Text Marketing is becoming a widely used marketing method. Despite this increasing popularity little is still known about this emerging marketing channel. In this article I detail the five major reasons why I believe text marketing outperforms all the other more traditional forms of marketing.
Text marketing campaigns are becoming very common place in today’s retail and service sectors. From pharmacies to fitness gyms and from furniture stores to pizza parlors, text marketing is becoming a widely used and thoroughly effective marketing tool.
Outlined below are the five most important reasons why I believe text marketing outperforms all other marketing methods.
1. Low Cost and High Return on Investment
Commercials, print ads, sponsorship and outdoor advertising can all be cost prohibitive for many bar those with lavish marketing and advertising budgets. Text marketing however has such low set up and running costs that campaigns can be launched and executed for a fraction of costs associated with the more traditional marketing channels.
With the cost effectiveness and high response rates of text marketing campaigns, there are simply no other marketing mediums out there that can touch it for return on investment.
2. Open Rate and Response Rate
The statistics do not lie. Almost 100% of text messages are opened. Mobile coupons and special offers sent by text message have a redemption rate of between 5% and 15% as compared to 1% and lower for traditional coupons. If you want your marketing message or special offer read and used, then text marketing out performs all others with quite a bit to spare.
3. Intimacy and Personalization
Your keys, your wallet and your phone - these are the only things that you never leave home without. The mobile phone is probably the most intimate object that a person owns in the fast moving digital age and few electronic gadgets have become as close a part of our daily lives than our mobile phone. Because mobile phones are such a personal part of our world, this form of mobile marketing has the potential to create a uniquely powerful impact on the recipient. Text messages can be personalized to the recipient and delivered to their pockets within seconds; no other form of marketing can achieve this level of intimacy and personalization.
4. Speed and Flexibility
We now live in the fast moving information age where circumstance and environment can change on a daily if not hourly basis. The modern business must be flexible and adaptable to keep pace with the change and so must their marketing campaigns. As there is virtually no lead time to text message marketing, campaigns can be conceived of and delivered to their target audience in a matter of minutes. Whether it’s driving footfall on a slow day or clearing stock before months end, the speed of a text message cannot be matched. Text marketing allows businesses to immediately respond to the events of the day or to a competitor’s special offer almost instantaneously.
5. Highly Targeted
The days when marketers could send out marketing messages into the ether in the hope that they would land on their target consumer are over. For any company with even one eye on costs it’s now essential that every marketing and advertising campaign they run is highly targeted. Marketing messages sent by text message are sent directly to the pockets of their target market and are opened within minutes and sometimes seconds. In addition to this, as these subscribers have already opt-ed in to receiving these marketing messages they are much more likely to purchase than the recipients of other types of marketing messages.
Traditional marketing took the carpet bomb approach where as text marketing takes the sniper approach. As a result of this no other form of advertising can compete with text message marketing when it comes to reaching the most highly targeted audience.
Brian Stephenson - Managing Director, Text Republic
