5 Ways Retailers Can Use SMS Marketing to Generate More Sales

5 Ways Retailers Can Use SMS Marketing to Generate More Sales

In the burgeoning retail industry, how can retailers improve their marketing functions to drive more traffic and customer engagement?

A perfect saying by Booker T. Washington “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” has the answer hidden in it.

The aforementioned statement by Booker is an ideal strategy for retailers that they should implement in their marketing mix for higher customer satisfaction and retention, and drive traffic, and improve their marketing functions.

Today’s successful retailers have one thing in common: They are customer-centric and heavily committed to marketing. They have the passion to satisfy customer needs with innovative ideas in well-defined target markets.

But as 77% of consumers are inclined more towards mobile online shopping, modern retailers need to adapt to the new customer buying behavior and include SMS marketing strategy in their retail marketing functions to heighten customer satisfaction and uplift the business.

sms-cta

What is Retail SMS Marketing?

Unlike emails, 98% of all SMS messages get opened within 3 minutes and that makes SMS a powerful platform for retailers to seamlessly share product or service-related updates and convert leads into consumers.

Retail SMS marketing is the perfect channel for retailers to market their brand. With SMS they can easily increase brand awareness, customer retention, and ultimately establish their retail business into a popular and huge brand worldwide.

SMS marketing is a valuable component in customer engagement strategy as it has 6-8x higher engagement than email and a 32% response rate. Retail SMS Marketing leverages retailers to engage consumers on every step of the customer journey, drive traffic, uplift sales, and improve customer experience which can result in massive growth in business revenue.

For example, A popular cosmetic brand Kiehl’s executed a 6-month retail mobile marketing trial campaign. The retailer gave customers the option to sign up for mobile offers on their mobile phones by texting “KIEHL’S” to 25787. After the trial was complete, it was found that 73% of the customers had signed up for their SMS marketing campaign and made a purchase. 

Perks of SMS marketing in Retail

SMS Marketing facilitates an exceptional experience for retailers to grow their brand in several convenient ways.

Consider the below benefits for that:

  • Easy and direct to drive customers to take action
  • Call-To-Action in SMS to improve the consumer experience 
  • With a 98% open rate, the coupon redemption rate is high
  • Highly Cost-effective in nature
  • Supports other marketing channels such as Email, Social Media
  • Allows two-way communication with consumers

Retail SMS Marketing to Leverage Your Business’ Growth

SMS marketing goes beyond selling a brand to consumers, its goal is to make the brand a meaningful part of consumers’ conversations and lives.

To understand this better, let take an insight into how SMS marketing can complement Retailers in modern marketing.

Establish a Customer Loyalty Program with SMS 

customer-loyalty-programs-with-sms-marketing

SMS customer loyalty programs are a vital marketing strategy for retailers to keep their customers coming back to them. The notion behind an effective loyalty program is that the more loyal customers are, the more rewards they’ll get.

According to a recent report, around 3.8 billion brands have enrolled themselves in customer loyalty programs. These programs allow brands to reward subscribers with free discounts, flash sales, exclusive offers, VIP access to new products for customer satisfaction and it is proven that 67% of existing customers with good brand experience repeat their purchases compared to first-time shoppers.

It is also beneficial as retaining existing customers with SMS loyalty programs is comparatively less expensive than acquiring a new customer. 

For Example, OYO Wizard gains 5 million subscribers and uplifts 49% of booking with customer loyalty programs.

Customer Order Journey Update

sms-order-updates

SMS marketing is an effective tool for retailers to engage customers by sharing order updates from “successfully ordered” to “out for delivery” with them. Each stage of order journey update increases customer trust and provides them a seamless purchase experience as it reduces unnecessary interaction of customers with the support team regarding order related queries.

Unlike email, where the user gets 88 mails per day, and they miss out on order updates. SMS marketing is 250% more effective because it provides instant updates on order journeys to the audience.

To strengthen your customer service more, you can also share order tracking links in the SMS to the audience and in the last trail message, you can also share the product review link.

Examples: “Hi! Thank you for shopping. We’re preparing your order”

“Hi, Your bag of joy is on its way to you. You should receive it by 8th May. track it here: //LINK//”

“Hi, We Hope the product brought a smile to your face 🙂 we would like to hear about it. Please share it on this // LINK //.

Notify The Audience About Relevant Events

sms-event-updates

As we know, the Audience generally reads text messages within 3 minutes after receiving the SMS notifications, thus the best channel to notify the audience about all the events is SMS. 

Notifying the consumer about events such as ongoing discount or sale, promotional event, new product launch, giveaway contest, order update, and many others to keep them engaged. 

Send them direct links in SMS so they can easily track the live event.

Example: Hi! We have launched a new body spa product. Check out now and receive 10% on the product. Click the //link//

Hold Onto The Audience With Valuable Offers

sms-discount-offers

As a retailer, sending your audience a message about a product or service may not get you a good response with SMS. However, your audience would more likely appreciate receiving promotional deals for discounts or coupons toward your products and services.

It is important to share the right text to the audience according to their choice of products and preferences as it will have a greater impact on the customer conversion rate because if the message is irrelevant, it will be of no interest to the audience, and might lead to unsubscription.

It is important to analyze each customer’s buying behavior and then come up with unique offers for each segment, to provide the most relevant offers as possible. The SMS shared with customers about products and discounts must carry them on a tide of Euphoria.

To make the SMS marketing more innovative, you can also share a product demo or video link in the text as 73% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product or service if they can watch a video explaining it before purchase.

For example, Hi! The Wedding season is near.. Check out our latest wedding collection and choose your favorite. //Video link//

Feedback For Upgrading

sms-survey

SMS surveys help retailers to evaluate customer reviews about the product and services to improve the company action plan. 

Following up with customers for feedback, once they have received the product can provide real-time information to the brand about customer opinion on services or product. It enables the marketers to understand customer product preferences, customer contentment, discover the areas of improvement and accordingly rectify them.

One recent study found that 79% Of Consumers Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations

With SMS marketing surveys retailers can enhance the relationships and boost business growth. They can create a positive conversation about their brand and create a powerful impact on consumers’ buying behavior. 

To make customer engagement more effective, feedback should be taken after every purchase to engage the customer and make them feel their opinion matters.

For example, “Hey Maria! Thank you for shopping with us. To serve you better please share your review with us. 1. Excellent 2. Good 3. Average 4. Bad”

Final Thoughts

As consumers’ shopping preferences have drastically changed over the last few years, SMS marketing has become a go-to strategy for all eCommerce retailers to generate more sales. Retail SMS marketing strategies are a blessing in disguise for retailers to create value for consumers to capture value from consumers in return. 

To design a winning retail marketing strategy, you must try our SMS marketing automation tool, Wigzo to provide an outstanding experience to your contemporary mobile audience.

wigzo cta

Rashi Kundra

Rashi Kundra

Rashi is a literature graduate from Delhi University. She is a content writer at Wigzo. In her spare time, you will find her meditating while grooving on EDM beats.

Related Blogs