During the holidays, there’s a delightful warmth that most of us feel. But for businesses, there’s a different kind of heat in the mix as the marketplace grows crowded amid the seasonal flurry.
With this, brands are turning to Short Message Service (SMS) marketing.
But why?
Unlike emails that often get lost in the digital shuffle, texts have a way of making a direct and immediate connection with consumers. SMS campaigns are like the friendly tap on the shoulder that says, “Hey, look at this!”
So, to inspire your SMS marketing plan, this blog will look at:
• SMS Marketing Best Practices: How To Run SMS Campaigns To Drive Holiday Sales
• SMS Marketing Benefits: Why Texts Work for Holiday Season Marketing
• Spark Interest in Your Brand This Holiday: Thrive SMS Marketing Campaigns
SMS Marketing Best Practices: How To Run SMS Campaigns To Drive Holiday Sales
Let’s dive right into the holiday SMS marketing best practices:
1. Build your subscriber list through key opt-in touchpoints.
2. Segment your SMS subscribers.
3. Personalize all possible elements.
4. Tailor your messaging for the holiday season.
5. Find the right timing for outreach.
6. Request online reviews or customer feedback.
7. Add the opt-out choice in select texts.
8. Look into SMS marketing platforms.
1. Build Your Subscriber List Through Key Opt-In Touchpoints
At the point of sale or checkout, you can add a tick box that says, “Receive exclusive offers and news via text.” It’s a good holiday marketing practice to leave such boxes unchecked and let customers toggle them on their own.
Here are more online and physical opt-in opportunities you can explore:
• Use website chat functionality for easy sign-ups.
• Optimize online sign-up forms or pages for a seamless experience.
• Strategically place website banners or pop-ups to encourage subscriptions.
• Leverage QR codes and physical signages to promote opt-ins.
• Create a textable keyword for a convenient subscription.
You can also go the extra mile and set up a dedicated sign-up station or kiosk in your store for in-person interactions. Similarly, as you make your opt-in process as effortless as possible, it’s equally important to make opting out just as easy.
2. Segment Your SMS Subscribers
SMS segmentation benefits both the recipient and your business. While segment recipients only receive relevant messages, your business spares the resources that would otherwise be spent on futile campaigns.
Apart from age, gender and location, here are more ways you can approach SMS segmentation:
• Level of engagement or lack thereof
• Date of subscription
• Purchase history
• Interests or preferences
If you offer a premium subscription, that’s also another segment to group your list. Segmentation also helps you avoid annoying recipients, which in turn reduces the likelihood of opt-outs from your holiday marketing campaigns.
3. Personalize All Possible Elements
Now that you have organized customer data through segmentation, you can better send personalized SMS marketing campaigns. In most SMS marketing automation platforms, you can use custom fields to streamline personalization.
For better SMS targeting, custom fields could be:
• First name of customer
• Loyalty member tier
• Store branch location
• Date and time
• Discount amount or percentage
• Promo code
• Event
Another avenue for personalized SMS marketing is to include the name of the sales representative or doctor who would attend to the client, especially for appointment reminders. For instance, a portion of your text could be “Hi [Customer name]! Your appointment with Doctor [Doctor name]…”
4. Tailor Your Messaging for the Holiday Season
The holiday season shifts, and so does shoppers’ intent. Your holiday season marketing approach should likewise adjust to these changes for relevance’s sake. In your customer data, you may be able to discern which holidays hold particular significance for each segment.
Aside from looking into your customer data, here are ways you can evoke the holiday spirit in your SMS customer engagement plan:
• Use festive language and incorporate holiday-themed emojis or symbols.
• Offer special discounts, limited-time offers or holiday-themed bundles.
• Send countdown texts to create a sense of excitement for upcoming holidays.
• Curate gift ideas for different personas or occasions.
• Deck your landing pages with elements of festivity to it.
From a jolly “ho-ho-ho” to a simple Christmas tree emoji, small touches can transform your holiday marketing messages.
5. Find the Right Timing for Outreach
You’ll find different data-backed input when it comes to the best schedules to send your SMS marketing campaigns. For Omnisend, Tuesdays and Saturdays provide peak conversion rates, while Mondays have the lowest. This is consistent with Textline’s data that favors Saturday and advises against Monday campaigns.
Here are more common grounds to consider:
• Avoid early mornings and late nights, except for event reminders.
• Midday campaigns are ideal for a specific segment in lunch breaks.
Still, the right timing is relative. So, feel free to experiment with different days of the week and times of the day to find out what works best for your brand. Keep an eye on key metrics like response rate, click-through rates (CTRs), conversion rate and opt-out rates.
6. Request Online Reviews or Customer Feedback
SMS customer engagement and marketing are targeted at people on the go. So, your texts provide a direct link to your landing page or review form. Otherwise, recipients are more likely to get discouraged if there’s too much friction in the process.
Here are more tips for asking for reviews through texts:
• Generate a short link through Google to help customers quickly write and submit reviews.
• Make sure your business listings are on-point with consistent details such as name, address and phone number (NAP).
• Don’t manipulate or force your recipients to leave you perfect ratings or positive reviews.
Keep in mind that most review platforms are against incentivizing reviews.
But you may incentivize your reviews only when seeking SMS feedback for your own website, provided that you don’t ask for a biased rating.
7. Add the Opt-Out Choice in Select Texts
While including the opt-out language in your messages may seem counterintuitive, it is a fantastic way to build trust with your customer base. You respect their choices and value their freedom in deciding what messages they get from your business.
When it comes to opt-outs, you want to:
• Experiment with the call to action. “Text STOP to unsubscribe” is standard, but you can be creative.
• Support different opt-out methods. Subscribers may prefer to contact you either by text, email or call.
• Ask for a second and final confirmation. This ensures you won’t lose subscribers by mistake.
• Honor opt-out requests in a timely manner. Once the request is confirmed, apply the changes immediately.
Not every SMS campaign needs to have the opt-out language, but most of them do. For instance, texts for appointment reminders and order tracking updates can do away with such.
8. Look Into SMS Marketing Platforms
In no particular order, here are a few SMS marketing platforms you can look up online to supercharge SMS marketing automation and overall process:
• Klaviyo*
• Attentive*
• Twilio*
• Textedly*
When it comes to SMS marketing platforms, weighing pricing, features, integrations, automation prowess and so on is a dreadful task for many. If you need help, our SMS marketing automation experts at Thrive can answer your questions.
SMS Marketing Benefits: Why Texts Work for Holiday Season Marketing
In this section, let’s take a step back and look into why many businesses turn to SMS marketing for their holiday season marketing.
What consumers say:
A 2022 survey of consumers in the United States revealed that 47% of millennials and 44% of Generation Z prefer receiving text messages from brands (Statista).
What brand owners and marketers say:
In a 2023 survey conducted among U.S. business owners and marketing managers,
• 60% said SMS customer engagement level is higher.
• 53% said SMS marketing has higher open and click-through rates than other channels.
• 52% said SMS marketing is the most efficient channel for customer support.
• 43% said SMS marketing is a straightforward channel for customer interaction.
To add, over 38% stated that SMS feedback is much quicker from potential customers. And above 28% of brand owners and marketers said younger consumers clearly prefer texting, putting it ahead of other communication methods (Statista).
But what about actual return on investment (ROI)?
To look at SMS marketing ROI: A recent survey revealed that 73% of consumers completed a purchase after receiving a text message from a brand. And, what’s even more interesting is that more than half of them repeated this shopping feat two to three times (Klaviyo).
The same source also showcased a use case of text marketing. An Ohio-based clothing brand debuted a new item through its first SMS campaign, drumming up 100 orders in the first hour alone.
In the end, 86.9% of SMS recipients clicked the in-message link, resulting in 9% of recipients making a purchase. Its SMS marketing ROI translated to an outstanding $167 in revenue per recipient for the apparel brand.
So, whether your SMS targeting is aimed at the younger generation or not, these figures make the case that SMS marketing drives better results than other channels in many cases.
Spark Interest in Your Brand This Holiday: Thrive SMS Marketing Campaigns
Thrive is here to help you drive more holiday sales. We have a team of digital marketing experts ready to set up an SMS automation tool to help your business painlessly send booking reminders, special offers, order confirmations, and so much more.
It’s the busy season, but we have time for you — talk to us.
