While email remains a critical channel for retailers during the holidays season, integrating SMS into your marketing strategy can significantly impact consumer engagement and ROI. SMS is the most used communications channel within the US with more than 6 billion messages sent every day and has a 98-percent read-rate.

We recently took a look back at how SMS performed over the 2019 holiday season. Among clients, we saw a 3.4X increase in revenue per SMS message sent over email. When we broke down the numbers during the busiest shopping moments of the year, the results for SMS were impressive:

• Thanksgiving Day: 5.4X Increase over Email
• Black Friday: 2.7X Increase over Email
• Cyber Monday: 2.9X Increase over Email
• Thanksgiving through Cyber Week: 3.4X Increase over Email
  

Here are a few simple ways that you can leverage SMS into your cross-channel approach and reap the benefits during the 2020 holiday season as well as throughout the rest of the year:

Grow your subscriber list

Acquiring new customers and keeping loyal clientele are goals for any retailer. Using keywords via SMS is a powerful tool to grow subscriber lists and build customer loyalty. For example, in-mall signage asking customers to text HELLO for a 25% discount can drive more in-store sales and grow your subscriber base to send information or offers to in the future. Integrating tap-to-join features to mobile responsive popups can also help grow SMS subscribers.

Offers and promotions

SMS is an easy way to provide extra incentives for consumers to buy, particularly among new and repeat customers. Text messages can be used to send discount codes or links to promotions. It is an especially powerful channel for promotions that are time sensitive. Offering discounts or freebies to opt-into an SMS campaign or come in-store can boost conversions and revenue.  

Alerts and notifications

Delivery times, shipping status, and appointment reminders are examples of how SMS can be automated to communicate with customers when important actions are happening. Keeping customers in the know around when their goods are arriving can drastically improve the customer experience.

Deepen cross-channel engagement

Increasingly consumers are turning to their phones to browse products and shop. Mobile responsive popups, like ‘Tap-to-Join’ are impactful features to help retailers accelerate the acquisition of both mobile numbers and email addresses enabling cross-channel campaigns.

SMS marketing is an efficient way to reach consumers today and the most relevant way to engage with them, build trust, and acquire new subscribers. If you’re not already connecting with customers through SMS, weaving it into your cross-channel program is a must for 2020.

Click here to learn more about SMS.