Targeted SMS mailings as a powerful tool in the hands of a marketer

Today, a huge variety of activities are used to increase sales, attract new clients and business partners to the business, and promote the brand on the market. Often, different approaches are combined with each other in order to obtain the maximum result in practice. And here it is important to decide which option will be the most effective in practice for your business. Therefore, you should be well versed in all the trends that currently exist on the market.

As part of today's review, we will dwell in more detail on what targeted SMS mailing is. It is highly effective, since we are talking about targeted messages aimed at attracting a relevant audience, ensuring comprehensive communication with the client. In this way, information is sent about new products, opening of certain business representative offices, promotional offers, etc. All this has led to the fact that targeted SMS mailings have become part of the marketing communications plans of companies today, and are actively used by them in promotional campaigns. It is noteworthy that this technology is suitable for any business, regardless of its size or area of activity. In addition, it does not require exorbitant budgets, and the result makes itself known very quickly.

Why targeted SMS mailing has become popular in practice

Today, marketers have a lot of tools at their disposal to promote a business, as well as individual goods and services. But not all of them can be called optimal in terms of material investments and results. Alternatively, advertising through Yandex Direct will cost you quite a lot. In addition, the competition here is very high today. Today it takes about 70% of the entire advertising budget, but the price that has to be paid for attracting customers has become much higher than it was relatively recently. The main reason for this is the transfer of funds from Google Ads. But at the same time, the audience clearly has not increased.

The advertising platform of the VKontakte social network VKAds is still quite raw today. In addition, if you switch from your old account, there is a high probability of an error. The cost of contact for most areas is very significant here today. Considering the fact that myTarget will soon become part of VK Advertising, the efficiency of this promotion channel is also decreasing. Telegram Ads shows good efficiency in practice, but the price is high today. In addition, it will be necessary to connect additional services here, and the functionality leaves much to be desired.

All these features attracted the fact that marketers were faced with the need to find other channels for promoting their business. As a result, Google and Yandex maps, various marketplaces, such as Wildberries, Ozon, advertising tools from Avito began to be used. One of these solutions is these are also targeted SMS mailings.

The high efficiency of the latter is largely ensured by:

• constant contacts of the user audience with their smartphone;
• high open rates, since according to mobile network operators, over 90% of users read SMS in the first 10 minutes after receiving them;
• simplicity, convenience and efficiency in launching: does not require specific knowledge, time and effort;
• the ability to work within your own budget, no competition from companies that allocate more funds for advertising;
• no need to spend money on third-party specialists, such as a designer to prepare a promo;
• completely legal actions: such rights are held by mobile network operators, through which your mailing will be carried out.

It turns out that by launching a targeted SMS mailing, you use the operators' solutions. That is, you get access to clients who have already approved the receipt of advertising. In addition, by providing you with their contact information, consumers themselves agree to subsequent interaction with you, including the distribution of special offers and other information via SMS messages.

So what is targeted SMS mailing?

Targeted SMS mailing is an effective, modern advertising tool that you can use to send bulk SMS messages to the audience that is interested in your products and services. That is, you select certain parameters in advance, by which the selection of target clients will be carried out. These parameters are called targets, which is where the name of the advertising technology comes from. If you do the preparatory work as competently as possible, you will get quite an impressive result. Audience settings are performed here in the same way as in other similar tools. That is, you choose for yourself by what parameters, be it gender, age, place of residence, interests, income level, key queries or any other aspects, potential clients will be sorted. Moreover, you can even target people who visited certain websites, called certain phone numbers.

Using targeted SMS mailing in practice, you can:

• Increase repeat sales rates, and with them business profits. You can bring back those customers who have already worked with you and were able to see the quality of the products provided. Just remind them that you exist, that you have prepared a special offer for them, a new product. Such people are more likely to make a purchase than new customers.
• Ensure interaction with people who are interested in your products, services. In this case, you evaluate third parties and work directly with the target audience. Thanks to this, you have every chance to increase conversion and minimize advertising costs.
• Get significant material benefits. SMS mailing will cost significantly less than building communication with the audience through other interaction channels. If we talk about the ratio of attracted clients to the price of such advertising, then in this case you will get one of the highest coefficients.
• Interact with the target audience quickly enough. This mailing is sent by trigger, that is, very quickly. Your clients will receive the corresponding notification instantly. Moreover, this way you get the opportunity to respond as quickly as possible to any market changes, adapting them to yourself.
• With a high degree of probability to receive feedback. If desired, you can add a survey to your mailing, as an option about your products, service. This way you will be able to identify the problems that clients see and promptly eliminate them, improve the level of service and take other actions that will contribute to a more successful and effective development of your business in the future. And if you also offer some bonuses or additional discounts for completing such a survey, you will increase your chances of getting answers.
• Improve audience loyalty. Regular mailing of messages to clients containing interesting offers for them, including discounts, the opportunity to purchase a particular product from an exclusive series - this is what can increase the level of customer engagement and retain them in your business.
• Improve the effectiveness of marketing research and get maximum information about your potential clients, including their interests, preferences, wishes.

Let us remind you that all this can be implemented with minimal investment of time, effort, and money.

What filters can be used when setting up targeted SMS mailing?

We have already talked about the fact that the essence of targeted SMS mailing is that it is aimed at an audience that is already interested in your products, services, and cooperation with your business in general. And here it is very important to correctly select your potential clients, that is, those who will receive messages from you. This will not only provide feedback, but also significantly save the advertising budget.

The most commonly used key criteria for selecting the target audience are:

1. Gender. In this case, you should follow simple logic, dividing products into two separate categories: men's and women's. It is clear that in the "hunting and fishing" category, over 90% of customers are men, while the main buyers in cosmetics stores will be women. But you should understand that such a division is quite arbitrary, since the market offers a huge number of business areas where the client can be anyone, that is, both a man and a woman. If your business belongs to one of these areas, then you should not use gender as a filter.
2. Location. This parameter will be especially important when linking your company to a particular geolocation, that is, for a business that operates not only online, but also in an offline environment. This includes various cafes, bars, restaurants, pastry shops, beauty salons, as well as home appliance repair, home delivery, etc. This will be relevant for most businesses operating in large cities, where delivery or any other type of home visit, accessibility for customers will require a lot of time. Also, a similar parameter should be taken into account by those who work online, but only within a certain region. That is, you yourself specify which location will be optimal for you when forming your audience. When setting up this parameter, you can choose not only countries, but also individual regions, districts and even coordinates.
3. Interests. One of the most important criteria that allows you to attract to your business only the audience that needs your products and services. If you ignore this filter, you can cause indignation among people. Agree, it is completely inappropriate to send a vegetarian a discount on a new type of sausage from your store, and a fish owner a promo code for a leash for walking dogs. That is, you must understand what exactly your audience is interested in. But putting this into practice is not always as easy as it may seem at first glance. This will require a comprehensive analysis, including search queries, subscriptions in social networks, etc. And here a tool such as data parsing will be useful. It will automate the process of collecting information and structuring it, which will significantly simplify and speed up the work.

Recall that you can use any other filters when forming your own target audience, taking into account the specifics of your business. Approach the implementation of this task as professionally as possible, and then you will be able to get the maximum result with minimal material investment.

What business should use targeted SMS mailing?

We have already mentioned that targeted SMS mailing is suitable for almost any business, regardless of what market niche it operates in, what sales volumes it has. Here are some of the most common areas where the use of this technology in practice will ensure your fairly successful development:

• Any retail stores. In this way, you can inform your customers about the promotions and special offers that you are launching, new arrivals. You can also make individual mailings to certain customers to encourage them, interest them, and ensure subsequent interaction.
• Restaurants, cafes, establishments specializing in food delivery. Through SMS mailing you can show your potential clients your menu, current prices, tell them about promotions and discounts. In such messages you can remind them about table reservations, about the order fulfillment process.
• Various online trading representatives. By analogy with offline stores, they can also send out information about new products, interesting offers, including personal discounts, unfinished orders that remain in baskets, etc.
• Beauty salons, massage parlors, fitness clubs and other centers that focus on the local consumer. With the help of SMS mailing you can remind them about expiring subscriptions, an upcoming procedure or the need to sign up for it, some motivating messages that will encourage them to contact you.

Targeted mailing will be useful to all those who are launching a new product or service on the market, who are opening a new establishment or expanding an existing business, those who would like to attract the attention of the audience with a special offer. It will also become an indispensable tool for business representatives who would like to retain the attention of their regular customers as much as possible and attract a new audience to the business, ensuring a stable growth in profits.

The main types of targeted SMS mailing

For your targeted SMS mailing to work in practice, it is necessary not only to correctly configure the target audience, but also to choose the most suitable option for launching such messages. In this case, the following solutions are possible:

1. Mailing for business. Offers a simple, prompt service with the help of which messages will be sent literally all over the world.
2. Advertising mailings. Designed to increase sales and promote products and services on the market, increasing brand awareness.
3. Transactional mailings. With their help, you can inform your audience about how their order is being processed, how payments are made, announce delivery details, etc.
4. Personalized mailings. They involve addressing by name and often contain a unique selling proposition. They are also used to congratulate regular customers on their birthday or some special date.
5. Combined mailings, which involve the use of SMS and, as an option, Viber or another messenger. It is assumed that if your messages are delivered or not read through one of the channels, the same message is sent again, but through another channel.
6. Checking the relevance of the number using an HLR request. From time to time, such mailings must be carried out by absolutely all business representatives in order to make sure that your existing customer base is still relevant.
7. International mailings. We are talking about sending messages not to a local, but to an international audience.
8. Automatic mailing. This includes reminders of some important events, the need to contact you again with an order, congratulations on the New Year, Birthday, etc.

And now we have systematically approached such an issue as the customer base for targeted SMS mailing. Namely, where to get it?

Where to get contacts for targeted mailing?

After you have created a portrait of your target audience, the next question automatically arises: where to get contacts, using which you can send an SMS message to potential clients? There are several options. The simplest and fastest in this case would be to decide to purchase a contact base. In this case, you need to be ready to pay a fairly impressive amount of money. And the point here is not so much in the purchase itself, but in the costs that will require subsequent processing of the received base. You will need to spend money on segmentation, processing conversation scripts, paying for the services of specialists whom you will involve in solving this problem, including calling potential clients. In addition, practice has repeatedly shown that such purchased bases often contain a large number of inactive numbers. And this means that you will need to do additional work in order to sort the available results by the same calling. And again: do not forget that in this case you are simply getting a database of phone numbers, not the contacts of your target audience.

Another point that we would like to draw the attention of those wishing to buy a client database is the legality of such actions. The fact is that in this case you are violating the law on the protection of personal data. You can be sure that the people whose contacts are presented in such databases did not give consent to the processing of their personal information and, accordingly, to receive the mailing list.

You can avoid such problems and get your own target customer base only by doing the work yourself. So, you can add a corresponding item to the flyer for registration of personal discount cards, to the service agreement, various questionnaires, etc. That is, you will make it so that your clients voluntarily provide their contact information. In the future, you will only have to verify all this information in order to exclude inactive numbers.

When compiling such a database, you can use the numbers of clients who have already contacted you, as an option, for advice, during the process of placing previous orders. But in this case, you need to inform your managers that at the beginning or end of each conversation there is a request for the subscriber's consent to receive such mailings.

Quite often, businesses also provide their potential clients with additional bonuses for providing them with their phone number and, accordingly, permission to mailings. You can also offer them to fill out the appropriate form, as an option for participating in the bonus program, indicating personal information in it. Today, you can already see many sites where a pop-up window with individual offers limited in time periodically appears. To use them, a person must provide their contact information.

How to write a targeted SMS mailing correctly?

Another key aspect of an effective targeted SMS mailing is the correct writing of the text of the message itself. Here, too, everything is not so simple, since it is important to interest the potential client. If he opens your message, he should see in it an offer that will obviously be useful to him and can cause a reaction, such as asking for advice, placing an order, subscribing, etc. Therefore, your message should be as short as possible. One that a person would spend a couple of seconds reading. But at the same time, it should contain the most important information. To prepare such a text, you need to answer 3 key questions:

1. What exactly are you offering the client? This could be an additional discount, the opportunity to purchase a product that is just appearing on the market, a cumulative discount system, free delivery, etc.
2. What benefit will a person receive from contacting you with an order? Again, this could be the purchase of a product or service with additional discounts, the opportunity to buy a product that is not yet widely available on the market, etc.
3. Where can such a purchase be made? If we are talking about an offline representative office, indicate the address, if there is an online one, provide a link to your website.

It is very important not to exceed the permissible limits in such publications. Often, this is 160 characters per message. You must also comply with all legislative norms and requirements that are in effect in your country at the moment. This is what will allow you to avoid various fines, sanctions, and restrictions. You must understand that it is forbidden to advertise prohibited goods, be it alcohol, tobacco, drugs, weapons, explosive substances, and other similar categories of products. It is also forbidden to compare the product with competitors, insult other business representatives. There are also a number of categories of goods to which special information must be added. For example, if these are dietary supplements, you must write that they are not a medicine. The corresponding restrictions are spelled out in legislative acts and every business representative must know them.

When writing a message for a targeted SMS mailing, you should literally form some emotion in the first words that will cause a response. For example: “Sushi for an evening for two?” And then you can say that the buyer can place an order with a 20% discount today until 17.00 on any sets. Next comes a call to action, for example “Hurry up to order before 17.00”. After this, be sure to indicate the official link to your website, which your potential client can follow and learn more about the offers and place an order. It is also necessary to indicate the name of your organization so that a person can remember it and use it in the future.

When writing texts for SMS mailing, try not to use capital letters and too intricate fonts, because they will be difficult to perceive. Such a solution automatically evokes associations with spam, which reduces their reading rates.

Are there any limitations to targeted SMS mailing?

Like any other technology used in online advertising today, targeted SMS mailing also has a number of limitations. In particular:

• You must have an up-to-date database of phone numbers. It must be carefully prepared, excluding inactive options. In addition, it must be constantly updated based on key criteria relevant to your target audience.
• The legality of such mailing. This can only be implemented if you have the appropriate permissions, and the content of the message itself does not include prohibited information.
• The text for such a mailing should be as short as possible, usually no more than 160 characters. But this is not always enough to tell the most important information about your business.
• The presence of requirements for the message format. In particular, it is necessary to indicate the sender and their contact information.
• The presence of time restrictions for sending. Do not forget about such a concept as a time zone, as well as the time when the activity of your target audience will be the highest.

There are no special difficulties here. You just need to be well versed in all this in order to avoid mistakes and increase the efficiency of your work.

Let's summarize

We hope that the information presented in our review was useful for you and you were able to understand such an issue as targeted SMS mailing. Once again, we will highlight a number of key aspects that everyone who plans to use this technology in practice needs to know.

• Targeted SMS mailing — this is what will help your business ensure maximum efficiency in attracting the target audience and retaining its attention over a long period of time.
• You get opportunities to increase conversion and sales, which is largely ensured by personalizing offers for the audience.
• The effectiveness of your work will directly depend on how correctly you draw up a portrait of the target audience, how professionally you collect a customer base.
• When composing the text of the message, be sure to take into account the character limit, as well as all the requirements of the legislation in the field of advertising.
• Build your message in such a way as to convey in a few characters the main information about your unique offer, the benefits that the client will receive from cooperation with you.

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