Your company is looking for a new way to reach prospective customers. You feel like you have exhausted social media and regular blog posting. Those things still work to some degree, but you want to expand your reach even further. How do you do it? You might consider SMS messaging.
Known colloquially as texting, SMS messaging has been around for more than 30 years. It truly exploded along with the smartphone. And now, with billions of people using smartphones on a regular basis, the power to text is no longer limited to developed countries. People all over the world are texting.
It turns out that companies are investing in bulk messaging for this very reason. They work with service providers offering SMS APIs, software, and gateway solutions that open a whole new world of marketing. If your company isn't doing it yet, it's probably just a matter of time. Just like email marketing became nearly universal in years past, so will SMS messaging.
Billions of Messages Daily
Research from just a few years ago revealed that some 70% of all smartphone users use their devices to send and receive text messages. While the research was confined mainly to the US, it is not hard to extrapolate the data to cover the billions of smartphone users around the world.
A conclusion that billions of texts are sent every single day is reasonable given the data. And guess what? Texts boast an open rate in excess of 90%. That's gold. The hardest part of any marketing campaign is getting people to actually pay attention. If recipients are opening text messages, half the battle has already been won.
How many millions could the smallest of companies reach by investing in bulk messaging? No one really knows the answer to that question. But the fact that the total audience numbers in the billions suggests that reaching countless people is not too difficult.
A Captive Audience (News - Alert)
The power of bulk messaging is its ability to reach a captive audience. Society can debate the merits of so much screen time all day long. But from a purely marketing standpoint, the smartphone is one of the most effective tools for getting a person's attention. That is just the way it is.
So many of us are connected to our phones like dogs on a leash. We cannot bear to be without them. And as soon as a notification comes in, life stops until the phone is checked. It would be laughable if it weren't so serious. The point from a marketing perspective is this: no other form of messaging captures customer attention quite like text messages.
If your company still relies on email, you can bet that plenty of the recipients have your messages heading right to the spam folder. They are never even seen. And with some of the newer email platforms now emerging, messages can be blocked entirely. Forget being sent to the spam folder. They never get that far.
SMS messaging is different. Phone (News - Alert) users can still block your messages, but they are less likely to do it. There is just something about texting that makes people feel compelled to accept whatever comes across their phones. And again, people check their phones the minute a notification comes in.
Highly Automated Marketing
The benefits of bulk messaging go far beyond just reaching a wider audience. SMS marketing is also comparatively simple because so much of it can be automated. For example, did you know that most messaging platforms can import phone numbers from basic spreadsheets?
Your company likely collects contact information from every single customer. If not, you are behind the marketing times. At any rate, this contact data should be easily dumped into a spreadsheet. And once dumped, it can be fed into a bulk messaging application where phone numbers can be extracted. All of this can be automated so that no one in the office has to spend time manually entering phone numbers.
Furthermore, phone numbers can be categorised in any number of ways. Why would a company do this? For the purpose of sending messages to targeted groups of customers. There is no point in sending messages to customers not likely to respond to them because that wastes money. On the other hand, targeting certain users with specific messages reaps better results and saves money.
In terms of sending the messages themselves, it takes seconds to construct a new message. Hit the send button and it's gone. In less time than it takes to walk to the break room for a coffee refill, you can send a text message to every customer on your list.
It is Easy to Get Started
If all this is not enough to convince companies to embrace bulk messaging, there is yet one more thing to consider: it is easy to get started. The top SMS gateway 2021 providers offer turnkey platforms that companies can have up and running in short order. And thanks to the software-as-a-service model, companies do not have to invest a huge sum up front.
For a small investment of time and money, bulk messaging can increase a company's reach considerably. Bulk messaging can also increase ROI due to its exceptionally high open rate. And finally, the company can get in on the ground floor relatively easily.
Do Not Text Lists
The one downside to bulk messaging is dealing with 'do not text' lists. In jurisdictions where text messages are tightly restricted, a company could get into big trouble for sending unsolicited messages to people on the list. That is not something you hear about until regulators come knocking on the door.
Nonetheless, there are still boatloads of people to contact whose names and numbers are not restricted. They are just ready and waiting to be marketed to.
More companies are embracing bulk messaging these days. Now you know why. If your company isn't on board yet, it's time to change that. Bulk messaging is not the wave of the future; it is the emerging trend of right now. It is the way leading companies are expanding their reach and increasing market share.
