4 Steps For Successful Promotional And Transactional SMS Marketing Of Your Business

SMS message marketing has taken the business world by storm. A really powerful tool to reach target audience and boost sales, bulk SMS marketing in the form of promotional SMS and transactional SMS, is being highly used by both large and small businesses to drive their sales.

Understanding Bulk SMS Marketing : Transactional SMS and Promotional SMS

India has the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market, making mobile advertising a smart way to promote products and services and share important business updates with customers. Among the various channels of mobile advertising, Bulk SMS marketing or instant message promoting is the fastest developing channel. Used to send instant messages in bulk, it can work wonders for driving sales leads, making new customers and maintaining healthy business relations with existing customers.

The bulk SMS marketing revolves around two types – Transactional SMS and Promotional SMS

Promtional SMS, as clear from the name itself, are the messages sent with an objective to promote your product or service. These include sales and marketing messages that are usually not requested by the recipients. Promotional SMS can be sent from 9AM to 9PM and only to phone numbers that are not on the NDNC registry (DND numbers).

Transactional SMS are those messages that are sent to the customers to update them with information necessary for using your product or service. For instance, the messages sent by banks about current account balance or about the transactions done at the ATMs, merchant stores, etc. Transactional SMS are delivered to DND (Do Not Disturb) numbers as well.

How to Get Better Results From Promotional SMS and Transactional SMS Marketing

Given that SMS marketing services and promotional SMS services are cost-effective and result-oriented, the bulk SMS services in India are on a rise. SMS marketing platform allows you to share intended information in a number of ways such as coupons, appointments, reminders, occasions, feedback, votes, challenges, etc. Bulk SMS marketing is quick (average response time for text messages is 90 seconds) and are a quantifiable marketing tool.

Here are some useful approaches to get high results from your promotional SMS advertising campaign and boost sales.

1) Create your customer database

Build a database of your customer’s details like their name, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, birthdays, etc. Ensure you get 80% of such details in an inconvenient way. With such data available, you can carry out following activities to keep your customers loyal to your product/ service –

• Send a ‘thank you’ SMS after every transaction. In the message do provide your contact information so that a customer can always reach you.
• Send them SMS with details of fresh arrivals or sales offers, etc.
• Be more sensitive – Send them SMSes on occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, festivals, etc.
• Do more than just business – Send them messages on traffic update, national calamity, etc. This may seem an unnecessary task but showing the ‘human’ side of your business can help your company in long run.

2) Refer prospects to your business website

Doing so will increase traffic to your website, resulting into higher page rank on Google and other search engines. Also customers will be better able to understand your product or service which will help them in making purchase decision.

3) Have a flexible approach

Be flexible with your content, style and tone of promotional SMS and transactional SMS. Experiment with the timings of SMSes and also by sending different copies to different customer segments. This will help you gauge the effectiveness of bulk SMS marketing. Also, keep researching on your target audience in order to find out what offers and information best appeal to them.

4) Make use of your sender ID

Your sender ID is what tells your audience who the message is from. In order to make the most out of it, suggest your business name as the ID, something that you are allowed to do by most bulk SMS providers.

In today’s business world, where technology is rapidly evolving, bulk sms marketing or text message marketing is the simplest way to initiate the process of purchasing a service or product.

Many small businesses are reaping great fruits from SMS marketing services. Bulk SMS service providers offer customized services and you are sure to find the one effective for your business. When looking for a SMS marketing company to launch your Promotional SMS and Transactional SMS capmaign, make sure you find one that you can trust.

Variform is a reliable name in the industry offering transactional SMS gateway & Bulk promotional SMS solutions for small and medium sized companies. An ISO 9001:2008 certified company Variform Solution completely understands the complexities and issues that clients face. It offers a host of services in domains such as Bulk SMS, Website Design and Branding Solution.

Through their short code services, the company makes it very simple to get the requested information quickly. Their smooth and fast services make your customers respond quickly to desired call of action. Thus leading to increased sales of your product or service.

The company’s long codes offer dedicated services to individual companies. Through long code service, you can respond to your customers in a cost-effective way and enjoy benefits of timely and regular customer interaction.

Besides Variform, Juvlon, Netcore and Kapsystems are some other reputed names that provide bulk SMS services in India.