Why retailers need to market their business via SMS

There are lots of ways retailers can market their business, and it can become a minefield of sales and marketing personnel trying to tell you why their way is best. 

With so many options around, from PPC, email, magazine and print, radio, billboards, social media… The list can go on and on. Which means it can end up being a very expensive exercise for retailers to find the right marketing solution for them. 

Magazine and print used to be the go-to for retailers, showing stylish photos of their clothes or products with the retailers details on for any interested customers to go off and find/contact the retailer. 

Since the introduction of the internet the magazine and print industry has took a huge hit, with so many people constantly browsing the internet, the ability to be able to quickly go from site to site, check reviews and prices, and order products straight away, all for free rather than buying a magazine, has led to the demise of many magazines. 

Email marketing continues to be widely used by retailers, it offers the ability to be able to send lots of images, links off to different products and websites all contained within a nicely designed email. 

However email marketing has also taken a hit over recent years, with so many emails now being sent out every single second, our email accounts and spam filters have had to get more ruthless in deciding what emails should make it into our inbox and not, let alone what’s worth clicking on and opening.

In fact, Radicati Group state that on average we receive 121 emails a day. This leads us to unfortunately dismiss and delete emails rather quickly and hastily. 

This means that retailers have been searching around for better return on investment to achieve their goals, and a lot of paths have led to marketers reaching deep into their pockets to sustain their digital marketing – turns out there’s an alternative and it can also be found in your pocket – our mobile phones!

SMS marketing has been a revolution for the retail industry. Delivering open rates that could only be dreamt of, along with huge response rates and ultimately that much higher return on investment. 

A retailer can pretty much guarantee every message they send will be read, as 98% of all text messages are read and 95% of all text messages are read within the first 90 seconds. Which all equates to SMS receiving a response rate on average of 45%
(Source: Gartner).

SMS marketing gives retailers the perfect method of communication with their customers. Customers now want everything instantly, and it needs to be convenient for them, which makes the mobile phone the perfect device, it’s simple and familiar to use, and always at arms reach.

Retail SMS marketing stats

With SMS marketing there are no hidden costs, no photographers or designers needed, no expensive advertising rates, just simple effective marketing. 

In a click of a button you can send thousands of messages, with a link to your website or specific product, you can personalise the text message to include their name, you can track who clicked the link and with our amazing SMS Web Pages you can even send a bespoke mobile landing pages filled with colour and images!

SMS marketing really has changed the game when it comes to retail SMS marketing, and given retailers a fantastic new avenue to reach their customers on. Read some of our retail marketing success stories here. 

If you would like to sign up for your SMS marketing account here, and please do get in touch if you have any questions about how you can use SMS to improve your marketing.