term success. If you’re
unsure where to start, prioritize working with a vendor that provides
expert advice and guidance on setting goals, launching your text messaging
program, and scaling it to maximize results.
Craft Your Program
Attentive’s Client Strategy team provides dedicated support for
managing day-to-day strategy to help you reach your marketing goals. Attentive
University and Attentive Studio also give you access to best practices content,
tutorials, design resources, and integration engineering expertise.
If you’re an early adopter of SMS marketing
who’s already seeing success with your program, consider how investing more
resources in the channel—and ensuring you have the right solution in place—can
help you drive even better results.
2.
Marketers have room to improve and are eager to learn how
Approximately 51% of marketers who currently
use text messaging say they're using SMS to its full potential in some areas.
Marketers want to build on their text
messaging strategies and drive even better results. Nearly 50% rate their SMS
marketing sophistication level as average, but believe they can and should do
more to fully leverage the channel.
22.5% of marketers we surveyed feel very confident about their SMS strategies,
saying they believe they’re using text messaging to its full potential in most
or all areas. On the flip side, 26.4% of marketers don’t believe they’re making
the most of SMS and need to do more to maximize its value in most or all areas.
This is understandable, given text messaging is an emerging opportunity for
many businesses.
Diving deeper
Text messaging is still a relatively new marketing
channel that many brands are just beginning to tap into. And
while the ROI can often be seen almost immediately, many marketers realize they
may only be scratching the surface and are ready to learn how they can drive an
even better return on investment.
According to a commissioned study conducted by Forrester on behalf of
Attentive, 69% of marketers cite
meaningfully engaging consumers as an overall marketing challenge. Another 65%
said they struggle to stand out amid a high volume of marketing messages across
channels. To counter this, text messaging enables you to connect with consumers
on a 1:1 channel that captures their attention. Tailoring messaging to
individual subscribers is key to delivering content they’ll care about.
Craft Your Program
Attentive lets you use subscriber actions, behaviors,
preferences, and more to create a personalized experience across the entire
customer journey. Our Segment Builder allows you to target specific audiences
and send more relevant and personal messages. Built-in A/B testing ensures
you're sending the most impactful content to drive more engagement and
conversions.
Personalize your text
messages based
on the actions subscribers take, customize content using relevant subscriber
data, and consistently evaluate how different elements of your text messages
resonate with your target audience. And don’t forget that when and where a text
message is delivered is just as important as taking a subscriber’s shopping
history into account. Use time zone-based sending and geographic data to ensure
messages are delivered at the right times for specific regions and don’t
contain irrelevant content.
Personalization helps
strengthen subscriber engagement, but don’t slice your list too thin
or only focus on specific segments. Pigeonholing certain subscribers could
cause them to miss out on valuable content they may want or that could boost
sales, and regularly sending both campaign and automated messages to your
entire subscriber list is key to maximizing incremental revenue.
3.
List growth and channel alignment are top of mind
Marketers say increasing subscriber sign-ups
is their top tactical challenge.
Marketers know that a healthy subscriber base
is essential to the success of their text messaging programs, so they’re
focused on increasing sign-ups. Beyond list growth, developing personalized
content and using text messaging throughout the customer lifecycle are high on
marketers’ to-do lists.
Interestingly, while a commissioned study conducted by Forrester on behalf of
Attentive showed that integration with current
marketing tech stacks is a top-three priority when selecting a
text message marketing solution, Attentive customers ranked SMS integration at
the bottom of their list of tactical challenges—indicating this was not a
problem for them. While marketers new to text messaging may initially worry
that integrating it into an existing tech stack is difficult, with various
options for data-sharing and direct ecosystem integrations with popular
softwares such as Shopify, Salesforce, and other leading solutions, this isn't
the case.
Diving deeper
Consumers are value-driven and
price-conscious—which makes incentives an important part of driving subscriber
sign-ups. Survey results from our 2021 SMS Marketing Consumer Trends Report
show that a dollar-off discount on a
purchase is the preferred incentive among consumers, followed
by percentage-off discounts and free gift offers. But discounts and special
offers aren’t the only ways to drive results—consumers also indicated that
loyalty or rewards points and access to exclusive content would make them
willing to sign up to receive text messages from your brand.
Craft Your Program
With Attentive, you can automatically apply coupons to shoppers’
carts. You can use dynamic coupons to send unique discount codes to each
subscriber, combining them with auto-apply URLs to create a sense of urgency,
drive purchases, and ensure a smooth checkout experience.
Give consumers a reason to opt
in to your text message marketing program. For some
shoppers, new and back-in-stock product alerts or shipping updates may be
enough motivation. But illustrating the advantages of joining an exclusive
community and making it clear that subscribers will be rewarded for doing so
goes a long way toward enticing them to join. Text messaging subscribers are
likely to be your most loyal customers—incentivizing them to opt in is well
worth the investment.
Marketers say aligning text messaging with
other marketing channels is their biggest strategic challenge.
Marketers want to make sure their text
messaging strategies complement their other marketing initiatives and are
working to align their SMS programs with other marketing channels. Apart from
considering channel goals and alignment, securing enough time and people to
support SMS marketing programs are top priorities. Fortunately, as Attentive
customers can attest, client strategy support and automated technologies make
it easy to quickly launch SMS marketing programs and start seeing results
immediately.
Getting the necessary budget for SMS marketing and support from company leaders
ranked lowest in terms of marketers' strategic challenges, indicating that
business leaders are well aware of this channel’s value and are willing to
invest resources in it.
Diving deeper
Consumers want more options for how they
interact with their favorite brands. As a best-in-breed marketing solution, SMS
doesn't require orchestration with other channels to drive incremental revenue.
That said, making sure the cadence and content of your text messaging program
complements your other channels will help you optimize overall marketing
performance. And not only will you support consistent cross-channel messaging,
you’ll empower consumers to interact with your brand in the way they
want.
Craft Your Program
Attentive offers a large library of integrations with
different technologies to help you more easily coordinate your cross-channel
strategy. These include e-commerce and CRM platforms such as Shopify Plus and
Salesforce Marketing Cloud, as well as leading email, customer data, and
customer service solutions.
Consider the unique strengths of your SMS
marketing program and implement integrations to synchronize and share data as
it makes sense for your brand. Connecting the dots between your different
marketing tools will help you evaluate how different channels can work in sync
with one another.
4.
Marketers have more tools at their disposal than they may realize
Mobile sign-up creatives are the list-growth
leader.
Marketers know that converting website
visitors into SMS subscribers is key to supporting healthy growth. They’re
following best practices by leveraging their website traffic to drive sign-ups
via mobile creatives, as well as desktop creatives and dedicated landing pages.
But they should maximize their online real estate by implementing checkout page
sign-up forms as well. And while Text-to-Join (TTJ) campaigns currently rank
lower in terms of priority—potentially due to the lingering effects of COVID-19
on in-store traffic—marketers should consider how TTJ can be used to grow
subscriber lists across digital channels in addition to offline.
Diving deeper
Website creatives are fundamental to opting
consumers into your text message marketing program, but you have many
list-growth tools at your disposal. With increasing subscriber sign-ups ranked
as marketers' top tactical challenge, you should double down on different ways
to drive people to this channel and get your SMS marketing program in front of
consumers at every opportunity.
While engaging website visitors is and should remain the top priority, other
marketing channels—including both email and social media—offer the chance to
acquire off-site subscribers.
Craft Your Program
Attentive’s Instagram Stories Swipe-Up feature lets you grow
your subscriber list directly from Instagram. Followers simply swipe up on a
Story, open up their phone’s native text messaging application, and hit send on
a pre-populated text message to opt in to your program.
Use cross-channel
list-growth techniques to widen your pool of subscribers. Beyond capturing offline
shoppers via in-store signage and physical mailers, use TTJ campaigns to drive
sign-ups across digital channels such as email and social media. Be sure to
test variations of your sign-up units to understand how different types of copy
and imagery may impact list growth.
Triggered welcome messages are the go-to for
automated engagement.
Marketers are focused on nurturing
relationships with their new subscribers and setting the tone of future
communications, using triggered welcome messages to greet subscribers. They’re
also re-engaging high-intent shoppers via triggered cart abandonment messages
that remind subscribers of products they added to their online carts but didn’t
purchase.
But marketers shouldn’t let other automation opportunities fall by the wayside.
Triggered browse abandonment messages automatically remind shoppers of products
they recently viewed but didn’t add to their carts—helping turn browsers into
buyers. And triggered post-purchase messages are valuable for building
long-term brand loyalty, surfacing word-of-mouth marketing, and driving repeat
purchases.
Diving deeper
Since triggered messages are sent to
subscribers based on certain actions they’ve taken (or not yet taken), they’re
ideal for automatically engaging shoppers at every stage of the buyer
journey—from interest to consideration to decision. By leveraging all triggered
messaging options, you can automatically drive incremental revenue while
ensuring your subscribers receive communications that are relevant to where
they are in the customer lifecycle.
Triggered post-purchase messages in particular are excellent for customer
retention, enabling you to incentivize repeat purchases via recommendations
based on past orders and loyalty or rewards programs.
Craft Your Program
Attentive’s triggered text message functionality lets you
automatically follow up with subscribers after they’ve completed a purchase and
encourage them to provide feedback, write a review, and more.
Use post-purchase messages
to turn your buyers into brand advocates. We recommend waiting at least one week after
your subscribers’ products have arrived before getting in touch. And make sure
to end with a clear call to action and a direct link to complete the action
you’re asking them to take, whether it’s reviewing a recent purchase, referring
family and friends, or some other post-purchase activity.
Special offers take the top spot for most
common campaign messages.
Marketers want to create a sense of urgency
among SMS subscribers and keep their brands top of mind. They’re using
limited-time sales, free shipping, and similar promotions to
drive immediate action. They’re also generating buzz with new product
announcements and sharing subscriber-exclusive content—such as early access to
products and mobile-only coupons—to treat their subscribers like VIPs.
Yet, marketers have an opportunity to diversify their messaging even further to
build stronger connections with subscribers. Branching out with content that highlights
their brand’s mission and values, humanizes the people behind their products,
or educates consumers will help marketers differentiate their brands from
competitors, all while driving incremental revenue.
Diving deeper
SMS doesn't just boost sales—it helps you
support overall brand marketing goals and develop long-lasting relationships
with your audience. Consider the role non-promotional text messages can play in
building brand awareness and guiding subscribers through the consideration
phase of the buyer journey.
Content related to the causes a brand supports is especially effective among
younger consumers. 72% of Gen Z said they’re more
likely to buy from a company that contributes to social causes,
and 84% said they’ll actively promote brands that stand up for something they
believe in.
Craft Your Program
Attentive’s real-time data analytics tools let you measure how
different types of content perform with your audience, giving you insight into
which text messages garner the most clicks and conversions.
Supplement your
sales-focused content with text messages aimed at deepening emotional
connections and
building brand affinity. Behind-the-scenes content that spotlights your
employees, content that provides insight into your brand story, and educational
content relevant to your products and services will help you stand out from
your competitors.
5.
Personalization + testing = massive opportunity
Purchase history is most popular for
segmentation.
Marketers recognize how important historical
data is to personalizing their text messages. They’re focusing on developing
audience segments based on subscribers' purchase histories, as well as using
past SMS engagement to tailor messaging.
But there’s a lot more data available to work with. Web browsing behavior and
geolocation both empower marketers to ensure their text messages are as
relevant as possible, whether they’re recommending certain products or
highlighting region-specific promotions. And join dates and sign-up sources
provide insights into when and how subscribers opted in to their programs,
allowing marketers to inform their list-growth strategies accordingly.
Diving deeper
After driving subscriber sign-ups, marketers
said developing personalized content that resonates with their target audiences
was their most pressing tactical challenge. This aligns with data showing
that the ability to personalize
content in messages was the most important factor in marketers’
choice of a text message marketing solution.
Craft Your Program
Attentive's Segment Builder lets you build targeted audiences
that update automatically based on their location, browsing history, purchase
behavior, device type, and much more.
It also fits with consumers’ priorities. While
survey results from our 2021 SMS Marketing Consumer Trends Report show text
messages featuring multimedia are more likely to drive consumers to make a
purchase, 33% of consumers said they have
no preference regarding media as long as the text messaging
content is relevant to them.
Craft Your Program
Attentive’s integration with Shopify lets you deliver
personalized experiences by creating segments based on customer attributes and
historical purchase data stored in the e-commerce platform, such as lifetime
spend, products viewed or added to cart, total orders, and more.
Use customer data to deliver
truly personalized content. You can segment your subscribers in numerous ways, such
as when they last interacted with your brand via text or how much money they’ve
spent with your business over a specific timeframe. Consistently send messages
to your entire subscriber base to get the most overall return, but always
consider how to make your content as relevant as possible to your audience.
A/B testing copywriting and CTAs ranks supreme
for analysis.
In a more data-driven world, marketers are
constantly testing and refining their text messaging strategies. They’re
regularly comparing copy, calls to action, and multimedia (emojis, images,
GIFs, videos, etc.) to understand which versions of their text messages perform
best, and they’re using this data to inform future campaigns.
But marketers shouldn’t stop there. They also need to consider how messaging
cadence may impact results. The day, time, and frequency of your messaging
should play a significant role in evaluating and enhancing text messaging
performance.
Diving deeper
Consumers have clear preferences when it comes
to text messaging frequency. Based on survey results from our 2021 SMS
Marketing Consumer Trends Report, 58% of consumers are
interested in hearing from brands via text message multiple times per week, and
approximately 19% are open to hearing from their favorite brands on this
channel once per day.
Our internal research indicates that the day and time a message is sent can
impact text messaging performance, and varies across businesses. Revenue per
message is typically higher for texts sent after 1pm vs. in the early morning
(before 9am), with campaign messages seeing higher click-through rates in the
afternoon and evening. Campaign messages sent on weekends generally drive
higher click-through rates while weekday messages often see higher revenue per
message. However, no two businesses are alike, so it’s important to test what
works for your unique audience.
Craft Your Program
Attentive’s built-in A/B testing lets you compare and contrast
how different versions of text messages perform side by side. And with
Attentive’s frequency capping and quiet hours functionalities, you can
automatically limit how many messages a subscriber receives over a set time
period and ensure messages aren’t delivered too late at night or early in the
morning.
Start enhancing your performance by ensuring
your messaging content is optimized for the mobile consumer experience.
Messages should be short and to the point, and end with a strong CTA to drive
action. And don’t forget visuals. Approximately 51% of consumers we
surveyed said they are more likely to make a purchase if text messages include
media such as images, GIFs, and videos.
Craft Your Program
Attentive’s customizable reporting allows you to set up
recurring reports, pull ad-hoc reports, and format data to fit your
requirements. And by integrating Attentive with your customer data and analytics
platforms, you can dive even deeper into different metrics to assist with
sending optimization.
We recommend sending 8-10 text messages per
month to your entire subscriber list, adjusting your frequency based on
subscriber response. Analyze click-through rates, conversion rates, and
attributable revenue to measure the performance of different messages.
6.
Integration and cross-functional collaboration can amplify results
E-commerce platforms lead integrations.
Marketers are maximizing the impact of their
SMS programs by integrating with online commerce technologies. Doing so lets
them pull valuable customer data from their e-commerce platforms—such as
Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce—and use it to develop even more personalized,
impactful text messaging campaigns. They’re also focused on ensuring their
overall marketing campaigns and subscriber lists are connected via integrations
with their email service providers.
Customer service software ranks third on the list of integrations. Marketers
should consider how these and other technologies—including data analytics and
CRM—can be used to share data between platforms and deliver exceptional SMS
experiences that keep customers coming back for more.
Diving deeper
SMS is a top performance marketing channel on
its own, but when combined with other marketing technologies, it can become
even more powerful. The data you pull from your existing tech stack—especially
e-commerce platforms such as Shopify and Shopify Plus—can be harnessed to
create more relevant text messages, drive upsells, and build brand loyalty. And
by integrating your SMS marketing solution with other platforms, you can
centralize subscriber data and use engagement with your SMS program to inform
other initiatives.
Craft Your Program
Attentive’s integration with Salesforce lets you match and unify
customer profiles by collecting email and phone data together, providing a
comprehensive view of your customers and enabling true orchestration.
Integrations also enable you to deliver on the
experiences your subscribers want. Results from our consumer survey showed that
nearly 70% of consumers would be likely or extremely likely to connect with a brand via text
message to receive customer support. Yet approximately half
that number currently does, indicating that many brands aren’t integrating
their SMS marketing solutions with their customer service software and offering
customer service as part of their text messaging programs.
Craft Your Program
Attentive’s integration with leading customer service solutions
lets you automatically sync all support-related text messages with your
customer service platform so your brand representatives can quickly respond to
inquiries sent via SMS.
Tap into consumer demand for
two-way conversations.
Our research found that Attentive customers drive 31% more spend from
shoppers who receive replies to their text messaging inquiries compared to
those who don’t. On top of that, research from Gorgias, an Attentive Technology
Partner, showed that SMS-based pre-sale conversations that receive replies in
less than 10 minutes have a 28% conversion rate,
significantly higher than desktop-based pre-sale chats.
Email marketers are most likely to collaborate
on SMS.
Marketers want to drive better results by
informing their text messaging strategies with input from other internal teams.
They’re collaborating with email marketers and also getting cross-functional
feedback from colleagues focused on social media, e-commerce, and paid media.
It’s wise to consult with other teams inside marketing to consider the unique
role SMS will play for your company, but SMS marketers should also take into
account feedback from various angles, both inside and outside the marketing department.
Diving deeper
Text messaging doesn’t exist in a silo.
Providing visibility into SMS programs and collaborating with different teams
on your channel strategy positions you to maximize the impact of your marketing
efforts more holistically. Every marketing touchpoint—SMS, email, social media,
paid ads, etc.—is part of a whole, and they’re more powerful if they inform
each other.
Customer-facing teams can provide valuable insights marketers may miss. Consult
with teams both inside and outside your marketing department to enhance
your text messaging strategy. Get input from other marketers to help you
understand how your messaging complements different channels, and solicit
feedback from your sales, customer service, and product teams to uncover key
details related to consumer questions and trends. Doing so will help you
develop content that aligns with your various marketing channels and addresses
subscribers’ most-pressing wants and needs.
7.
Methodology
Parameters
8.
Ready to implement these findings in your 2021 mobile marketing strategy?
Attentive helps over 3,000 brands
effectively engage their mobile audiences with personalized text messaging.
Using real-time behavioral data, Attentive automatically sends engaging text
messages to each subscriber at every step of the customer lifecycle.
Have questions about our survey findings or how to implement these learnings in
your own text messaging program? We’re here to help! Reach out to us at
info@attentivemobile.com or request a demo.
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