How to make SMS (Text) Marketing Work for Small Business

How to make SMS (Text) Marketing Work for Small Business

Mobile or SMS marketing is on the rise and yet few small businesses have taken advantage of the opportunities it presents. As many as 55% of businesses now have a mobile optimized website, according to a recent Econsultancy survey. This may seem like a big number but it all depends on which side of the fence you sit on. There are still a lot of businesses out there yet to establish a mobile presence.

SMS (text) Marketing should form a part of every small business’ marketing strategy because recent studies have shown that all mobile phone users use SMS for over 45% of the time. Below are some of the compelling reasons why small business owners should engage in SMS marketing:

• 98% of text messages are read compared to 29% of tweets, 12% of Facebook posts and 20% of emails are opened. What this shows is that there is great potential with text message marketing
• Mobile and Smartphone users check their texts an average of 150 times a day
• For 14 out of the 24 hours in a day most users have their mobile or Smartphones within reach
• Up to 70% of participants in a survey indicated they would like to receive coupons via SMS
• Users will redeem SMS coupons 10 times more than email or newspaper coupons
• The quick response time to SMS (90 seconds) compared to 2 days for an email

What therefore is stopping businesses from leveraging the growth in mobile and Smartphone usage? There are a number of reasons and these include various misconceptions about SMS marketing. The biggest one is the lack of knowledge about the rules and regulations surrounding mobile marketing. A lot of marketers and business owners wrongly believe that SMS marketing is a minefield with a lot of regulation involved.

This cannot be far from the truth. SMS marketing is quite highly regulated, just as much as the telecommunications industry. Regulation is there to protect users and marketers alike from spammers and unsolicited SMS. However high regulation does not mean complicated in any way. When it comes to SMS marketing following the following guidelines will mean you stay on the right side of the law:

• Always confirm the subscribers opt-in with the very first message
• Remember opt-ins expire have a system to manage opt-in expiry
• Build a robust database and ensure data is strictly protected
• Just with any marketing strategy do not spam your subscribers because you will lose them faster than you can say…

As you can see from the information above SMS marketing is the next revolution which holds great promise for small business. If you are not already engaging in mobile marketing then this should be reason enough to get started. Grow over the myths often surrounding the SMS marketing industry and you stand a great chance of growing your business. Mobile marketing should not be unchartered territory for small businesses. Get familiar and get profiting.

Link Up Mobile Solutions
Jason Matznick "The Text Guy"

(248) 690-6929
jason@thetextguy.com
www.TheTextGuy.com
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