Proud family man, global traveler and creator of award-winning agencies Weberous and Generate Culture serving clients worldwide @rafaelromis
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In 2022, mobile migration continues. E-commerce brands are seeing desktop users drop while mobile rises across all marketing channels. According to Insider Intelligence, mobile e-commerce sales reached $362 billion in 2021—a 16% increase from 2020. In 2025, it’s expected to nearly double, with mobile predicted to make up $710 billion of total e-commerce sales.
As the world continues migrating from desktop to mobile, so should your marketing strategy if you want to keep up. We use SMS for a lot of our e-commerce clients, and there are four reasons why I believe SMS is the future of e-commerce:
1. It’s the fastest marketing channel available.
In today’s world of microwave dinners, UberEats deliveries and Amazon Prime two-day shipping, faster is better. The same holds true with marketing. If you’re too slow, the competition is going to win your audience over. Thankfully, you can upgrade how quickly you reach your audience with SMS.
In the olden days, most average Joe marketers had to rely on direct mail to capture sales from a new audience. This mail-delivery marketing method could take weeks to reach your audience and weeks to get a reply. Now, you can reach your audience instantly.
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According to EZ Texting’s 2019 Mobile Usage Report, nearly 70% of people open up a new text message within five minutes. And over 90% check their new text message within 30 minutes. This is especially important if you have an urgent message like:
• A limited-time flash sale.
• Early access to a product launch.
• An important update on an order.
The ability to reach your audience quickly isn’t something to look over, and SMS is the best channel to send an urgent marketing message that you need your audience to read quickly.
2. Texting is super personal.
What’s the first thing most people do when they wake up? Pray? Meditate? Practice gratefulness? Probably not for the majority. Instead, most people check their phones first thing in the morning.
Your audience has a tight-knit personal relationship with their phone—mainly because it’s the stepping stone to a close relationship with their loved ones in the modern world. Asking for someone’s phone number is a big deal. It’s personal. It’s intimate.
We all know that creating rapport with your customers is the key to creating meaningful relationships, and creating these relationships is ultimately what drives revenue.
If someone accepts your SMS marketing invitation, allowing you to enter their “texting world,” you shouldn’t take it lightly. You’ve opened up a world of possibilities to reach them on a more personal level than any other marketing channel.
3. SMS is a two-way conversation.
There was a time in the marketing world when a single line of copy could win over an entire generation. However, the Mad Men days with Don Draper one-liners are long gone. Now, marketing is all about getting hundreds of tiny interactions right.
The reason SMS is so personal is that it opens up the doorway to a one-on-one conversation. The keyword here is “conversation.” With email, it’s a bit more formal. It takes a bit more effort to reply. Having a two-way conversation isn’t expected or even desired a lot of the time.
The most effective marketers create email relationships that are conversational. But doing this through email is an uphill battle. However, with SMS, this type of two-way communication is implied.
As mentioned earlier, driving revenue by creating strong relationships with your customers happens naturally when you can build rapport. This is true whether you’re a door-to-door salesman or you sell T-shirts online.
With SMS, you can create real conversations with your customers. The best SMS marketers answer their audience’s questions quickly, ask them for feedback and treat them like real people.
4. It outperforms other marketing channels.
SMS sounds like it should work well in theory, but just how well does it actually perform?
While SMS is still an infant in the marketing world, we can get a snapshot of just how lucrative it is by comparing it to its closest marketing relative, email. In fact, SMS should really be thought of as an extension of email marketing. Just like email, it offers simple, short messages that can be sent out to a specific segment of your audience who have intentionally opted-in to receive your marketing messages.
We know email is one of the most profitable marketing channels. In fact, according to Campaign Monitor, it has the highest return on investment (ROI) of any marketing channel at $44 for every $1 spent. But what about SMS?
While there isn’t a ton of data on SMS ROI quite yet, there are a few other metrics we can use to paint a picture of its performance:
• Open Rates
According to SMS Comparison, the average open rate for SMS is 98%. Compared to the average email open rate of about 15%-20%, this number is just absurd. While nearly 80%-85% of your email subscribers won’t even see your email, only 2% of your SMS messages will fall by the wayside.
Oftentimes, the downfall of marketing campaigns isn’t necessarily the offer. Sometimes, your message would have converted your audience, but it just got lost in the mix. This incredible deliverability of a nearly 100% open rate is where SMS shines.
• Click-Through Rates
According to SimpleTexting’s 2021 SMS Marketing Report, 43% of business owners reported average SMS click-through rates (CTRs) of 20%-35%. Another 28% reported average SMS CTRs of 10%-20%. This means that over 71% of business owners are getting 10%-35% click-through rates with SMS. The metrics we saw earlier from emails pale in comparison. And remember, these are just average SMS metrics.
With a well-thought-out SMS strategy, there’s no telling how lucrative this growing channel will be. Then again, maybe people will eventually start neglecting it, like with emails. One thing’s for sure: As the e-commerce world becomes ever more mobile, SMS marketing will continue to rise.
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Author: Rafael Romis, Forbes Councils Member
