For today’s eCommerce brands, building lasting connections with your customers means more than just sending engaging messages — it means sending the right message for each and every shopper.
By personalizing every SMS message you send, your brand can cultivate emotional connections that build community and keep shoppers coming back. In fact, 54% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase if the messages they receive are personalized, making it essential to create amazing, tailored customer experiences to bolster your brand equity.
But, how can your brand create these high-converting — and highly personal — customer experiences at scale?
We’ve compiled our four best practices for building a top-performing SMS marketing strategy.
1. Understand your shoppers, then send them down the optimal buyer journey
No customer is the same, so don’t treat them all the same. Instead, send your shoppers down the path that’s right for them with the messages they want to receive.
If a shopper has abandoned their cart without making a purchase, leverage their purchasing history to set conditions so you can send messages that are likely to engage them.
Are they a high-value repeat shopper? If so, they’re likely more inclined to return and purchase, so you can send a personalized message welcoming them back. Or, if this is their first time shopping on your site, send a message introducing your brand — with an enticing discount!
With Yotpo SMS & Email’s industry-leading Flow Builder, brands can build a perfectly tailored experience for every shopper. From a robust library of out-of-the-box message flows, like cart abandonment and product cross-sells, to fully customizable flows, Yotpo SMS & Email makes it easy for brands to send personalized messages that convert — in fact, brands see 4x higher ROI with targeted SMS flows than any other SMS campaign.
2. Ask the right questions to give the right recommendations in 1:1 conversations
Sometimes, the best way to understand what your customers want is to just simply ask them.
With SMS marketing, it’s easy to have 1:1 conversations (and it doesn’t take a team of support specialists, either). Instead, use Yotpo SMS & Email to set up automated conversational flows after a customer takes an action, like signs up to receive your texts or purchases a certain product. From there, ask them a series of questions so you can recommend products that are perfect for them.
Over half (51%) of consumers are interested in being able to text with the brands they love, so it’s time to get texting.
3. Engage your loyalty program members via text
Already a highly engaged group of shoppers, your loyalty members are an ideal segment to send tailored, high-converting messages. In fact, over 76% of loyalty members prefer to receive personalized updates from their favorite brands via SMS.
To increase loyalty program adoption and boost member engagement, brands should send targeted messages congratulating members when they reach new perks, like a VIP Tier achievement. Send messages with personalized loyalty data, like point balance and VIP Tier, as well as tailored rewards through our seamless integration with Yotpo Loyalty & Referrals.
4. Segment to perfection
By building segments that accommodate every shoppers’ unique attributes, your brand can be sure you’re sending every customer targeted messages perfectly tailored to them.
Leverage Yotpo SMS & Email’s robust segmentation engine to create high-performing segments, like high-value shoppers, location, product interests, prospects, gender, even AI-powered predictive segments — just to name a few!
Send texts with incentives tailored to the segment, like a specific discount or an experiential promotion, to increase engagement and make every shopper feel special.
Personalized messages build personal connections
Creating tailored customer experiences is one of the most powerful ways a brand can connect with their shoppers. SMS marketing cultivates these connections — empowering your brand to become a community.
To learn more about SMS marketing, read our guide, The Complete Guide to Generating Fast ROI with SMS Marketing, check out our insights, Survey: Do Consumers Really Want to Receive Texts From Brands?, and get started with our limited time promotion.