How to Build a Scalable SMS Marketing Service for Your Agency

The rise of mobile commerce means brands can communicate with customers in more ways than ever before.

Your clients need to be able to reach their consumers where they’re most active, but the channels they’ve traditionally used to reach customers, like email and social media, are no longer the most effective ways to reach mobile shoppers. Brands need to cut through the marketing noise and reach customers where they are: on their phones.

Plus, with recent privacy changes implemented by Apple in the iOS 15 release, opt-in marketing channels are more important than ever. SMS marketing is already adapted to the mobile-first, customer-first, privacy-first environment, so it is the perfect way for brands to effectively engage consumers as privacy policies continue to tighten.

SMS holds so much potential for your clients that want to scale up, especially since many brands still aren’t utilizing it to its full potential (or even at all). Those who make the most of SMS marketing are the ones that will create loyal, valuable, happy customers both today and in the future.

As part of our mission to provide our agency partners with the tools to help their clients succeed, we’ve created the Yotpo SMS Managed Services Program. This allows digital agencies to create a scalable SMS marketing service offering that drives revenue and delivers a 25x+ ROI for clients.

An integral part of Yotpo’s “Best in Class” Global Partner Program, the Yotpo SMS Managed Services Program supports the long-term success of agencies as they build their SMS practice from the ground up or expand their existing SMS marketing services.

Why join the Yotpo SMS Managed Services Program?

• Build a new revenue stream.

Build your own service-based, high-growth revenue stream and expand your agency’s SMS marketing service offerings. Your dedicated Managed Services Strategist will help you develop the best pricing and marketing strategies for your services. Plus, you can tap into Yotpo’s network of 24,000 brands already working with Yotpo SMS.

• Receive 360-degree support.

Benefit from extensive resources and continued support to successfully launch, implement, and grow your own service to manage your clients’ entire SMS practice and campaign management. From onboarding to pre- and post-sale support and enablement, we empower agencies to be in the driver’s seat of their clients’ success.

• Learn from the experts.

Your dedicated Managed Services Partner Manager and SMS Strategist provide the industry expertise and end-to-end SMS knowledge needed to build a sustainable and dynamic SMS offering for your clients that drives explosive ROI.

• Own your client relationship. 

Gain exclusive access to enablement materials, certification courses, white label content, and comprehensive training for your team on how to effectively position and sell SMS marketing to your clients.

• Take advantage of preferred agency pricing.

Agencies that join the SMS Managed Services Program enjoy discounted platform fees, no commitment, and reduced usage rates.

The Yotpo SMS Managed Services Program provides your agency with the tools, resources, and know-how you need to create successful SMS marketing strategies and campaigns that enable your clients to build deeper connections with their customers, drive retention and loyalty, and skyrocket sales.

Yotpo SMS: Features and benefits

By joining the SMS Managed Services Program, your agency will have access to Yotpo’s powerful SMS marketing solution, which gives brands and agencies the tools to craft unbeatable SMS experiences for today’s mobile shoppers. Here are some of the features and benefits of Yotpo SMS:

• Industry-leading SMS Flow Builder: Build SMS flows powered by real-time events (like abandoned carts) and custom conditions to send each subscriber down their own personalized path to purchase.
• Robust segmentation engine: Create hyper-targeted segments to engage subscribers based on advanced data points, including customer behavior, attributes, and SMS data.
• Unmatched deliverability: Our best-in-class SMS deliverability engine ensures your message gets delivered on time, every time.
• Compliance protection: Our subscriber tools are built according to TCPA, CTIA, and GDPR guidelines to guarantee your list is compliant with the latest privacy regulations.
• Multi-channel subscriber collection: Collect SMS subscribers anywhere with tools built to reach the mobile consumer: keywords, QR Codes, native-text sign-up, Shopify POS, and more.
• Advanced analytics: Our comprehensive reporting offers real-time, actionable data on revenue, spend, ROI, CTR, and CVR for every text you send.

We also provide various tools and resources for agencies looking to enhance their SMS communications, including our SMS Analyzer, an interactive tools that lets you measure the impact of your texts; A+ Texts, our inspiration gallery of real SMS messages from real brands; and the SMS Campaign Planner, which makes it easy to build campaigns around important retail events.

Yotpo’s eCommerce marketing platform offers the most advanced solutions not just for SMS marketing, but for customer reviews, visual marketing, loyalty, and referrals, too. Our single platform approach allows agencies and brands to create more holistic marketing programs, and analyze metrics both within and across channels. SMS integrates with all of Yotpo’s marketing solutions to boost engagement and drive sales.

The SMS Managed Services Program combines Yotpo’s powerful SMS solution with the know-how of Yotpo’s SMS marketing experts, to help your agency create a new revenue stream for your business, and a new revenue channel for your clients.

When it comes to building and pricing your SMS offering for clients, it’s important to know how much bandwidth you’ll need to set it up. The good news is, with Yotpo SMS, it’s much less of an investment than setting up an email marketing program.

We’ve found that our top agency partners of all sizes and agency types offer their brands retainer-based services to execute the deliverables listed below:

Initial strategy development

Step 1: Set-up and integration

• Installing and configuring Yotpo SMS

Step 2: Essential flow creation

• Welcome flow: Convert new subscribers into customers with an engaging welcome flow. Incentivize purchases with discounts, and add a link so engagement is easy. If you can convert new SMS subscribers, you can leverage the data you learn from their purchasing behavior to create more targeted flows in the future.
• Cart abandonment flow: If a shopper recently visited a site, added a product to their cart, and then left without making a purchase, your client can send a cart abandonment message encouraging the customer to return and purchase. Include additional incentives tailored to that shoppers’ preferences and habits to drive more engagement. Multi-step messages generate 2x ROI than single messages, so we recommend sending follow ups when customers don’t engage at first.
• Transactional Flows: Transactional messages allow brands to update customers about their recent orders directly via SMS, delivering top-notch customer care and service experiences. Messages in a transactional flow might include order confirmations, shipping updates, subscription notifications, and more.

Step 3: Create subscriber collection elements

• eCommerce checkout: Checkout is the most natural part of the shopping experience, and therefore, it has the highest success rate. Customers have already made their purchase decision; now, your client needs to incentivize their decision to sign up for SMS messages in the most inviting way. Place content on the checkout page to invite shoppers to sign up via text to receive special offers on their next orders. Brands that leverage an SMS opt-in directly at the time of checkout see over 45% higher mobile number capture rates.
• On-site pop-ups: Capitalize on shoppers visiting your client’s website by engaging them with a pop-up window and an offer to incentivize SMS subscription. Brands that use on-site SMS widgets and elements see, on average, 5% higher conversion rates.
• Social media: Encourage followers on social channels to text a keyword to opt in to receive texts. If they already follow your client on social channels, they’re already engaged with their mobile content. Leverage this audience with SMS marketing to drive them from social media to the site.
• Email marketing: Email subscribers may be even more eager to receive texts from a brand — they just might not yet be aware of SMS as an option. Engage shoppers already receiving communications from your clients via email, and encourage them to join another channel for special SMS-only discounts. Email and SMS work well together, so make sure to use them both to optimize shopper engagement.

Step 4: Campaign creation

• Create a content calendar.
• Create and schedule content related to events, sales, product releases, etc.
• Recommended cadence: 4-6 campaigns per month

Once you have your initial SMS program set up for each client, you’ll need to focus on optimization and management. Luckily, that’s a much lighter lift.

For ongoing optimization and management of SMS programs, the top agencies we work with typically allocate about 10 hours each month. Here’s how that breaks down.

SMS optimizations

It’s important to analyze your SMS efforts every 30 days to make sure you’re continually improving on what is working and course-correcting underperforming efforts. To get started, it’s key to have a good benchmark so you can leverage your results based on industry standards. Here are some percentages to compare against:

Yotpo SMS reporting allows you to gain insights into the most crucial aspects of your program including revenue, ROI, cost, subscriber growth, unsubscribe data, and more. Downloadable reports are also available based on the time period you select.

To analyze your clients’ SMS performance, the following data points are the most important:

• Placed orders: While spend and product costs can vary depending on seasonality, it’s important to track the actual improvement of orders placed over time in conjunction with revenue generated.
• Conversion rate: Make sure that the quality of users coming to the site via SMS is high versus the total number of site traffic generated. This will allow you to determine if your SMS efforts are driving qualified buyers and not just digital window shoppers.
• ROI: With our Yotpo SMS analytics, you can easily keep track of your spend over any designated time period. If you want to factor in your cost of SMS services into spend, use the formula below:

Revenue Generated / (Cost + SMS Managed Services Fee)

If the results are negative, use Yotpo SMS’s Revenue Sources analytics to identify where you are seeing a negative trend. Once you’ve identified areas to optimize, you can make changes where needed.

Need help calculating what your agency’s ROI will be? Feel free to book time with Danielle Butera here for a hands-on Agency ROI Workshop.

SMS attribution

With SMS attribution, you can connect user interactions to a specific marketing campaign, to find out how customers came across your clients’ product or service. Yotpo SMS allows you to have full control over how you measure SMS results for your clients.

The SMS attribution model works with two possible scenarios:

• Last delivered SMS: If a customer received a text message from you in the last X days.
• Last clicked SMS: If a customer received a text message from you in the last X days and clicked on it.

Our advanced attribution model helps brands check whether incoming orders are a result of their SMS marketing efforts or not. It even digs a little deeper and shows the specific campaign, flow, or automation that drove the conversion.

With Yotpo SMS Managed Services, you’ll have the advanced technology, hands-on support, and resources you need to build a scalable SMS marketing program for your existing clients, plus an enticing offering to bring in new ones. Add your clients to the network of thousands of brands that are using SMS to drive engagement, retention, and revenue.

These brands are driving incredible engagement and sales with Yotpo SMS. Here’s how they are doing it.

Princess Polly drives millions in sales in 3 months with Yotpo SMS

Fashion-forward clothing brand Princess Polly needed a way to build better experiences for their Gen Z customer base and drive brand loyalty for global audiences. They implemented Yotpo SMS, and integrated it with their existing loyalty program to drive engagement.

The result: 43% MoM subscriber growth, 64x total ROI since launch, and 10x higher ROI from loyalty members.

Parks Project drives 73x ROI with Yotpo SMS

Parks Project, a social enterprise brand creating national park-themed apparel and accessories, wanted to drive more incremental sales through marketing channel diversification. In SMS, they saw a unique opportunity to reach, connect, and grow with their community on a more personal level.

The result: 80x ROI on exclusive sale announcements, 73x ROI on triggered flows, and 35% MoM subscriber growth.

Til You Collapse drives 27x ROI with Yotpo SMS

Inclusive activewear brand Til You Collapse wanted a way to engage their loyal fanbase differently with unique, memorable experiences in an increasingly competitive market. They implemented SMS, enabling them to have direct conversations with customers that not only foster loyalty, but help the brand better understand their shoppers’ preferences and interests.

The result: Over 16% MoM revenue increase, and over 29% CVR on SMS welcome messages for new subscribers.

Alkaline Herb Shop sees 20% revenue growth with Yotpo SMS

Affordable supplement brand Alkaline Herb Shop wanted to create a new marketing channel to better connect with customers and increase sales. They encouraged customers to sign up for SMS messages using a few different subscriber collection methods, including on-site popups offering a 15% off coupon and free cookbook; an email sent to their entire database offering a discount for signing up; and promotions on social media using keyword sign-ups.

The result: Over 160x ROI, 20% MoM growth in revenue with SMS, and 33% of abandoned carts recovered with SMS messages.

Are you ready to build a scalable SMS marketing service offering for your agency? To learn more about Yotpo’s SMS Managed Services Program and get started, feel free to book time with Danielle Butera, Senior Manager of Agency Managed Services.