Should Your Enterprise Use Text Message Marketing

You have likely seen the commercials on TV or perhaps even received your fair share of text message solicitations. Undoubtedly, text message marketing can be an effective method of using mobile technology to target your key demographics. However, there are additional factors involved that you should consider when implementing a text message marketing campaign for your enterprise. For those companies looking to do so, here are a few things to consider.

Why Do Consumers Sign Up?

Quite often, when a user signs up to receive promotional text messages from a company, they are expecting to get something in return. In other words, no consumer is going to allow a company to send him or her text messages just to stay abreast of the company’s happenings. For such reason, you should aim to offer your customers something of value in return for their permission to receive text messages from your company. Most commonly, this means offering frequent deals on your products or services, such as free weekly giveaways or daily discounts. 

How Often?

Another consideration for your company when appealing your text message marketing campaign to customers is how often to send. In this regard it is best to limit the frequency of your messages to a moderate amount. Companies such as Redbox do this extremely well by announcing to customers that sign up for promotions that they will not exceed a certain amount of text messages sent per week. Generally, the cap is one or two text messages per week, but it varies on the company and depends entirely on the confidence you have contacting your customers.

Giving Your Customers A Way Out

It is critical that you respect the wishes of your customers, especially when intruding on their privacy by sending daily or weekly text messages. The best way of doing so is to give them a way out even after they have consented to allowing you to send them text messages. In doing so, you can add a reply function to your text messages saying something like, “Text 0000 to stop.” This way your customers can quickly and easily unsubscribe from your solicitations by merely replying to your text message. What’s more, they don’t even need to give an explanation, all they have to do is hit “Reply,” and type in a few numbers or letters. If you provide your customers with a way out of being bothered by your text messages they will likely feel more comfortable receiving them in the long run and will subsequently be less likely not to opt out. The key is to preventing your customers from feeling trapped is giving them a way out of your solicitations.

Conclusion

Implementing a text message marketing campaign can be an extremely effective way of soliciting your customer base and appealing to new demographics. What’s more, if done modestly and correctly, you can create loyalty and trust with your customers through their consent. At the same time, if you send out text messages too often or superfluously, then your campaign may actually end up hurting your company, rather then helping it. For such reason, it is critical that you limit the frequency of your text messages and give your customers a way to opt out of receiving them in future. If you can follow those simple guidelines, you will be able to successfully use mobile technology to better your marketing efforts.