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Some of you are close to wrapping up a short week. Others? You could always shorten yours by ditching work tomorrow. I’d never rat you out.
What’s on tap today? We’ll look at mixing email marketing with SMS marketing. Frequently asked questions, to be exact. 6 of them to help you decide if SMS campaigns are right for your organization and how to fuse them with email campaigns. Inbox Hackers, mount up.
3 Key SMS Stats
- Nearly 80% of text messages sent to consumers are opened within 15 minutes of receipt. (EZTexting)
- Women are more likely to sign up for promotional texts than men, 72.3% vs. 61%
- 83% of millennials say they open text messages within 90 seconds of receiving them (Open Market)
A few years from now, SMS may wear out its welcome as more marketers jump on the bandwagon.
As of now, only 15% of people felt “annoyed” when receiving a new text message.
SMS Email Similarities
How are email and text messaging alike?
Unlike social media and online ads, SMS and email marketing are both permission-based.
Unless you purchase lists. This erases the power of permission-based marketing.
Making your texts and emails no more effective than annoying ads. Ads that ruin the bliss of Twitter & Instagram 😅.
Let’s talk opens…
What are average open rates for SMS vs. Email campaigns?
Email hovers around 20% (B2C 21.9% / B2B 20.8%).
SMS opens are reportedly as high as 98% (No conclusive studies. But – how many texts do you delete before opening them?).
More concrete SMS data shows 42 percent of commercial text messages were actually opened and read (Statista).
Stay between the lines though.
SMS Rules
What are the rules for using SMS marketing?
General safeguards:
- Don’t “cold text”
- Use double opt-ins
- Be crystal clear about what subscribers are signing up for
Similar to email, yes. But remember, annoyed subscribers are more likely to mark a text as spam since they’re more likely to open a text. Whereas your email might simply be ignored.
FCC and Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) largely regulate text marketing. Detailed SMS rules here.
How Should SMS Marketing Messages Look?
SMS-eey. Short, sweet, and neat.
Like these 5 Klaviyo examples.
All 5 have some level of urgency. 3 lean into a holiday or season. One is directed at VIP subscribers.
You could look at SMS campaigns as only selling. Kind of a relief.
No worry about funnels and I’m pretty sure you can’t send a newsletter via text. Or can you?
What Type of Messages Work Best With SMS?
The best use would be appointment reminders. Naturally.
With that knowledge, what else would subscribers appreciate a reminder about?
- A freebie they didn’t grab yet
- Discount code they left behind
- Live webinar or one they missed, with the recording link
- A cart full of stuff they abandoned like a redheaded stepchild
Does SMS Marketing Help Email Marketing?
5 ways text marketing can improve email campaigns.
- Provides more data / insights to help segment your list
- Can highlight your most engaged subscribers (you got their number)
- Faster feedback
- Smooth over problems in real-time (ie. shipping issues)
*Insightful quotes on SMS from marketing managers below:
SMS Email Wrap-Up
Fear keeps email marketers from testing SMS marketing. No one wants to annoy customers and clients. Politicians don’t care but we’re talking decent humans here.
SMS best practices resemble what good email marketers already do. Message only those who confirm their opt-in and make all messages relevant to individual subscribers.
Think of SMS marketing as an extension of your email campaigns. Not to be overused, but to be precisely fused with what your audience already does on mobile devices.
Almost forgot. If today’s edition of Inbox Hacking were a ‘text message newsletter,’ here’s how it would’ve read.
“SMS marketing gets crazy open rates, but sky-high spam complaints for thoughtless marketers. SMS complements email campaigns. Tap that glass to read full story.”
Knowledge Base
Knowledge is power, but first, take a break.
Are you on an email blocklist and how to get off one.
See if webinars are worth doing → 25 statistics.
Pile up subscribers – 20 ways to grab more email addresses.
EMAIL MARKETING: How to resuscitate “dead” email subscribers and bring them back into the purchase funnel. Inbox Mailers empowers re-engagement. They leverage a unique engagement trigger system that we have seen more than double open rates. Book a Free Demo.
Self Help
Protect customers, workers, and yourself.
#1 Careful changing loyalty program rules. It’s all about perception + ease of use.
#2 Prevent employee burnout by giving them what protects entrepreneurs from burnout → work-autonomy.
#3 Defeat brain fog by working from the neck down.
*Shout-out to Inbox Hacking Subscribers →
➕Alexander at SocialBlue (leads)
📰Alex at GMX (news)
Facts and Stats
- 41% of U.S. consumers say physical stores are “less enjoyable” than pre-pandemic (MediaPost)
- 73% of B2B webinar attendees become qualified leads (Zippia)
- 38% of people say their phone is the most important thing they own😲 (Klaviyo)
Bonus: Email Marketers deemed brighter than 110% of college professors.
Increase your open rates by up to 300%! Send emails when your subscribers enter their inbox, here’s how…
Spike your engagement and revenue with a new technology that enables you to know when your subscriber enters their inbox! It simply works like this:
Step 1: Inbox Mailers identifies when your subscribers are checking their inbox.
Step 2: Inbox Mailers triggers your ESP to send an email while they’re checking it.
This boosts opens, clicks, aaaand… sales! Book a Demo.
Marketing Musings
Having a psychologist on staff would help you understand why your customers keep returning purchases, huh?
Online return rates range from 25% – 35% (up to 40% for clothes), compared to just 8% for in-store purchases.
According to Dr. Jansson-Boyd, it’s all about touch.
Hard to dispute this when one of the most tech-tastic companies still has physical stores. Apple.
We all know how an iPhone works. But they sell more by letting us fondle phones on-site.
So, how can you make your online products and services more tangible when much of this “feel” is subconscious?
- Video of models touching the products in relatable ways
- Highlighting textures visually
- Sound, which strangely provides an idea of what the physical touch is like
Relaying the feel of software? Line up video client reviews, transformation stories, and fired-up salespeople who like talking to people about the features.
Get Hacking
If you’ve got enough sense to collect emails on-site, awesome!
Why more businesses and organizations don’t do this, I’ve no clue.
However, today’s hack is to eliminate all the errors inherent in verbal and handwritten email signups.
People write like 💩 and we mishear things.
The solution is to confirm email addresses written, spoken, or even typed in at a kiosk.
Double-check addresses collected at physical locations and over the phone or risk a wasted opportunity with every typo or ‘S’ resembling a ‘5’.
Noteworthy from newsletters I read recently:
- “Once the mind has accepted a plausible explanation for something, it becomes a framework for all the information that is perceived after it.” (Brain Food)
- Every US President as Pixar characters.
- “Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.” (Leo Tolstoy)
📝Please take survey below. Thanks so much.
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