Tips For Personalized SMS Marketing Campaigns

Personalized SMS marketing automation can help your marketing efforts stand out from the crowd. Texting is the quickest, most direct, and – importantly – the most welcome type of contact your customers can receive. It is highly effective for connecting with loyal, engaged consumers, which is why it’s such a good platform for personalizing your message, either to an individual or a small group of individuals with common interests.

Adding targeted, personalized mobile SMS marketing to your arsenal will ultimately make your entire mobile text marketing campaign more effective. So how do you create personalized mobile SMS marketing strategies that work? Adopt these four maxims and you won’t go wrong:

Tips For Personalized SMS Marketing Campaigns

1. Judge it right

As such a personal form of communication, brands have to be careful about using mobile SMS marketing in a way that is annoying or overbearing. You want to send only information that’s appropriate, relevant, and timely (unlike the infamous 3 am text sent by Barack Obama’s 2008 election team to announce his vice-presidential pick). Respect time zones and plan your mobile text marketing campaign to be a ripple across the oceans rather than a blast that hits the world all at once.

2. Accuracy breeds responsiveness

There’s no point coming up with a personalized special offer if you get the customer’s name wrong. Make sure you provide enough fields on the signup form for people to leave their full names and their nickname or abbreviation. Getting small details right – like an unusual spelling of a common name – is the kind of thing that will set you apart from brands that make the same old mistakes. Never assume, always double-check, and offer consumers an easy way to update your records if their details change.

3. Spend time building preference profiles

From the outset, you should dive off the proverbial deep end when it comes to finding out personal preferences. Collecting interests can be done in several ways, including Keyword-based opt-in Surveys Leveraging existing data Surveys should include questions that may not seem immediately relevant. Favorite sports teams or bands, for example, may one day become useful if you have a promotional tie-in with a local baseball team or concert promoter. Having these details on file could pay dividends, so play the long game when it comes to mining your customers for information. Also, be sure to divide your lists into various criteria, like area, zip code, and age.

4. Chuck them a freebie

Free content is one of the surest ways to get a response. If you have a video that relates to customers in a specific area (and is relevant to your brand) then send it along with a special offer. One of the benefits of a mobile SMS marketing campaign is you can include links to rich content that smartphone owners can view while stuck on a train or otherwise in need of a useful distraction. You might just make someone’s day.

9 SMS Marketing Ideas to Generate More Sales

SMS campaigns continue to be a dominant force in the digital marketing world. And with the industry set to reach more than $70 billion by 2020, that momentum is unlikely to fade anytime soon. The low costs and minimal barriers to entry make it an attractive option for all marketers, regardless of their preferred niche or specific experience.

That said, you can’t start an SMS campaign out of nowhere and expect to be successful; there’s significant competition for your target demographics, and if you fail to stand out or build your campaign on a poor foundation, you might not get the strong ROI you’re hoping for.

Thankfully, there are some easily accessible ideas that can get you started—even if you’re new to the game.

General Sources of Ideas

First, let’s take a look at some general places where you can do research and explore new tactics, to generate new ideas on your own:

Your industry. Take a look at your own industry, and some of the competition within it. How are companies like yours using SMS marketing? If you need help here, Slick Text has a fantastic guide on SMS marketing ideas for several industries, from restaurants to schools to marketing agencies.
Historically successful campaigns. You should also look outside your industry to some of the most successful SMS campaigns of all time. Tatango has a number of case studies from some of the top brands in SMS to review here.
Customer feedback. You can also get ideas for your SMS offers by listening to your customers. Are they providing you feedback on your current efforts, or are they requesting more functionality in a specific area, like better discounts or a more thorough confirmation system?

SMS Marketing Ideas

If you’re struggling to come up with something on your own, try one of these prompts to get started:

Announce your best offer. One of the simplest starter ideas is to broadcast your best product or service offered to your customers; this is ideal if you’re just starting out since it will prime people for what to expect from your brand. Use a single sentence and a single price to entice customers, and make sure to link back to your site.
Gauge customer interest. If you’re using a platform that allows you to monitor and measure your customer response rate, you can use an SMS campaign to gauge customer interest (and segment your audience). Send an engaging conversational message and see who responses—those who do will be more valuable audience members than those who don’t.
Advertise a special promotion. One common strategy is to send a text with new and/or temporary promotions, such as sitewide free shipping. Mention an expiration date to add a sense of urgency to the message.
Integrate a social campaign. By embedding links in your messages, you can link your SMS campaign to specific tweets, posts, or even your basic profile pages. Tying together these two campaigns can be a powerful way to get more eyes on your best content.
Integrate a direct mail campaign. Direct mail may seem obsolete, but it’s reasonable to expect a 35 percent ROI or more—especially when you combine it with a digital marketing channel. Send customers a text that they have a special offer waiting for them in the mail, or use a direct mail piece to have customers sign up for your SMS campaign.
Provide reminders. If your business sets appointments or otherwise integrates some calendaring functionality, use SMS to provide reminders to your audience.
Relay confirmation texts. You can also set up SMS texts as automated confirmations for specific customer actions; for example, you can notify customers that their monthly payment for your service has gone through.
Send periodic tips. You can also send regular tips (such as weekly or monthly) to your customers, especially if your industry is information-hungry. For example, if you run a health-conscious restaurant or a gym, you could text your patrons’ weight loss and fitness tips regularly—and integrate the messages with your blog.
Run a short customer survey. As long as you keep them short and easy to respond to, you can also use SMS to launch customer surveys. These are valuable opportunities to get feedback on your business and your marketing strategies—even your SMS campaign itself!

These ideas aren’t meant to guarantee your campaign a positive ROI, nor are they intended to be used as the sole basis for your SMS marketing strategy. Instead, they’re meant as a jumping-off point for novice SMS marketers who need something to start, or a refresher course for experienced SMS marketers who need to inject new life into their campaigns.

SMS Marketing Guide for Ecommerce

SMS marketing initially got a bad rep because of its spammy origin story. As long as you had a mobile number, you could count on that being included in several spam lists that businesses used to indiscriminately blast unsolicited promotional messages. That led to negative feelings towards the medium, with marketing messages commonly ignored or deleted straightaway.

Those changes allowed text messaging to evolve into what is arguably the most effective marketing medium today. But it doesn’t just take a good SMS automation platform for a business to succeed in this channel. It requires a thorough understanding of what the medium is and the best ways it can be used.

What is SMS Marketing?

SMS marketing is the practice of sending business communications or promotional messages via text messages. It differs from text spam mainly because it requires people to opt into the service. So rather than being averse to promotional SMS, recipients expect the texts and tend to welcome them.

Marketing messages sent via SMS are subject to a 160-character limit. Although you can technically send multiple messages to increase that limit, doing so is both costly and contrary to SMS marketing best practices. Additionally, the brevity of text messages is what makes this medium so valuable.

The Value of SMS Marketing in Ecommerce

1) SMS is fast in every way

Text messages sent by businesses are received almost instantly. The customers, who typically have their phones within their arm’s reach at all times, read those messages just as quickly. That’s because they expect the texts to be concise and easy to consume. In fact, 90% of text messages are opened within the first 3 minutes of receiving them.

2) SMS boasts unbeatable open rates

While an email campaign with a 15% to 25% open rate is generally considered successful, that’s a monumental difference from what SMS campaigns typically enjoy. In fact, open rates are as high as 98% for promotional text messages. It seems too good to be true, right? But it actually makes sense once you consider how SMS is consumed.

3) SMS has incredible engagement rates

Text messages aren’t just opened, they’re actually consumed. In fact, SMS marketing boasts engagement rates that are six to eight times higher than email. Additionally, customers are ten times more likely to redeem coupons delivered via SMS than any other medium. That makes it an excellent platform to boost engagement for exclusive sales and promos.

How to Implement a Successful SMS Campaign for Ecommerce

When you engage in SMS marketing, you need to value the fact that your customers trusted you enough to let you access them through the medium closest to them. Show that you value that trust by getting your SMS campaign right at the onset.

Follow these tips to get it right the first time and minimize the risk of upsetting your SMS subscribers:

1) Get explicit permission

Sending text messages only to the customers who have opted in is not only a good sign of respect. It’s actually the law. Thankfully, getting permission is easily done through subscription forms that most platforms already have templates for.
Once you’ve been granted permission to access your customers through SMS, you need to earn the right to keep them on your subscriber list. Don’t abuse the medium and make sure you respect their right to opt-out.

2) Use a capable SMS platform

Using an SMS platform is really the only way to use this marketing platform efficiently. When selecting software to use for your company, don’t make your decision based on price alone. The cost of accessing the software as well as sending the messages themselves are definitely significant deciding factors. But, see to it that you also compare the value that each platform offers.

One of the most useful features you should look for in an SMS platform is its ability to automate text message sending. If you’re using this medium as part of a larger omnichannel marketing campaign, you should probably consider all-in-one solutions that allow you to integrate your other channels and manage them all on one platform.

3) Limit your SMS campaigns

SMS’s limited character count already requires you to keep your messages short and direct. But just because they’re concise, it doesn’t mean you can send them often. In fact, text promotions are most valuable when they’re received infrequently. Not so far between that your customers forget you, but seldom enough that they don’t tire of you.

Generally, you shouldn’t spend more than 4 to 5 text messages a month, but that figure might be different based on the nature of your brand and the relationship you already have with your subscribers. You can always use that as a guideline to start with and test your audience to see if they can tolerate more frequent messages.

4) Always aim to provide value

Providing value in every message should be a fundamental requirement for every marketing medium. However, it is even more crucial for SMS because of its proximity to its recipients. And, because you shouldn’t be sending texts too often anyway, don’t waste your limited opportunities if you have nothing real to offer.

Remember that providing value doesn’t always have to be grand. It’s not always about giving away free stuff or offering discounts (although they do help a lot!). Customers just want to feel like you also have their needs in mind instead of just yours.

5) Keep your messages relevant

Part of providing value to your customers is making sure that every message they receive is relevant to their specific needs and preferences. This is where targeting and personalization come in. One of the most important success factors in SMS marketing is the ability to run a data-driven campaign.

Always use the data you already have to segment your subscribers into groups of similar profiles. That way, you’re able to reach every subscriber with the messages that they find most useful or engaging. The enormity of this task might be overwhelming for the novice marketer. Luckily, most SMS platforms actually have precise targeting and personalization features that make this crucial task much more manageable.

Wrapping Up

It has the potential to produce remarkable results, most especially for eCommerce businesses.

When managed through a capable SMS platform, it can be an even more powerful medium for marketers. Of course, that’s only true if you follow best practices and use it strategically to garner the greatest impact on your bottom-line.

Best 5 Magento 2 SMS Extensions 2020

With the advance of technology, mobile phones become an integral part of human life. Thus, it is always considered the best way for business to approach their customers and there is an old-fashioned but effective resolution for merchants to do it easily on their Magento 2 stores. It is an SMS extension for Magento 2. This tool allows users to create and design text messages to clients’ phone numbers according to their needs. With this feature, the eCommerce store can enhance its customer loyalty by providing them the latest news in real-time.

Let’s check out the list of best Magento 2 SMS Notification Extensions to decide the most suitable one for your eCommerce stores!

Magento 2 SMS Notification Extensions 2020

1. Magento 2 SMS Notification | Voodoo SMS

Magento has rolled out the next generation of its hugely popular digital commerce platform: Magento 2.0. This heralds a new era of eCommerce, promising an engaging and personal shopping experience. With Voodoo Magento 2 SMS gateway, you can now amplify this experience.

2. Magento 2 SMS Notification | Magecomp

SMS has a vital part in eCommerce nowadays. People use and prefer more mobile services in order to carry together everything on a tiny smartphone. Ecommerce business owners also developing various services to make mobile friendly and provide the fastest services to provide the best user experience to their customers. We have also come up with a Magento extension to keep up with providing the best user experience and quicker service 24*7. Magento 2 SMS Notification by MageComp allows Magento store owners to configure SMS notification services for various order status activities to acknowledge customers through SMS. Just choose a preferable SMS gateway to integrate SMS service and notify customers round the clock.

3. SMS Notification For Magento 2 | Magedelight

With it, admin can receive notification about numerous actions from customers as new accounts registered, new orders placed, or contact forms submitted right after it happens. They, hence, always keep up with all the activities on the web and manage the eCommerce store more effectively. In addition, this plugin is able to run smoothly even when cooperating with another SMS service such as Twilio and BulkSMS.

4. SMS Notification For Magento 2 | Mageplaza

Besides sending shipment, registration, cancellation, etc. SMS notification to customers, it provides clients with the latest news about their concerning goods as stock status or price status through text message. From these messages, customers can be easily determined the most suitable for purchase the merchandise, which increases the revenue of your store.

5. Magento 2 SMS Notification Extension | Landofcoder

SMS (Short Message Service) or simply texting, is a feature available with practically all mobile phones, allowing people to send and receive short notification messages. Choosing the most effective way to communicate is essential to the business of getting things done.

So we are inundated with messages from all different forms of communication, including email, messaging apps, snail mail, social media, telemarketing, and more. Using SMS is the most optimized and convenient way for you to interact quickly and directly with your customers and administrators as well.

Moreover, this Magento 2 SMS Notification extension is a comprehensive and powerful module that enables you to send SMS Service API with Twilio, BulkSMS to your customers or administrators during various events in your Magento 2 store. Be an intelligent businessman, choose Magento 2 SMS extension with some outstanding features below.

SMS Marketing for eCommerce – Benefits and Best Practices

Its formal name is short message service or SMS, but most of us know it by its more ubiquitous name: texting. Americans send an estimated six billion text messages per day, 90% of which are read in three minutes or less. When you compare texting to other forms of communication like phone calls and emails, that’s an astonishingly high engagement rate.

So how can your business capitalize on this high-attention, high-response channel? Here, we’ll explain some important best practices to consider as you plot your SMS marketing strategy and share a few campaign ideas to help you get started. But first, let’s discuss why you should strongly consider implementing a text message component to your marketing strategy if you’re not using one already.

The Benefits of SMS for eCommerce

People read text messages, plain and simple. SMS messages have a 98% open rate, which is leaps and bounds above email’s average open rate of between 15 and 25%.

What’s more, people enjoy reading text messages. They’re the most-used form of communication for adults under 50 and the preferred platform for a third of Americans.

Finally, texting presents a compelling opportunity for brands to create meaningful one-on-one interaction with their customers. The instantaneous nature and personalized feel of text messages make them distinct from other forms of branded communication like social media posts and email. When used correctly, they can serve an important need in your overall marketing strategy. We’ll talk about what we mean by using SMS marketing “correctly” next.

Best Practices for Using SMS in Marketing

While SMS messages are highly engaging, they also have a disproportionately high risk of feeling invasive. Send one too many messages or include a detail that’s a little too personal and you can quickly turn a customer off to your brand for good. That’s why it’s so important to abide by a few key best practices when sending them.

Always ask permission. The wording in your opt-in needs to be very clear about the permissions you’re seeking and the fact that the authorization pertains specifically to text messages (i.e. ‘respond YES to opt-in to receive weekly promotions via text!’). Collecting a customer’s phone number during checkout does not equal sufficient permission to send them marketing text messages.

You can take your opt-in one step further–and enhance the customer experience in the process–by asking your customers what type of texts they want to receive. For example, if the opt-in occurs on your website, you might ask the user to self-select into one or more of the following SMS categories: promotions, product news, local store info, and order status updates. When consumers feel in control of the messaging they receive, they are more likely to have a positive attitude towards SMS advertisements.

Send marketing texts sparingly. Multiple texts in a single day is too much, and in most cases that apply to multiple texts in a week, too. We’ve found the sweet spot for brands using SMS marketing to be a handful for texts per month. When you do send a text-based campaign, make it worth the customer’s while. Use them to advertise your very best discounts, flash sales, and exclusive offers only available to text subscribers.

Make it easy to opt-out. In a study of consumers’ willingness to receive text message advertisements, the ability to withdraw at any time was among the top three considerations when deciding whether to opt-in. Don’t make subscribers jump through multiple hoops like clicking a link that then opens a mobile web browser in order to unsubscribe. Make it as simple as texting back the word ‘STOP’ or something similarly straightforward.

Ideas for Incorporating SMS Into Your Marketing

Now that you have a few ground rules to play by, try implementing SMS messages into your marketing with these three ideas.

Send personalized offers

Research on text-based advertising has found that the more relevant an offer is to a consumer, the more pleased they will be to receive the message. Texting, by nature, is personal; after all, it’s a direct line to the customer’s smartphone, which is usually within arm’s reach. Use the privilege of that access wisely by delivering tailored offers, like product recommendations based on past purchase behavior or new additions that are similar to items the customer has purchased in the past.

If you have brick-and-mortar locations, you can also use personalization in conjunction with location-based targeting to send subscribers messages specific to their local store. For instance, during the coronavirus pandemic, stores might update nearby customers about changes to their hours or inform them of reopening news.

Remind customers of abandoned carts

Text messages can be a great tactic to recover abandoned carts, especially if the item is running low on stock or just went on sale. Avoid sales-heavy language and instead, frame it as a friendly reminder to help the customer avoid missing out. Shoppers will welcome the message and such efforts contribute to brand loyalty, which is essential in building the customer’s lifetime value.

Use them for effortless order tracking

Few things are as satisfying as receiving a text that a package you ordered just arrived on your doorstep. Not only is it convenient and smart, but it also creates delight in an unexpected way, which is a long-held tactic that some of the most-loved companies like Apple and Starbucks use to win die-hard fans.

By integrating your order fulfillment application with your SMS platform, you can send customers real-time alerts about the status of their shipment, which helps breed trust and confidence in your brand.

5 Examples Of eCommerce Push Notifications For Increasing Sales

The retail sector is moving fast towards an amalgamation of both offline and online experiences. Today, consumers switch seamlessly between physical and online stores. Customer journeys are integrated in such a detailed manner now, that the idea of online shopping being a distinct activity when compared to brick-and-mortar shopping, no more exists.

In fact, e-retail sales are expected to contribute to 17.5% of total retail sales worldwide. As the e-commerce industry continues to expand, the competition is growing at a fast pace too. Here are some eCommerce push notifications examples to increase your sales.

Examples Of eCommerce Push Notifications

1. Cart abandonment notifications

If users visit the website, it means they are clearly interested in the products up for grabs. But since they have left the products in the cart and probably forgotten about them, it’s best to remind them. The fastest way to reach those people is via mobile phone.

Similarly, if they have opted to be notified of similar deals or offers while they are browsing through the website the first time, then browser push notifications can work their magic!

These notifications could be used to create a sense of urgency with messaging like the product is out of stock, a new ‘buy 1, get 1 free’ offer, etc. to make them come back and complete the purchase process at the earliest.

2. The FOMO notification

Frankly speaking, no one has the time to visit an eCommerce website every day and check the ongoing deals. Yes – email newsletters are a powerful tactic to inform the customers but they don’t initiate a quick response. Push notifications, on both desktop and mobile, can notify them of price drops instantly!

So if the brand is having a massive sale or is running a limited period offer, such notifications can literally give them the “push” required to turn their attention to the services you are providing.

3. The geo-location notifications

Such notification is sent to users in a certain geographical area to deliver a message that is relevant in terms of both time and place. For instance, in the image given below, the three brands sent messages to users stating the actual distance from the store in a bid to attract them.

Not only this, but the messages also contain loyalty points or a coupon code or a discount deal to instantly catch the eye of users.

4. The real-time updates

This works best if you take food orders online or run a similar business because then it becomes your responsibility to make sure your customers know where their delivery is! GrubHub.com provides free online food ordering service and informs its customers in the wittiest fashion ever!

Basically, GrubHub provides value by monitoring the delivery time of the order placed by its customers.

5. The search-incentive notification

Such a notification prompts the user to complete his first search started on a mobile app and thereafter, encourages using the search function. TripAdvisor, a travel website and mobile app, makes complete use of such a transactional push notification.

It encourages the user to finish a search he or she began on the TripAdvisor mobile app, by providing a heads up, such as a possible increase in prices of the apartments.

SMS Marketing for Shopify

Converting visitors into loyal customers sometimes requires a little push from your side. No matter how good your product is, or how well your online platforms function, you have to turn every marketing channel to your advantage.

Let’s dive into the tips and tricks that make SMS Marketing work. Whichever forms of SMS marketing you start getting involved in, your three core goals will be:

Increase brand awareness
Boost engagement
Generate sales

You may ask – aren’t those the same standard goals you apply to any marketing strategy? Of course, they are. But SMS marketing for eCommerce is unique because the goal acquisition is instant, the effort you put in is minimal and the cost is highly effective for ROI.

There are dozens of reasons for you to send out an SMS campaign (and creativity will always be rewarded) but here are a few of the most common reasons for short messages:

Coupon offers
Abandoned cart reminders
Sales and promotions
Festive season updates
New product or inventory update announcements
Notifications (for example delivery progress)
Customer feedback

Plenty of strategists are incorporating these same messages into their email campaigns already and might think that’s good enough. It’s not.

The average open rate for email is 20%. The average open rate for SMS is 98%. If reading that wasn’t enough to convince you, then we can add that only about 2% of links within emails actually get clicked, whereas almost 20% of links through SMS get clicked.

We’ll never tell you to stop email marketing. It has its own powerful, somewhat irreplaceable advantages but it definitely doesn’t fulfill all the same objectives as SMS marketing. It’s highly recommended that you incorporate both into your budget and strategy if you want to see a proper impact on your customer engagement.

Now that you understand what sort of communication short messages are used for, we can start looking into where exactly they are used and why, because your strategies and outcomes will most certainly differ across platforms.

SMS marketing for text messages

Nearly 6 billion people will be able to send and receive text messages by 2025, and a whopping 61% of the world’s population will have access to mobile internet. This means mobile marketing will continue to bring success in the future. So even with web push notification capabilities, standard text marketing will live on strong.
The average American checks their phone approximately 47 times a day and states that they will open a text message within 15 minutes of receiving it. In fact, 90% of SMS are actually read within 3 minutes. That’s quite a lot faster than an email lingering in the dark depths of a spam folder!
Just last year there were over 7.9 billion mobile subscriptions across the globe, which helps explain why as many as 23 billion text messages are sent each day worldwide. Yes, each day. That’s insane.
On average it takes a person about 90 seconds to read and reply to an SMS message but over 90 minutes to respond to an email – when they eventually get to reading it, that is.

If all this sounds too good to be true, it’s because there is a very fine line between successful text marketing and downright annoying spam.

Final Thoughts

Now is the time to start building on and improving your rounded marketing strategy. With so many tools and functions at your fingertips, you can start immediately and grow exponentially.

7 Ways to Boost Sales Through Marketing Automation

It has become a widely recognized fact that the automation of marketing and sales processes increases the efficiency of business efforts.

According to a Marketing Automation Report by the B2B Technology Marketing Community, 53% of B2B marketers are actively using marketing automation today, and another 17% are currently evaluating adopting it into their current strategies. The top 3 benefits marketers are looking to receive from marketing automation are more and better leads, improved marketing productivity, and improved conversion rates.

The right eCommerce platform and correct business practices can turn your brand into a sales juggernaut. We see more and more customers taking the quick dip into the pool of online shopping and services rather than spending time at the malls/retail stores. Smart software and orchestrating sending out relative content will not only help to build a great sales funnel but also lead to ultimate sales conversion.

Key components of marketing automation to driving more sales:

1. Providing your marketing team with the right tools

With the right tools, your team will be able to spend more time effectively qualifying and guiding leads through the sales funnel vs. manually obtaining, tracking, and passing along leads.

2. Leveraging personal relationships

It’s important for your marketing and sales to lead the process to enable your team to nurture personal relationships. Make sure your system can account for personal referrals, allow for customization to host information you know about your main contacts and allow for you to personalize messages that are being delivered.

3. Identifying the right amount, and type, of follow up throughout the sales cycle

Not everyone is ready to buy right away. Identify the different stages your buyers go through when determining when to buy, and use that to segment future leads and assign the appropriate type of outreach and message for the audience.

4. Shortening the sales cycle

Through automated nurture and scoring programs marketing can deliver more high quality leads to the sales team at a quicker pace.

5. Focusing on delivering more high-quality leads (vs. high quantity) to sales

Allow sales and marketing to identify key characteristics for high-quality prospects. In addition, look to lead sources that send prospects through at a further point in the sales funnel, such as referrals. Referrals are often higher quality leads because they have been influenced upfront by a trusted source.

6. Integrating cross-sell and upsell strategies to maximize the value of each customer

Revenue opportunities exist after the initial sale and should be part of your overall marketing automation strategy. Utilize dashboards that track customer profiles and activity and implement cross-sell and upsell strategies.

The Auction platform provides marketing and sales tools focused on capitalizing on the highest quality segment of leads—referrals. The platform can stand alone, or integrate with existing marketing automation and/or CRM systems you have in place. It works to expand your direct sales force through building a community of internal and external referrers, incents their activity, and implements cross-sell and upsell strategies appropriate for your audience.

7. Segmenting your Customers

Do you keep track of all the customers that visit your website/online store? Identifying and leveraging your customers is another important thing to do while you work on marketing automation for eCommerce. Remember your business model depends on your target audience. Now, there are several ways to do this based on Demographic factors, Purchase History, Psychographic factors, and Dividing them into Benefit Groups. All of this helps you in personalizing the experience for customers by providing them with more relevant services on one hand and devise clear strategies for the growth of your online business on the other.

5 Easy Email Segmentation Strategies To Try

Marketers know that segmenting email marketing lists can improve open and clickthrough rates.

Mailchimp’s latest user data showed that segmented campaigns get 14.37% more opens and 64.78% more clicks than non-segmented campaigns.

That said, figuring out the best way to segment your email marketing lists can be a huge undertaking.

To make it a little less daunting, this post will show you 10 quick and easy segmentation strategies that you can get started on today.

5 Easy Email Marketing Segmentation Strategies

1. Demographics

The first way many marketers begin email marketing segmentation is by demographic data.

Information such as age, gender, company position, and income level can tell a lot about a person’s needs and interests.

The more information you can get about your audience in the sign-up process, the more options you’ll have for demographic segmentation. Be careful with this, though, because asking for too much information can scare people off from signing up at all.

Decide which metrics are most essential for your business and include those questions in the signup process.

2. Survey or Quiz Results

Some marketers are minimalists who wouldn’t dare to ask for more than an email address to sign up for their mailing list.

That’s fine – you can still get access to nuanced data about your customers by creating a survey or quiz.

A survey gives you the opportunity to not only get that valuable demographic information but also insights into individual tastes, preferences, and beliefs.

If you want to send out a survey to your audience and get a lot of responses, you should probably create some kind of incentive for completing it – such as entering them in a drawing to win a prize.

Or, instead of pitching it as a survey, turn it into a quiz that offers results that would interest your audience.

3. Email Engagement

Email engagement is another very basic way to segment your lists, but it can have a huge impact on your overall results.

Open rate and clickthrough rate are the main metrics here, which you keep track of in your email marketing service.

You can segment by engagement by designating active vs inactive users, such as someone who hasn’t opened your emails in three months. You can then create a specialized campaign designed at re-engaging your inactive subscribers.

Or you can focus on subscribers who do engage and target them more specifically. For example, you send out an email announcing an upcoming sale and everyone who clicks through the email link can be categorized as “interested.” You can then create a special campaign to further target them as likely buyers from the sale.

4. Geographic Area

There are a lot of different ways to use geographic location data, making segmentation by geographic area a valuable tool – especially for businesses where location greatly influences purchasing decisions.

ways companies can use geographic data include:

Time-based email messages. Stagger your emails to send out at optimum times for customers in different time zones.
Advertising regional promotions. Send focused emails for events in certain store locations.
Live webinar or AMA invitations. Adjust event timing based on audience location.
Personalized travel directions. Customize directions to a store or event based on the reader’s geolocation.
Where a customer shops. Send out offers specific to the physical store a buyer frequents.
Location-specific content. Use a location in your headlines or content to draw attention and offer a personalized experience.

5. Past Purchases

Segmenting by past purchases is another simple way to optimize targeting. The easiest way is to start sending out email recommendations for similar items or accessories that would go well with their previous purchase.

Or, if a customer bought something that requires replacement, refilling, or renewal, you can send out targeted emails based on their potential needs.

For example, if someone purchased a certain hair styling product, you can make an educated guess about when it might run out – and send an email after a few months suggesting a reorder.

Conclusion

Email marketing segmentation isn’t a tactic reserved only for brands with the most advanced marketing automation software. With a simple email marketing service and a bit of creativity, you can start targeting your audience with these easy segmentation strategies today.

How to Run a Successful SMS Marketing Campaign?

A successful SMS marketing campaign is one of the best direct marketing solutions.

But, how to run an SMS marketing campaign that will worth every penny?

If you’re asking why we’ll tell you one more fact about SMS efficiency – more than 90% of text messages are read within 3 minutes of being received. Compared to email marketing, with only a 22% open rate, SMS is one of the most powerful marketing tools that can assure your marketing message is reaching your customers for real.

This is the reason why some of the world’s most famous brands use SMS marketing as an integral part of their mobile marketing strategy. It’s been quoted so many times that Coca-Cola spends 70% of their mobile budget on SMS marketing. And when asked why, the answer was simple: “Because we invest in what works.”

So, let’s take a look at some of the rules you should follow if you want to create and run a successful SMS marketing campaign.

Tips to Run a Successful SMS Marketing Campaign

1. Define your goal

This is the key thing to start with. As in any other marketing campaign, you must know what you want to achieve with your SMS marketing campaign. More leads, more sales, brand awareness, driving website traffic, etc. So, first, pick your strategic business goal because it will lay a foundation of your SMS marketing campaign and help you to structure it and execute it easily.

2. If selling is your main goal, go for BOGO

BOGO deal, better known as Buy-One-Get-One, is the best price-based offer you can use if your main goal is to sell more products or services. Why? Because some studies have shown that even 66% of consumers are ready for action if they receive a price-based offer in an SMS. And even 68% of those interested in price-based offers will not only positively react but will act if you offer them your products as a BOGO deal. The reason behind this number is the fact that people consider such deals as the most valuable. The point is you’re offering your customers to buy one product to get another one, similar or with a similar price, etc. And options are limitless because ‘buy something – get something’ strategy allows you to mix & match products to get the best possible results and positive ROI, of course. But, pay attention to this – people don’t like free things so much as you might think. So if you structure your offer like: “Free product if you buy…” your customers might not react very well. Why? Because people consider free products as items that probably have little value and you’re giving them for free because of that. But you’re asking them to spend a specific amount of money in return? Nope, this will not work well, believe us.

3. Never, ever send messages early in the morning or late at night

It sounds so logical, but you might be surprised to find out that some marketers still make such mistakes. Trying to be different, to create an exceptional service experience, or to stand out from the rest at all costs, some make such crucial mistakes that have serious consequences. First and foremost, people don’t like to be harassed. Especially after they’ve finally finished their work and went home. The point is to put yourself into your customers’ shoes and answer this simple question – would you like too weak up early in the morning or late at night with a text message offering you some special discount? No, of course not. So if you wouldn’t like to experience something like that why you would want to make your clients go through that? The point is to make them fall in love with your brand, not the opposite. In this case, a direct consequence is opting out of your SMS marketing campaign. In other words, you’re losing clients (read money).

4. Avoid SMS O’clock time

So, the next logical question is: When to send SMS marketing messages? You should not send your SMS marketing messages at an inappropriate time because this would be considered a very rude interruption. The rule when to send promotional messages has already been defined: don’t send SMS marketing messages before 8 A.M. and after 9 P.M. (referring to the subscriber’s time zone). But, there is one interesting thing that happens regularly, and you can notice it if you subscribe to a lot of SMS marketing campaigns. Some call it an SMS marketing rush hour, but we’ll call it ‘SMS O’clock’ time. When creating an SMS marketing campaign, many tend to schedule their messages to be sent at certain o’clock times, for example at 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock, noon, etc. It’s easier to schedule your campaign this way, but if your clients have subscribed to receive promotional messages from other brands or services, your SMS marketing message will likely be lost among other messages, and you’ll miss your business opportunity. Because everyone else is sending their messages at the top of the hour. So, if you want to achieve the best results and stand out from the rest, avoid these o’clock moments. Schedule your messages 15 minutes after or 21 minutes after or… You get the point.

5. Create effective call-to-action

And, in the end, there is another mistake you should avoid. Don’t assume people will know what to do after you tell them how great is your product. People want precise instructions on what to do next and how to do it. The best way is, of course, the clear call-to-action. So, if you’re giving them a special discount coupon, make sure to put redemption instructions. Or, if you’re promoting your mobile-optimized website and want to drive more traffic through this channel, make sure to tell customers why they should click on the link you sent them in your promotional SMS message. Also, if you’re using the keyword and shortcode to trigger some action, the best practice is to capitalize both of them to make them stand out within your call-to-action. Avoid using quotations around the keyword because people might send keyword with quotations which will not trigger the campaign.