“Sending an SMS is so much cheaper than most marketing channels. And it can deliver the same (if not higher) level of ROI.”
– Krissy DeAngelis 

These days, we’re witnessing businesses spend thousands of dollars on lead generation, customer acquisition as well as satisfaction. Whether you have a pretty limited budget or a gigantic-sized one, as a business owner, marketer, or C-level executive, we guess – you would love nothing more than to generate as many high-quality leads as you possibly can. 

More than 53% of marketers spend more than half of their overall marketing budget on lead generation. And while the number is reasonable, the thing is – SMS marketing can help you generate 10x the same amount of leads that you would be generating via email marketing or other marketing tactics.

That’s right.

But, before we touch down on the cost-effective part, allow us to share some stats related to SMS marketing that’ll help you realize its true potential:

Not only can you roll out bulk texts to everyone in your contact list but with a results-driven SMS marketing platform like Textback.ai, you can build highly personalized text messages and at the same time, engage your audience in two-way conversations.

Yes – that’s how impressive SMS marketing actually is.

And as we mentioned before – SMS marketing is cost-effective. Unlike other strategies, it’s not budget-draining. SMS marketing is powerful with a reliable and world-class SMS marketing automation platform like Textback.ai. And we’d love nothing more than to show you how you can use our platform to run a strategic and highly converting SMS marketing campaign.

Throughout this blog post, we’ll discuss how to create a results-driven and conversion-focused SMS marketing campaign in 2022.

Without further ado, let’s dive straight into it.

How to Build a Results-Driven & Conversion-Focused
SMS Marketing Campaign in 2022? 

Following are the six steps you need to follow to build a results-driven SMS marketing campaign in 2022:

  1. Set Goals & Desired Outcomes
  2. Figure Out What You Want to Achieve
  3. Choose the Right SMS Marketing Platform
  4. Match the Use Case with the Right Route & Start Building an SMS Subscriber List 
  5. Plan Your First SMS Marketing Campaign
  6. Measure & Optimize

1. Set Goals & Desired Outcomes

SMS marketing is a never-ending journey. Just like other marketing campaigns, it’ll involve a lot of testing, trying, and optimizing. Sometimes – you’ll find your SMS marketing campaigns to deliver an extremely poor ROI. On the other hand, some of our SMS marketing campaigns may turn out to be a blast.

To head in the right direction, it’s extremely important to set your goals and desired outcomes. By goals, we don’t mean the type of SMS marketing campaign you’d like to run. We’ll do that in the next step.

The first step is to identify your goals and desired outcomes. Some common ones may include:

  • Grow your SMS Contact List
  • Grow Your Email List – yes, you may use SMS campaigns to grow your email list.
  • Increase your Conversion Rate
  • Increase Customer Engagement Rate

While these are common goals, they are just vague statements. Instead, your goals need to be more specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-specific. 

And that’s where SMART goals come in. While setting SMART goals is common among marketers, if you aren’t familiar with the concept of SMART goals, allow us to explain. SMART goals are:

  • Specific (S) – Your goals should be specific. Setting goals by listing down vague statements like increase conversion rate, increase customer engagement rate is not enough. Instead, you need to set goals that are more specific like “Increase conversion rate by 5% in the next quarter.”
  • Measurable (M) – Your goals should be measurable. While we’ll further be dividing the goals into objectives, you need to make sure that you’re able to measure your goals after a specific time period. For instance, if I set a goal “increase conversion rate in the next one year,” then you’ll never be able to measure it as you haven’t been specific with your goal setting. Instead, you can set it as – “increase conversion rate by 2% in the next one month.” Now, throughout and after the month, you can measure your SMS marketing campaign to understand whether it is helping you achieve your goal.
  • Actionable (A) – Your goals should make you take action. Having vague statements like “increase conversion rate,” “build an email list” are not actionable. These statements seem like goals that you have created just for the sake of doing so. Instead, you should make try to be as specific as possible with your goal-setting process – which will help you make sure that they seem actionable.
  • Realistic (R) – Setting unrealistic goals will just bring down your and your team members’ morale. You can’t set a goal like “double your conversion rate by the end of this month.” That’s not possible. It’s important to set realistic goals that you and your team can actually achieve.  
  • Time-Specific (T) – Not only should you set short-term goals but it’s equally important to set long-term ones as well. But while setting them, you need to make sure that your goals are time-specific. For example, your short-term goal can be “increase conversion rate by 10% in the next quarter,” and your long-term goal can be “double your conversion rate in the next one year.” As you can see, both these goals are time-specific and will immediately get you to take action.

2. Figure Out What You Want to Achieve

Before you start planning your SMS marketing campaign, it’s important to note that running an SMS marketing campaign is not a straightforward process. Depending on your goals, needs, and requirements, you may build different types of campaigns that serve different purposes.

For example, if you are running a sale and would like to notify your already-existing customers, then you can build an SMS marketing campaign that helps you with the same. 

60+ BFCM SMS Marketing Examples And Templates | MessageMedia

Or what if you want to reach nurture cart abandoners? In that case, you can build an SMS marketing campaign that targets cart abandoners.

Here’s a brilliant example:

How to use SMS marketing for ecommerce conversion optimization

Different campaigns serve different purposes. At the same time, you can build a strategic SMS marketing campaign that immediately rolls out trigger-based SMS to help you put the right message in front of the right people at the right time.

For example, you can build strategic drip campaigns that help you:

  • Send SMS to your customers when they sign up on your website.
  • Send SMS when they place an order.
  • Send SMS if the customer hasn’t purchased from you in the past 30 days.
  • Send educational text messages
  • And more!

Honestly, we’d say – the possibilities are endless.

So – before you start building an SMS marketing campaign, we’d strongly advise you to figure out what you want to achieve with SMS marketing. 

In addition to that, prepare a list of the different types of campaigns you’d like to run. To build a strategic SMS marketing drip campaign, you can always head over to Textback.ai, build a Responder Template, and start working your magic

Let’s say you’re running a summer sale and want your customers to know about it. In that case, you can always send bulk messages (highly personalized) to every single person in your Contact list. 

Graphical user interface, text, application, email Description automatically generated

So, as we mentioned before, the first step is to identify the purpose of the SMS marketing campaign. And based on that, you can move ahead and plan your strategy.

3. Choose the Right SMS Marketing Platform

Now you have set your goals and desired outcomes. At the same time, you may have a rough idea of the type of campaigns you’d like to run. But you can’t just use your phone and manually send over text messages to your customers one by one. 

To build a results-driven SMS marketing campaign, you need to choose the right SMS marketing platform that helps you create strategic campaigns, build contact lists, send bulk text messages, engage with your audience in two-way conversations and do so much more.

Some of the most common benefits of equipping yourself with an SMS marketing platform includes the ability to:

  • Engage Your Customers in 2-Way Conversations
  • Schedule Text Messages
  • Roll Out Highly Personalized Bulk Messages 
  • Save Your Precious Dollars & Time
  • Build Drip Campaigns that Help You Put Yourself in Front of Your Customers at the Right Time
  • Gain Insights into Your Campaigns
  • And so much more!

Textback.ai is a results-driven and conversion-focused Patented AI-Powered SMS Marketing Platform that’ll help you build and run strategic SMS marketing campaigns to help you engage with your customers, increase conversion rate, acquire new customers, and grow your business.

Feel free to read our highly-detailed and insightful “The 5 Best SMS Marketing Platforms to Level Up Your SMS Marketing Efforts in 2022” guide to gain insights into the five best SMS marketing platforms in 2022.  

4. Match the Use Case with the Right Route & Start Building an SMS Subscriber List

Once you choose an SMS marketing software – based on your needs, the next step is to match the use case with the right route and build your SMS subscriber list. 

For example, if you are planning on rolling out bulk messages, then you’ll obviously need a different route than the one you’d be using for one-time passwords. With Textback.ai, you can find and apply the right routing solution – based on your needs and preferences. 

And once you have finalized the routes based on your needs, the next step is to build an SMS subscriber list. Now, obviously, to run an SMS marketing campaign, you will need a list of prospects or customers you can text.

If you don’t have any numbers, you’ll never be able to reach out to anybody. So, the next step is to start building your SMS subscriber list. Now, to get these numbers and their permission to send them SMS, you need to get the word out. Following are the different strategies you can implement to build your SMS subscriber list from scratch:

  • Run Influencer Marketing Campaign
  • Run a Free Giveaway on Social Media
  • Add a Sign Up for Text Alerts Option on Your Website
  • Run Advertising Campaigns
  • Run a Referral Campaign

When people purchase products on your website or download your mobile application, you can request their phone number and just below it – ask them whether they’d like to sign up for text alerts. 

And once you have their numbers and permissions, you can start running strategic SMS marketing campaigns that serve different purposes.  

5. Plan & Run Your First SMS Marketing Campaign

Now the final step is to plan and run your first SMS marketing campaign. Depending on your goals and requirements, you can tap into the numerous features of Textback.ai and build a highly-converting SMS marketing campaign.

6. Measure & Optimize

Now as important it is to build strategic SMS marketing campaigns, what’s even more important is measuring and optimizing your campaigns. 

Remember – not all your campaigns will be successful from the get-go. SMS marketing involves a lot of trying, testing and optimization.

And you’ll only be able to know what’s working well for you and what’s not by measuring your campaigns. Our advanced Analytics dashboard will help you gain insights into your campaigns and track the relevant metrics. For every campaign you run, you can track:

  • Sent 
  • Delivered
  • Clicked
  • Replied
  • Failed
  • Optout
  • Blocked
  • Attempt Failed

You can also gain insights into much more like how many subscribers you gained from people clicking on your link, how many people purchased your product after clicking through your link, and more.

Plan Your First SMS Marketing Campaign Today!

SMS marketing is one of the most powerful digital marketing strategies that you can tap into in today’s era. 

But to tap into its full force, you need to equip yourself with a powerful SMS automation platform like Textback.ai that’s action-packed with numerous features. 

We don’t charge based on the number of SMS you send or the features you use. Instead, we genuinely want to see you hitting your KPIs – which is why we have a Performance-Based Pricing model in place. 

If you have been planning to tap into SMS marketing, now’s the right time to do so. 

Start your Free Trial today!