SMS marketing is part of effective e-commerce communication
SMS marketing works excellently as an essential part of e-commerce communication. Use text messages to notify customers about your online store’s new products, offers, discounts, deliveries, and collect customer feedback.
The phone is always with you, so SMS marketing brings your best offers directly within customers’ reach. With text messages, you reach customers immediately, as the message has nearly 100% visibility. SMS marketing keeps your online store top of mind when a purchase need arises.
Text Messages and Instant Messages in E-commerce Customer Communication
Since the pandemic, the development of digital services for businesses and organizations has taken tremendous strides forward. E-commerce platforms in particular are now being developed rapidly. Fortunately, the related platform technologies (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento) are already highly developed and offer multiple options for organizations of various sizes and industries.
Customer communication as part of e-commerce customer journeys is often built on email communication. This works, and messages reach customers. However, if (and when) you want to develop more diverse and personalized customer communication for your e-commerce platform, text messages and instant messages become relevant channels.
Whether it’s communication as part of the purchase process or post-purchase marketing, it requires the use of these messaging channels to ensure messages are delivered and achieve the highest possible visibility.
E-commerce SMS Marketing and Other SMS Communication
54% of consumers feel that SMS marketing is a good communication channel, but only 11% of companies use it. Text message and instant message marketing therefore represents a significant opportunity for marketers to improve customer experience and create stronger customer loyalty.
What could SMS marketing in e-commerce look like?
Welcome message after registration
“Welcome to the club! Take advantage of your monthly loyalty benefit right now.” https://siirry.fi/1234.”
Announcing discount sales
“Our winter break sale is valid for 2 more days, until dd.mm.yyyy. Take advantage of our top offers now: https://siirry.fi/1234.”
Remembering customers on their birthday
“Happy Birthday Customer X! To celebrate, we’re offering XX% off our products with this code: 12345.”
Communicating new products
“Hi Customer X. New X products now in our online store, check them out: https://siirry.fi/1234.”
What could other e-commerce SMS communication look like?
Delivery-related messages after order
“Order shipped: Your order was sent on dd.mm.yyyy. Estimated delivery dd.mm.yyyy. Track your delivery at https://siirry.fi/1234.”
Content-driven communication
“Hi! Your trip is approaching. Read our blog post on how to get the most out of your vacation: https://siirry.fi/1234.”
Opinion surveys
“Hi! Were you satisfied with your experience in our online store? We value your feedback: Reply to this message with the keyword WEBSHOP and provide a number from 1-10, depending on how we did (1=poor, 10=everything went great), and add any additional comments if you wish.”
Launch SMS Marketing Securely with a Finnish Service Provider
Current technologies for using text messages and instant messages are highly developed and secure. Their implementation is technically relatively straightforward. However, it should be noted that customer communication involves many sensitive matters, such as when customer data is processed as part of communication.
Especially when using global providers’ services, negotiating contract terms, personal data processing principles, and security matters can be challenging. Often in such situations, you cannot use your company’s or organization’s own contract templates, but must use the global provider’s contracts.
Finnish companies, such as Arena Interactive, specialize in providing SMS text messages and instant messaging channels in Finland and globally as part of their own service platforms. We ensure data security and personal data processing, and contractual matters with us are handled straightforwardly and reliably.
SMS Marketing Is More Than Just Sending Messages
When you want to use two-way communication, where the end customer can reply to a message sent to them, virtual phone numbers or short message numbers are used. Additionally, keywords are used as needed to route different responses to the correct location in the e-commerce platform. This requires expertise to ensure services operate as smoothly and cost-effectively as possible. With an experienced provider, planning and arranging these services is straightforward.
Added value comes from the ability to integrate SMS marketing with payment services (text message billing and mobile payment). You can also incorporate gift codes as part of text message marketing and other SMS communication. Utilize gift codes for customer rewards and customer appreciation, for example.
Read also:
How Does an SMS Campaign and Text Message Marketing Reach Customers?
Multi-Channel Communication in SmartDialog – Benefits for Your Business