How Personalized SMS Experiences Engage Mobile Consumers
Consumers want personalized experiences, and SMS is an effective way to deliver them. This lesson dives into how you can deepen customer relationships with SMS personalization.
SMS Marketing Guide
With the rise of mobile commerce, SMS marketing creates countless opportunities for brands to engage with customers like never before.
But it’s providing a personalized mobile shopping experience that makes all the difference in creating a mobile buyer journey that keeps shoppers coming back.
The power of personalization
For brands, that means creating the optimal, highly-targeted path to purchase for each and every customer. That targeted path might include custom product recommendations, exclusive discounts, and targeted engagements based on customer behavior.
Why is this level of personalization so important to SMS marketing? Because shoppers crave experiences that are tailored to them.
Over 41% of consumers are willing to share information with a brand in order to receive a more personalized SMS experience, and more than half are more likely to make a purchase if the messages they received are personalized.
The bottom line: consumers want personalized shopping experiences, and they want them via text. Your brand needs to deliver on that promise if you want to acquire and retain more loyal customers.
How SMS offers advanced personalization
With SMS marketing, you can leverage data to connect with customers at each stage of the buyer journey, keeping them interested and engaged throughout. Here are a few ways that you can use texting at different customer stages:
1. Welcome flows
After a customer opts in to SMS, send them an automated message to welcome them and offer them an exclusive discount on their next purchase as a thanks for joining.
2. Loyalty campaigns
If you have a loyalty program, send a text with an invitation to join. For subscribers who are already loyalty members, use SMS to let them know how many points they collected via their recent purchase, or reveal exciting new perks when they reach the next program tier.
3. Transactional messages
Send transactional messages when the customer’s item ships, when it’s delivered, and if there are any shipping delays to always keep them informed and excited about what’s to come.
4. Review requests
After a customer’s item is delivered, send them a feedback request, either as a return message or an on-site review. 98% of shoppers say authentic reviews are the most important factor influencing their purchase decisions, and SMS can help you more easily capture that content.
5. Cross sells and upsells
Send SMS product recommendations based on your customers’ purchases, wish lists, or browsing history.
6. Win-back campaigns
If a customer hasn’t purchased in a while, use a win-back campaign to remind them what great products you have to offer and incentivize them to return with a discount (like 10% off their next order).
Use data for enhanced personalization
When messaging subscribers using the strategies above, greet them by name and leverage available customer data like location, gender, and cart value to create a message that is tailored to them (and doesn’t feel like a generic text that was sent to every shopper).
To further enhance personalization, collect zero party data about your customers by asking them questions about their needs, interests, or product preferences, so you can make every text relevant and maximize engagement.
SMS keeps brands and customers connected
SMS marketing helps brands reduce churn by offering personalized messages and offers at every stage of the buyer journey. Plus, the more you do it, the better you’ll be at understanding what your customers want at every touchpoint so you can continuously refine and improve the entire buying experience.