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How to get started with SMS marketing campaigns for lead generation

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Integrate & automate 7 min read | Amanda Ranville wrote in blog on August 30, 2022

“Why aren’t we doing this?” 

For a marketer, nothing makes you cringe faster than hearing these words from an executive on the leadership team. After all, when you have big lead gen goals to meet but a small team and tight budget, you don’t have the luxury of chasing after every shiny object. And so, those fancy tactics and cool new marketing channels end up on your “maybe someday” list, while you roll up your sleeves and get back to work on the strategies you know produce consistent, reliable results.  

If SMS marketing is on that “maybe someday” list – “someday” just got a lot closer.  

Text marketing not only generates seriously impressive results, but it’s also easy to implement – even for small teams and tight budgets.  

In this post, we’ll show you: 

  1. Why SMS marketing is so efficient at generating leads. 
  2. Tips for integrating SMS marketing into your existing campaigns. 
  3. Examples of real-world marketing teams absolutely crushing it with SMS marketing. 

Ready to get started? 

How does SMS marketing compare to other lead generation channels? 

At the end of the day, marketers are held to the results they generate. After all, if you’re not converting leads into customers into revenue, what’s the point? 

That begs the question, how well are your current lead generation tactics performing for you? Here are some average conversion rates we found across the more common channels you’re probably already using: 

It’s possible these relatively low conversion rates have you feeling pretty good about the ROI you’re generating at your own company – and you rightfully should. But compare that to the 23% average conversion rate MessageMedia clients achieve with SMS marketing. These are powerful results that warrant a closer look. 

Why does SMS perform so well? People just like it: 89% of people say they prefer texting with businesses over any other mode of communication.  

It makes sense. People are busy, and they want to communicate on their own terms. Texting is fast, but the recipient doesn’t have to engage in real time. SMS allows people to get the information they need and then act on it when it works for them.  

Plus, let’s face it: There are a lot of demands on everybody’s attention right now. A text reminder of a big sale, exclusive event, or abandoned cart is a well-appreciated way to quickly jog a customer’s memory. In fact, 60% of U.S. customers say SMS reminders are highly valuable.  

Another part of why SMS works so well is personalization. As a marketer, you know that old-school “spray and pray” marketing is nothing more than noise – easily ignored by the people you want to reach. The right SMS marketing platform will integrate with your CRM, meaning you can use your existing lists and workflows to automatically segment your text message outreach. Even better, you can adjust your lists based on how people respond (or don’t respond) to your texts. This will help ensure you’re targeting only people who are truly interested in your solution and not wasting your time with the tire kickers. 

In short, you’ll be sending people exactly what they want, when they want, in the way they want. Marketing doesn’t get better than that. 

Fitting SMS marketing into your existing strategy 

We’re big fans of minimizing the number of tools you need to use to do your job. Needing to jump between software systems and accounts is annoying and inefficient. But as we mentioned above, choosing an SMS platform that plays well with your existing marketing and sales tools can be a gamechanger. 

Consider the case of a MessageMedia customer who also uses HubSpot for marketing automation. By integrating our platform with their HubSpot account, they’re able to create and send SMS directly within their HubSpot portal. This means they can quickly pull personalization tokens into their messages, insert messages into workflows, and report on SMS channel performance right from their HubSpot dashboards. As their customers engage with these SMS messages, the activity is automatically logged to the correct contact records in the CRM. 

Our customer believes having this single, central hub for all their marketing activity saves them an average of four days every month on administrative tasks. It’s like magic (or an extra set of hands, anyway). 

Let’s take a closer look at how this magic works. 

For instance, let’s say you’re promoting an upcoming event and you want to boost early-bird registration numbers. Let’s also say you’re using HubSpot, and you’ve created a five-email workflow to promote the event. Once you have integrated your SMS app with your HubSpot account, you can insert text messaging into those workflows. Here’s a screen shot of what this can look like, using MessageMedia: 

Text messaging is easy to integrate into new or existing workflows, giving you multiple ways to grab attention.

SMS is also a breeze for bulk campaigns. For example, if your marketing team is gearing up to promote an e-commerce flash sale, it’s easy as pie to send out a text to any combination of lists in HubSpot. And why stop there? Why not create workflows to send a follow-up text for abandoned carts or a thank-you coupon after completed purchases? Imagine the impact. 

Getting started with SMS messaging is even easier with 30 free SMS templates Click here to download the kit.

Lead nurturing is another task that’s often a challenge for small teams to do well, at least in part due to the difficulty of building out enough content. Incorporating SMS into your lead nurturing is as simple as using the content you already have in your workflows and just adding a text message component that your audience will actually read. And since you’re engaging with them away from their already-full-to-the-brim email inbox, your text will stand out and be less likely to overwhelm or annoy the people you’re trying to convert.

OK,” you might be thinking. “This sounds like something we could swing. But will it get us real results?”

Will it ever.  

What SMS marketing looks like in real life 

The possibilities for well-integrated SMS marketing are practically endless. But let’s narrow that down with two real-world examples from existing MessageMedia clients: 

P’Nut Street Noodles: decided to integrate SMS marketing into their workflows, both for flash offers and ongoing marketing campaign support, and were overwhelmed with the outcome. Result: 50% increase in sales.
Click here for details on the campaign

Vinomofo: As an online wine retailer, Vinomofo offers ultra-curated wine selections and unmatchable special deals. Personalization is key in this space, and integrating SMS into their reengagement campaigns has dramatically improved their ability to reach their customers quickly with highly targeted messaging.
Results:
50% more recovered customers
21% higher conversions
120x ROI

Click here for details on the campaign

With a plug-and-play tool that integrates invisibly into the tech you’re already using — like your CRM, marketing automation, e-commerce platform, and/or service and support — sending an SMS becomes a quick and intuitive tool you can use to boost engagement anytime. Plus, many solutions out there (including ours!) are quite budget-friendly, making them a great fit for small teams. The possibilities are inspiring. 

That’s what makes a solid SMS tool so great: It makes other aspects of marketing easier, helping your team elevate its entire game (without elevating anybody’s blood pressure).  

Want to see it in real life for your own use cases? We’re going to be at INBOUND 2022, so if you’re going too, meet us there for quick chat and demo, and you’ll see exactly how it can work for you, your team and your goals.  

Want to see it in real life for your own use cases

We’re going to be at INBOUND 2022, so if you’re going too, meet us there for quick chat and demo, and you’ll see exactly how it can work for you, your team and your goals.

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