INTRO TO E-COMMERCE

Online retailers thrive during the holidays and on high-traffic consumer holidays like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. But the rest of the year? Smaller retailers struggle to keep customers loyal in the face of discount giants. While traditional marketing methods like email and broadcast ads can be effective, more and more e-commerce companies rely on text messaging to drive repeat business year-round. It’s not surprising – studies have shown that over 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online in the past 6 months, and that number will only keep growing as more users turn to mobile phones over computers for online shopping. Here are some reasons e-commerce sites need text messaging to boost their sales.

SMS IS INSTANT

In advertising, speed is crucial. Your company can’t spend too much time printing mail inserts or deciding on marketing language – your inventory and services may change before a mailer is received! But over 90% of text messages are read within three minutes of delivery, meaning your marketing communications are updated and current at all times. Advertisers can take advantage of the always-connected consumer by adding text messaging to their communication and advertising strategy. Text messaging is the best way to promote sales right before they happen and send timely reminders when promotions are live.

CUSTOMERS PREFER TEXTS

Customers not only like getting mobile deals, they expect it. In fact, the ability to personalize texts will boost the effectiveness of your e-commerce marketing campaigns. Most buyers can’t help themselves when they encounter a great, personalized deal. Send promotions with language that targets product or service categories customers have used before, or create birthday or anniversary promotions tailored to individual users. Sending discounts and offers via SMS is a better way to engage customers than email, as text message offers are read almost 5 times more than email offers. And they are more likely to use a coupon offer that feels personal and connects with their interests.

SMS SAVES TIME & MONEY

SMS’s low cost and ease of use is another reason for its popularity with e-commerce sites. Mobile customers are constantly strapped for time. Your mobile advertising strategy should utilize quick, concise messages in order to be effective. To save time, money, and effort, advertisers should turn to SMS advertising in order to drive traffic to online stores during sales and build relationships with customers.

COLLECTING CONTACTS

In order to gather more contacts for your mobile campaigns, use mobile keywords and QR codes to make opting-in easy. When you display keywords and QR codes on your website and across social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you reach your existing audience and can easily turn them into your mobile messaging audience. If you have a texting provider like iZigg, you can then automatically ask customers questions in order to learn more about them. Use that data to segment your audience, customize texts that are relevant for each customer, and drive up sales year round with targeted offers.

EFFECTIVE DIGITAL OFFERS

Each year, over 2 trillion texts are sent in the United States (CTIA). If you want to make your advertising campaign effective and relevant, you’ll need to make sure it stands out. To do so, you’ll need to send mobile coupons to get customers interested. And mobile coupons are effective too; they are 10 times more likely to be redeemed than paper ones. You can also use MMS (multimedia messages) to send coupon images and short promo videos to increase the impact of your promotion and make it more visually attractive to customers.

BRAND AWARENESS

The world of SMS advertising is big, and it offers great potential for e-commerce sites. Once you’ve secured your main marketing audience through opt-in campaigns, you should focus on retention. Make brand awareness your #1 goal with your customers. You can boost subscriber retention by offering better and more personalized deals, sending MMS pictures of products to entice customers, and gathering feedback from customers to improve your service and product offerings.

STILL HAVE QUESTIONS?

Follow the practices above to improve client engagement and watch satisfaction rates soar! And check out our other articles for more advice on specific industries and use cases.