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When was the last time you analyzed the effectiveness of your marketing? Don’t worry. There’s no need to hire an agency. Read how to conduct your SMS campaign audit entirely in-house and in no time! Check if you are using the essential functionalities and if you are compliant with the latest regulation as well as principles of permission marketing. Make your work easier and more effective by using these five simple tips.
Check your contact database
Building a contact database for SMS marekting in agreement with the GDPR is your number one priority. I can’t go any further without it. The effectiveness of third-party databases is ten times lower. In most cases, you only got one shot with them.
I can’t stress this enough: invest in tools to create and maintain contact databases. The process might be slower, but it will eventually pay off. Simply because you not only collect valuable and relevant client information but, more importantly, you build the trust and loyalty of your customers—you cannot buy those.
By the way of trust, we should also talk about transparency. Simply put: be clear and precise about privacy and rules of company communications. Make it clear that your recipients can unsubscribe from the database at any time, for example, by providing easy opt-in and opt-out methods.
As a rule of thumb: signing out should be equally easy as signing in to a newsletter. For example, the first message could include a link leading to subscription management. It could save a great deal of work later and even help you maintain the brand image.
If you are curious why it’s so important and profitable, read the article on permission marketing. I’ll leave you with the thought that a quick subscription system has numerous advantages. For one, it allows your customers to take care of themselves, and it automatically optimizes the database and your costs.
Home Location Register (HLR) look-up system
Have doubts about whether the numbers in your contact database are correct? Want to check what operators your clients are using?
Use the HLR (Home Location Register) check-up service to identify inactive numbers quickly!
Be GDPR-compliant
Have you only just begun to build the database? Just remember about GDPR! At the same time, try to plan or predict your future campaigns and ask good questions. In most scenarios, you’ll get only one chance to collect data that will help you to target your messages better.
Remember the GDPR!
According to Art. 5, EU, the companies’ GDPR data must be adequate, relevant and limited to the purposes necessary for processing.
It means you can send messages only to contacts that gave you proper consent for SMS marketing.
Read more:
Make your brand visible with branded SMS
You can, and should, brand your text messages sent from SMSAPI. The SMS sender name ID is 11 alphanumeric characters that replace a telephone number in an SMS inbox. Use this free-of-charge feature to make your brand stand out!
It’s a basic yet exceptionally effective way to increase brand awareness. Set up your free branded SMS service in the Customer Portal, but remember that it might not be available in every country. Contact our SMSAPI consultants to find out about local regulations regarding SMS with name.
Remember that you can use multiple sender names if your campaign needs them. How to mark that the message is a continuation of your previous communication? Leave a part of the name or a signature at the end of an SMS.
If you have a long-term marketing plan, you should consider buying your number (so-called Long code virtual mobile number). The digits, especially if they are easy to remember (because of repetition or rhyme), might become another element of your brand. Think of radio stations’ numbers or transportation services.
Start listening to your clients
If you think about business SMS communication as a one-way medium, say hello to Virtual Mobile Numbers. 2-way SMS communication is a tool for B2C relationships. Just like all other channels, you can use it to collect feedback, provide customer support, automatize processes like appointment rescheduling or even promote and sell stuff.
What keeps SMS apart from all other communication channels is its versatility, e.g., applications like the NPS surveys, competitions or interactive campaigns. The first ones are simple, you just need a Customer Portal, a virtual mobile number, and an idea, and it’s ready! The last might require a programmer’s help to connect your system and our API. Remember, the most common programming languages have ready-to-use integrations and libraries.
SMS rates for Long code
For your company:
GSM operators require a monthly fee for a Long code receiving SMS number.
For your clients:
Your clients won’t pay extra to text you. Regular SMS rates apply.
Personalize and cut links
Text messages function regardless of the Internet connection, but it doesn’t mean they cannot include links leading to your website. The GSM standard accepts plain text only, which rules out all coding, images and other fancy stuff. That’s why it’s so important to cut and attractively present links!
With tools like Rebrandly or cut.li (link shortener integrated with our Portal), you can make long URLs shorter, consequently saving some additional characters. More importantly, you can use them to add UTM parameters which will be invaluable during effectiveness analysis in Google Analytics. Read the article above or watch the video below for more info on utilising UTM in SMS campaigns.
Adding UTM to short links
Furthermore, I recommend the guest article by Jan Biłyk of Laurens Costers. It’s an excellent introduction to link personalization. If you think you don’t need such extensive control over the website traffic, remember that you can check your CTRs (click-through rates) in the Customer Portal.
Control the effects of your campaigns
Reporting and analysis is one thing, but remember that a bulk SMS campaign immediately increases the website traffic. So make sure your website is technically ready for such traffic volume. Otherwise, you risk downtime instead of an increase in sales. The Gino Rossi case study should give you an idea of how effective SMS campaigns are regarding website traffic and online shop revenue.
There’s a story about a client who sent a big, attractive SMS campaign with a link to his e-shop. Unfortunately, he didn’t prepare the servers for the high increase in traffic. As a result, instead of record-high sales, he went offline for a couple of hours.
You might be familiar with the case, but it shows that companies often underestimate the power of SMS. It might be better to split larger campaigns into smaller chunks not to overwhelm your customer service, logistics, and servers. Give yourself some time to react and breathe!
Conclusion
As you can see, a basic audit of your SMS campaigns is easy. Furthermore, you can fix most problems by yourself. At the same time, this is just the beginning of SMS marketing optimisation.
Start with the basics:
- quality of your database,
- sender names,
- virtual mobile numbers,
- link policy,
- customer care.
Secure your account
The security of your and your client’s data depends on you. So, keep frosty and never use the same password twice.
More security tips:
In the next step, you can break down the body of messages, the position of SMS in the sale funnel and campaign timing… But that’s another story!
