Top Five Reasons for Ecommerce Stores to Send Text Messages

In the current era, we witness a major shift in the marketing arena. Digital Marketing has become an integral part of most businesses and is primarily responsible for driving revenue for many of them. While there are many mediums for digital marketing, several studies note that SMS text messaging is one of the most powerful and effecting platforms for communication. There are plenty of applications in the digital market but not all are as accessible, beginner-friendly, and easy to use as SMS. It also observes much higher opening rates than emails, where promotional mails lie in the spam box for days. SMS is a more immediate and action-oriented alternative that is slowly growing among business and it makes for the best strategies to boost sales.

Following are some ways that can be pursued to effectively use SMS to market your products, increase your sales and maintain long-term relations with your client base.

1. Continued communication to keep customers engaged

Many customers often just visit a company’s website and don’t make a purchase or revisit. Sometimes even after a purchase they don’t return to company. To avoid this, making attempts to reach out to the customer can result in a continued engagement and may induce some interest in the customer. So even if they move on to some other company, you can still send messages to give reason to visit again. Often they may also have forgotten about the brand or its products, and reminders of sales or limited offers can give them a chance to revisit and build a relationship with the brand again.

2. Transaction Notifications

When a customer initiates the process of payment, there are a number of steps that the company can keep updating the customer with. Since this is a sensitive process, keeping them informed about every step can reassure them about their transaction. These notifications include details of their order, payment details, an update on completion of the payment process, as well as detailed shipping information so the customer is aware of their product is and how the company is managing the whole process. This also ensures that your brand and its product constantly stays relevant and on top of their notification feed.

3. Avoiding abandoned shopping cart sales

Several times new customers visit and add items to their carts, but end up changing their mind and don’t make a purchase. Sometimes customers forget they had items they were interested in, or get distracted by other things and forget to revisit the site to make the purchase. In these situations, sending a text message reminding them of their incomplete visit can be helpful. Providing specific details of the products they were interested in can bring back their original interest and lead them to finish their purchase. Even details of when the shipment may arrive or the overall payment to be made can make the purchase more appealing and push them to revisit the store. Recommending items related to the ones they added to the cart can drive your sales even further if they regain their interest in the products.

4. Running Loyalty CampaignsBuilding a database by approaching new customers constantly with offers can help in adding people to your clientele, but the real challenge is in maintaining the relationship with each of them. Using SMS to your advantage by personalising messages for them, sending special offers for birthdays, anniversaries or other personal events can boost the relation they share with your brand. They may start to associate celebration with your products and services which can result in consistent sales and revenue from them. Having special customer-oriented point-systems and others can push them to be more proactive in purchasing to avail more valuable and unique offers that may be available to them alone.

5. Sending bulk messages to different customer bases

While some customers may have more benefits from winter clothing due to the longer seasons of cold, summer may be abound in another area. Offers suitable to a region, a particular age range, specific birthday months, etc. can help in meeting the needs of different customers while also expanding one’s client base. It is important to remember that an offer or stock may not be as valuable and unique to every customer. Hence, a significant aspect of marketing is knowing the preferences and interests of customers, and to group like-minded individuals to sned personalised offers to the different groups. In this manner, several interests are fulfilled and your revenue keeps increasing. Your product line can also be fuelled by ideas gained through the different desires that your customers express, which can help in integrating customer feedback and creating according to their needs.

Maintaining contact with each customer can be challenging and retaining them consistently is difficult. This is why marketing smartly and keeping in constant contact is useful in keeping the brand relevant and significant in the customer’s minds and serving them better.