4 Ways to Use SMS to Drive eCommerce Sales

Guest post by Sophorn Chhay

Consumers in the U.S. today use their mobile devices more than any other device to access the Internet. The latest studies show that mobile devices account for 51% of all Internet usage, while traditional computers only account for 42%.

If you want to take advantage of this information to drive sales to your business, you need to take a long, hard look at SMS marketing. SMS messages are instant, affordable, and simple.

Here are four easy ways you can drive more eCommerce sales using SMS:

1. Send Texts Judiciously

Text messages are much more personal than email or social media messages. They go right into the same Inbox alongside messages from your customers friends and family. If you start contacting people too often or without their permission, you’ll turn them off before they ever even give you a shot.

Instead, send text messages only when you have a really good reason to - usually no more than two or three per month. The last thing you want is your customers to start associating you with spam.

2. Use SMS to Add Value Besides Sales

You can use text messages to increase sales by directly offering sales and promotions, but you can also use it to drive more eCommerce traffic by simply improving the customer experience. After all, the better you treat your customers, the more likely they are to return.

Allow customers to opt-in to SMS to track shipments, receive inventory alerts when out-of-stock or on-order items come in, and thanking them for their order after the fact. If a customer has ordered from your online store, send them a text message upon delivery.

Or if you offer in-store delivery, send a text letting your customer know their order is ready to be picked up in-store. This is a great opportunity to give a little bit more value and build a good relationship with your customer.

3. Prepare An Optimized Landing Page

Because your customers are receiving text messages on their mobile phone, any landing pages you use in your SMS campaign must be optimized for all mobile devices. All links and buttons must be kept up-to-date and easy to activate on a touchscreen phone or tablet.

Graphics and flash should be kept to a minimum as they’ll make the page load slower, especially on mobile devices.

4. Offer Immediate Value

Because text messages have such a high read rate,90% in fact, and are read so quickly, you need to take advantage of your customer’s attention while you have it. People don’t want to receive messages explaining something that they can do in the future. They want to know how they can benefit immediately.

Whether you’re sending them useful product information or a relevant promotion, make sure to let them know exactly why they need this information in that very minute and not a day later.

SMS and e-commerce goes hand in hand. Once your customer opts-in to accept promotional messages from you, you have the opportunity to segment them into separate demographic, behavior, and interest lists. From there you have the data to send them highly relevant messages at the right time.

If you’re still skeptical about SMS, here's a great case study on how SMS helped Bohemian Guitar grow their sales by 98%.

Shaun Lee, Co-founder and CMO of Bohemian Guitar had this to say about using SMS. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s almost like you know the person.” said Shaun. “How many people do you text who you don’t know? As you respond to a customer on text, you’re much more informal. You instantly make a personal connection. When you make that personal connection, people are much more inclined to follow through with a purchase.”

Are you successfully using SMS marketing to drive e-commerce with your own business? Do you have any questions? Make sure to let us know with a comment or question below!

Author Biography Sophorn Chhay is the marketing guy at Trumpia, a mobile content delivery service that allows users to customize their one-to-one marketing efforts by interconnecting and optimizing all digital platforms. Follow Sophorn on Twitter(@Trumpia), LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+