According to AF2M and the Mobile Marketing Association Pakistan, SMS marketing grew by 15% in 2020, a figure that climbs to 32% for transactional SMS. Impressive statistics, which confirm the full potential that SMS can offer in a marketing strategy, regardless of the size and sector of activity of a company.

Today, we present to you the SMS marketing trends to follow in 2022, drawing on the expertise of SMSFactor, the Pakistan leader in professional SMS, which has more than 10 years of experience in the field.

SMS marketing: a traditional but effective channel

When a brand wishes to communicate with its prospects or customers, emailing remains the favored channel. However, the mailboxes are often saturated, leading to a risk that your email will never be opened. Conversely, the SMS displays an open rate of over 98%. In addition, 4 out of 5 recipients say they want to receive SMS from their favorite brands, in order to stay abreast of new products. With the SMS, you, therefore, have the assurance that your message will be read and remembered, but above all that it will be welcome.

It is also a communication channel accessible to all sectors of activity, thanks to the plurality of formats: promotional SMS, alert, appointment reminder, satisfaction survey ... From a practical point of view, SMS adapts to all smartphones and all mobile operators. An additional advantage, which saves significant time for marketing teams.

Offer personalized SMS

The SMS has the particularity of being limited in size: you only have 160 characters to send your message (not counting the mandatory information such as the possibility of unsubscribing). The choice of words is therefore essential, and the personalization of the text is the key element to convert. Therefore, do not hesitate to personalize your content by using personal information such as the name, the first name, or the identifier and the order number of your customers. It is also possible to personalize the name of the sender by replacing the 5-digit number automatically generated by the name of your brand for example. By personalizing your SMS, you will have a good chance of increasing your reading rate!

Manage and strengthen the customer relationship using SMS

Besides promoting products and services, SMS marketing is a very beneficial tool for customer relationship management. Thus, in 2022, it will be interesting to interact with your customers, regardless of their place in the conversion funnel.

For example, it is possible to send a marketing SMS on the birthday of a contact, for special attention: promotional code, the product offered, etc. You can also imagine sending an SMS for the contact. follow-up of order and thus facilitate the transmission of information. On the service side, the appointment or meeting reminder SMS will also remain very popular in customer relations.

Automate SMS sending

To save time, the marketing teams must automate the sending of SMS, by integrating them directly into different channels: business software, applications, websites, CRM, etc. This makes it possible to create precise scenarios, and to get in touch with mobile users at the right time and in the right way, according to predefined objectives (conversion, loyalty, etc.). For example, you can automate the sending of appointment reminder SMS, order confirmation, or send mass promotional SMS to a specific list of contacts.

Note: SMSFactor now offers a HubSpot plugin to send single SMS from contact files and workflows. A practical integration, which is easily installed from the HubSpot marketplace. You can send bulk SMS (from a workflow), or individual (from a contact card or a workflow). Thus, your SMS will adapt to all stages of the customer journey.

Add short tracked links to measure ROI

The short links tracked are very useful because they allow extending the contents of an SMS. Indeed, even if you are limited to 160 characters, you can add shortened URLs (between 16 and 20 characters only) in order to redirect recipients to a website, an application, a document, or your Facebook page. Note that SMSFactor hosts the files for free and securely on its platform.

In addition, just as with your emailing campaigns or your social ads actions, it is important to be able to measure the results generated by your SMS marketing campaigns. By inserting tracked links, you will be able to assess your ROI, and therefore the effectiveness of a campaign.

The links tracked can be applied in various cases: promotion of an e-commerce site, of products, the launch of a mobile application, geolocation, etc.

Use emojis and other special characters

If emojis are now an integral part of our conversations, there is no question of depriving yourself of your professional SMS. Unicode (or UTF-8 encoding) allows you to add emojis and other special characters (accents, characters of the Cyrillic or abjad alphabet, etc.) in order to further personalize your texts. However, the number of characters will be reduced to 70 for SMS using this encoding.

Set the right timing for your shipments

To hope to perform with your SMS marketing campaigns, the notion of delay is essential. Just like sending emails, there are days and times to favor increasing your open rate. These variables are unique to each company, and it is essential to know your target well to define the optimal niche. However, it is useful to remember that sending marketing SMS is prohibited between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. on Sundays and on public holidays.

The figure to remember: 66% of Pakistan people have already visited a store they usually go to after receiving an SMS. A statistic that shows the importance of good timing.

Focus on "last minute" information

With almost constant access to smartphones, more than 90% of mobile users read marketing SMS within 4 minutes of receiving them. A habit that allows companies to play on the notion of urgency and "last minute".

Brands, therefore, have the opportunity to bounce back on current events and annual events (Black Friday, end-of-year celebrations, etc.) to get in touch with their audiences. On the sales side, this makes it possible, for example, to launch flash sales, last-chance offers, or even exceptional promotions.

Anticipate the arrival of Rich Communication Services (RCS)

SMSFactor is also anticipating the arrival of RCS, a protocol, sometimes pictured as a worthy heir to SMS, which generates enriched conversations, thus offering an improved user experience. Concretely, the RCS concerns more BtoC relations, since it makes it possible to offer a conversational mode in the form of chat. Brands can also add clickable buttons to their text, as well as images, videos, or even QR codes. However, SMSFactor specifies that this technology is not yet supported by all mobile operators or all smartphones. A future trend to watch closely!