According to recent research, the average Brit spends 4 hours and 14 minutes a day on their smartphones, checking them every 12 minutes. This highlights the importance of SMS as a marketing channel, as it boasts an open rate of up to 98 percent and an average response time of just 90 seconds. This makes it the most effective way to deliver time-critical notifications, promotions and alerts.
In addition, 33 percent of SMS recipients reportedly react to CTAs in SMS marketing messages, with 47 percent of them making a purchase. SMS can be used to send notifications, alerts about sales/discounts, order/shipping updates, appointment reminders, conduct polls/surveys, and thank you messages.
Timing plays a key role in SMS campaigns, as they typically perform best mid-week between 9am and 12pm during business hours or between 5pm and 8pm for online browsing and shopping. It is also important to place the most important details at the start of the message to ensure visibility on the customer’s phone.
Personalisation is also key to engaging customers, as personalised adverts convert 10 times better than non-personalised ones. This could include anything from ‘Thank you’ or ‘We miss you’ messages, to birthday or purchase anniversary promotions, VIP offers and back in stock alerts.
SMS can be used to complement existing marketing communications such as social media, email, WhatsApp Business Platform, direct mail and search advertising, to create a unified message and voice for a brand.
Derick is an experienced reporter having held multiple senior roles for large publishers across Europe. Specialist subjects include small business and financial emerging markets.