How to Boost Ecommerce Conversions With SMS Marketing

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How to Boost Ecommerce Conversions With SMS
Marketing
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• The world of eCommerce is absolutely exploding.
  Every day there are hundreds of new online stores
  that are popping up around the world and for good
  reasonthats where the money is. In fact, over
  half of all internet users somewhat regularly
  shop online. Almost 75 of all millennials prefer
  to shop online over an in-store experience.

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What is SMS Marketing?

• SMS marketing for eCommerce is simply marketing
  to your customers via text messaging. Its
  effectiveness is incredible, though. It allows
  you to cut through the clutter of most
  traditional marketing channels by engaging your
  customers where theyre spending more and more
  timetheir mobile devices. If you sit back and
  think about it, not many people ignore their
  texts. In fact, over 90 of all text messages are
  read within 5 minutes.

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Why You Should Care

• As previously stated, owners of eCommerce stores
  got to use every digital marketing method within
  the book to grow their business and win online.
  Many are experiencing huge success with SMS
  marketing automation. While there are many
  reasons why text messaging should be the next
  weapon in your marketing arsenal, here are a few
  key reasons why this should have your attention.

Incredible Open Rates
Total open rates for text messages hover around
99 and the majority of that happens within the
first 5 minutesthats insane! Compare this to
email marketing where youre likely seeing a 25
open rate at the best. Theres no contest. If
youre looking to drive immediate traffic, its
silly not to have SMS marketing software in place.
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Click-Through Rates Higher Over Email

• Lets draw the same comparisons with click
  through rates. The average click-through rate for
  a SMS marketing campaigns is around 36. Compare
  that to email click-through rates and it falls to
  the floor at just above 3. Some eCommerce site
  owners have actually claimed they split large
  text messaging lists up into segments, as single
  large text blasts drive an excessive amount of
  traffic directly.

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How eCommerce Uses SMS Marketing

• So, weve made it abundantly clear why youre
  missing the train if SMS marketing isnt in your
  toolbox of marketing channels. With that said,
  however, its helpful to see how existing
  eCommerce merchants are leveraging text message
  automation in various capacities. Here are 7
  actionable ideas for putting rubber to the road
  and putting a strategy in place.

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Grow Your List at Checkout

• You may have asked yourself, how will I keep
  people hooked to my VIP text list as a web
  store? Texting to join has always been the
  number one way that people subscribe to
  personalized SMS marketing lists and the process
  is quite simple. When you launch a text program,
  you will create whats called a keyword. Its a
  word or phrase that people will text to a short
  phone number called a shortcode.

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One-Off Promos

• ending one-off SMS promotions is perhaps the
  foremost common and documented use case for text
  marketing. Its pretty straight forward too.
  Youre simply doing a text blast to your
  subscriber list with some sort of offer that
  drives people to your website. The key to
  maximizing your success here is to do a few
  specific things.

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Unique Coupon Codes

• Sending unique coupon codes may be a home run
  eCommerce. Depending on your SMS provider, youll
  have the power to supply each subscriber in your
  text blast with a singular coupon code which will
  only be used once. This helps to prevent abuse
  and makes people feel like theyre part of an
  ultra-special group that has access to offers
  that other people dont. When that light goes off
  and they understand that they are entitled to
  something valuable, youll have these people on
  your text list forever.

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Birthday Rewards
Take the private touch to an entirely another
level by offering happy birthday personalized
messages to your customers. Nothing says youre
paying attention like scoring them a unique deal
on their special day.

• Automated Purchase Reminders
• Do you offer products that customers return to
  get on a daily basis? Setting up automated SMS
  reminders can be really helpful for reminding
  people to replenish their stock on certain items.

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Shipping Notifications

• Shipping notifications are an easy one. Each
  message brings value along, especially if youre
  including links of the delivery status updates.
  While these messages probably arent marketing
  related, it helps your customers to become easier
  communicating together with your brand via text.

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Feedback Collection
A less common way that eCommerce sites are making
good use of SMS marketing services is by asking
for feedback from the existing users. Its
amazing how many merchants who already are using
text messaging look past this as a source for
capturing such valuable data. Some text message
marketing services offer survey features that
allow you to simply conduct automated,
multi-question feedback loops.

• Pro Tip Branded links in text messaging is now a
  best practice, as theyre known to increase trust
  between your brand and your customers, as well as
  increase the deliverability rate of your SMS
  messages due to the fact that theyre not at risk
  of being marked as spam. Marketers can create
  branded links using platforms like Rebrandly URL
  Shortener.

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Conclusion
The state of eCommerce continues to evolve as the
landscape becomes more competitive. Merchants are
dually pressured by increased ad costs and new
online competitors. As a consequence, teams are
getting leaner, larger merchants are cutting
staff, and smaller startups are comfortable
running lean and leveraging technology to achieve
results with less.
Traditional enterprise marketing software is
designed and made for large teams who come up
with grand plans and have large upfront cost
campaigns and technology investments. The new
breed of advanced and fast-growing merchants want
software that just works.
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Thank You