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    One of the primary goals for businesses today is to establish a consistent and impactful channel for communication with its customers. With changing times and the growing penetration rate of mobile, the channel has become an integral part of this communication strategy.

    While there are marketers that swear by chat apps for marketing, it is important to understand that the channel restricts the communication to only smartphone users – according to a survey, there are only 17% of all mobile phone users in India with a smartphone.

    That’s practically just a handful of your customers!

    Are SMS campaigns the answer?

    Yes!

    The one channel that lets a business reach out to their customers – irrespective of the mobile phone they’re making use of, is SMS.

    An SMS campaign is the quickest (via an SMS API), most efficient and cost-effective marketing platform for a business to communicate with a customer on a timely basis.  

    Here are a few reasons why your communication strategy needs to include an SMS marketing campaign:

    1. Higher open rates  

    SMS is included in all telecom operator basic packages. It is a facility available to all users, irrespective of the plan they choose. As a result, anyone with a phone is familiar with how messaging works.

    An average user knows how to access, open and respond to an SMS. According to studies, an SMS is opened within 3 minutes of delivery, and receive an open rate of a staggering 98% – in comparison to emails that get a mere 25-28% open rates.

    2. Better response rates

    Studies suggest that an average person uses his phone at least 2,617 times a day. The fact that we carry a mobile phone with us everywhere, increases the odds of the user responding to an SMS.

    For that matter, SMS marketing has proven to work the best for hyperlocal businesses. A timely actionable message based on the location of a user increases the likelihood of getting a response. The tactic of segregating your customers based on their physical location is known as SMS geofencing and is an emerging marketing trend according to Forbes.

    Companies like Exotel help hyperlocal service companies like Grofers, Peppertap, UrbanClap, and LocalOye integrate their marketing efforts with SMS. Using them for both transactional and promotional purposes, the businesses are maintaining high customer engagement rates.

    On the other hand, while emails have a wide adoption rate, there are also chances of your messages getting lost in the inbox volume of a user or landing in the spam folder.

    3. Highly cost effective

    SMS marketing is carried out directly through a telecom service provider at a premium cost, enabling you to send more messages during a campaign. However, using cloud telephony tools like Exotel can make it economical and efficient at comparatively low rates.

    In comparison to emails that need you to sign up for tools that help you manage a subscriber base, automate the messages and more, SMS is definitely a cost-effective channel for businesses seeking customer engagement at scale.

    4. Easy Personalization

    The only way to nudge a consumer to interact with the business is to send the right message at the right time. Personalization has become the top priority for marketers today.

    With SMS campaigns allowing 160 characters, they can be crafted to give out a clear, concise and hyper-targeted message. A marketer gets the opportunity to tailor and personalize messages as per previous customer interactions and other demographics.

    Higher the personalization, greater are the response rates.

    While email personalization has proven to boost response rates on a campaign, it takes longer to craft one-to-one custom messages. The higher cost of customer attention makes email a harder battle to win.

    5. Lower churn rates

    Emails have a greater amount of churn, as compared to SMS. The primary reason is that they offer an ‘unsubscribe’ option by default.

    SMS campaigns have a lower opt-out rate because customers don’t see a prompt to unsubscribe every time they receive a message from the business. The worst thing that can happen to your message, is it getting deleted!

    Conclusion

    An ideal customer engagement campaign is one that reaches the consumer at the right time with the right message.

    With emails and social media becoming overcrowded with businesses trying to reach their audience with multiple campaigns, it is time to step back and look for solutions that are already a part of the consumer’s day-to-day life and lack noise.

     

    Further Reading:

    Read: What is Cloud Telephony Integration? Check out this article to know how it can help your company.

    Read about why SMS Campaigns are beneficial for your company’s marketing efforts.

     

    Manisha Mishra

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