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How To Promote Your Business Using Text Messages
Text messaging, or SMS, is a highly effective way to reach your customers and potential
customers. Smartphones like the iPhone and Blackberry have become very common, and virtually
all those users can receive text messages. In this article, we're going to look at some
ways that you can leverage text messages to reach your audience.
Have you ever seen an ad that said something like "Text the word 'ABCDE' to 12345 to enter
to win?"
This is the "opt-in" component of SMS marketing. When you text that word to the number - known
as a shortcode - you are opting in to receive text messages from that company. Until you
opt out, they can send you promotional texts about anything they want, with the only limits
being the length limits of an SMS message.
There are services that will handle this broadcasting for you. They can set you up with a shortcode
of your own, and one or more opt-in offers that you can use as an incentive to get people
to send a text, thereby opting in to receive your messages.
Some of these services even offer "vanity" shortcodes for a premium charge. 90210 anybody?
Text messaging is a highly effective way of reaching your customers for a couple of reasons.
First, text messages enjoy a nearly 100% open rate. People virtually always read a text
message when they receive it, unlike email that often gets deleted without being opened.
This is likely to change, of course, as people get more marketing messages but at the moment
text messaging is a very effective way to get your message seen.
Those messages can be various things:
- Special promotions - New product announcements
- Invitations to special events - etc.
And unlike email, the majority of your audience will read your text message shortly after
it is sent. This gives you the ability to use SMS for very timely offers.
For example, if a restaurant is having a slow day, they could send out a text mid-afternoon
offering a free appetizer to anyone who comes in with the text message that same night.
It's extremely likely that this type of last-minute promotion would generate walk-in traffic that
wouldn't otherwise have been in that day. A slow day can be turned around on short notice.
If you don't overwhelm your audience with too many messages, this can be a very effective
way to keep in touch with them to promote your business.