Customers expect real-time updates from brands on their mobile phones, so sending tailored messages crafted with their interests has become essential. SMS marketing is an efficient way to send personalized, timely, and relevant messages and connect with customers. It helps boost customer loyalty, engagement, and retention.
What is B2B SMS Marketing?
B2B SMS marketing allows brands to communicate with prospects and customers via text. This helps promote deals, offer incentives, and provide customer support.
It provides a quick and effective way to reach a large audience by sending them a personalized message.
How Can Brands Use B2B SMS Messaging?
SMS in B2B marketing is effective due to the medium’s immediacy. As per a recent report by Cordial,
SMS allows brands to track open and click-throughs, a valuable metric for assessing customer interest levels and ROI tracking. B2B brands can use text messaging to-
- Reach out to B2B buyers who opted in to receive messages
- Send timely reminders or new product announcements
- Encourage customers to take action by offering time-sensitive product deals
- Drive traffic by sharing links to new content
- Send regular messages about company news and industry developments
Why is B2B SMS Marketing Helpful?
Cordial’s report states that
With high open rates, the target audiences will likely see the message quickly. Also, SMS messages have a high response rate, maximizing engagement with the target audience. The medium is cost-effective, allowing it to target B2B companies without high investments.
What are the Potential Challenges of B2B SMS Marketing?
1. Character Limit
With only a 160-character limit, conveying a compelling message becomes hard.
What to Do?
Brands must be concise and clear with their messages. This requires careful testing to determine the right approach to speak with the target audience.
2. Spam
Spam filters are another significant challenge marketers face. As SMS messages are subject to anti-spam filters, they won’t be delivered to the recipient’s inbox if they are identified as spam. Even carefully crafted messages can remain undelivered due to this issue.
What to Do?
Brands must ensure their messages comply with rules and regulations and prevent using language that can be considered spam. Monitoring and adjusting the SMS marketing campaigns can help ensure they are effective and comply with all relevant guidelines.
3. Opt-in Rates
The Opt-in Rates challenge refers to the difficulty in getting people to opt-in to receive messages. Customers often hesitate to share their contact information because they fear receiving spam messages. This makes sending SMS messages more difficult.
What to Do?
Brands must communicate the value proposition of signing up for SMS messages to encourage opt-ins. It is essential to be transparent about how they will use the phone number and offer an easy opt-out option. A targeted and engaged opt-in list is vital for a successful SMS marketing campaign.
4. Time
Timing is crucial in SMS marketing as it can impact the message’s effectiveness. Hence, identifying the best time to send the messages for maximum open rate and conversions is challenging. Brands must consider the recipient’s time zone, daily routines, and typical mobile phone usage patterns.
What to Do?
Test and experiment with different timing strategies to identify the best approach for their target audience.
What Factors to Consider When Creating a B2B SMS Marketing Strategy?
1. Audiences
Brands must know who their audiences are before sending SMS messages. Understanding their preferences to communicate is vital. CRM, email, or social media data can help segment audiences based on interests, behavior, and demographics. This will help personalize the SMS campaigns to multiple groups, delivering value and relevance.
2. Goals and Objectives
B2B SMS marketing helps increase awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads. Brands must define their aim for each SMS campaign and how they will measure its success. Aligning the SMS objectives with marketing strategies is essential to foster a coherent and consistent message across all channels.
3. Content and Frequency Optimization
While SMS messages are short, brands must craft engaging content to capture the audience’s attention. The messages must convey value and inspire action. They can use personalization urgency or make the content more conversational and make the messages appealing.
Optimizing timing and frequency when sending SMS messages helps maximize the impact. Brands can use data analytics to identify the best time and frequency for the SMS campaign. They can also test various options and see whether they align well with the SMS marketing goals.
4. Rules and Regulations
B2B SMS marketing is subject to rules and regulations that brands must adhere to prevent penalties. It is essential to seek customers’ consent before sending them messages.
Moreover, allow them to opt-out anytime and respect their privacy. To avoid sending them spam or unsolicited messages, use a reliable SMS marketing platform that will help comply with the rules and regulations.
5. Result Analyzation and Refinement
B2B SMS marketing is an ongoing process of learning and improving. Analyze and monitor the SMS marketing results and check if they meet the objectives and expectations. Using metrics like open rate, conversion rate, click-through rate, and ROI can help measure the performance.
Marketers can use feedback and surveys to seek customer opinions and feedback. Refining the SMS marketing strategies becomes accessible per the analysis and customer suggestions.
Also Read: Brands Are Prioritizing SMS Marketing Campaign amid the Pandemic
Conclusion
B2B SMS marketing requires constant optimization to maximize the ROI and meet marketing objectives. Define the SMS goals and KPIs as per strategy and desired outcomes. Track the SMS data with analytics tools integrated with various channels and systems.
Gather insights such as-
- number of messages sent, received, opened, clicked, and unsubscribed
- cost per message, revenue per message, and the ROI investment
Moreover, test and optimize factors such as-
- message content
- sender name, link, or phone number
- timing and frequency
- segmentation and personalization
With effective strategies and practices, brands can move the target customers through the marketing and sales funnel using SMS marketing.
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