With a 98% read rate, SMS is a barely used channel full of potential for online businesses.
SMS stands for short message service, meaning it’s the text based messaging you receive and read on mobile phones. It’s a highly intimate medium – more intimate than email, with a much higher open rate.
SMS can be used by eCommerce businesses for messages such as delivery announcements, however it can also do so much more. Triggered messages in this medium are based on very detailed shopper behavior in specific scenarios. It’s another channel you can use that can be fully joined up with other web and email customer experiences.
Why should I use it?
Customers are already used to receiving service-based SMS, so why not leverage the engagement to achieve other marketing objectives?
Of course, it’s important to stay respectful of the medium. Don’t bombard your customers with messages, and keep messages you do send highly personalized and specific to the individual customer. That way, you can build up trust with your customers and your messages will stand out more. After all, who isn’t excited when they receive a text? There’s a reason 60% of consumers check and answer texts within 1-5 minutes of receiving the message.
You can also easily blend triggered SMS messages with other channels as part of a personalized cross-channel experience for your customers. Remember, 80% of customers now consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products and services.
Learn more: The complete guide to SMS marketing
Use cases for triggered SMS messages
There are many use cases for engaging your customers with triggered SMS messages. Here are some examples.
Cart and browse abandonment
Similarly to cart and browse abandonment emails, SMS messages can be used to remind customers of a purchase they haven’t made yet. By adding SMS to your cadence as well as email, you will likely have a higher response rate.
A sample cadence could be:
- SMS 15 minutes after abandonment
- Email 24 hours after abandonment
- SMS 48 hours after abandonment
- Email 7 days after abandonment
Price drop
If a customer has been spending a lot of time looking at a product but they haven’t bought it yet, they may be more tempted to buy it once it has dropped in price. Sending them a text message to inform them of price drops will encourage them to make the purchase.
Stock messages
If a customer browsed a product that was out of stock, you can give them the option to share their phone number and set up a triggered SMS message to let them know when the product comes back into stock.
Similarly, you can set up an SMS message to trigger when a hot item they have browsed is low in stock, convincing them that now is the time to buy. This is especially useful if the product is already on their wishlist.
Messages about new stock from their favorite brand or category can also increase chances of purchase.
Replenishment
If your products are the type that customers are likely to want to buy again after they run out (such as vitamins or make-up), reminding them to re-order after a certain period of time depending on the lifecycle of the product can be useful for both parties. Not only will they remember to buy before they run out, you have a new purchase.
What if I don’t have any mobile numbers?
Don’t worry! You can add phone number data capture to our templates, which can be aligned and/or targeted to individual customers at key stages of the customer journey. There are lots of opportunities to align data capture with the use cases in this article and drive mobile number collection.
For example, when a product is added to a wishlist a data capture creative can be triggered saying that “this product is hot” and “let us text you if it becomes low in stock”.
I want to implement triggered SMS
That’s awesome! Let us help you. Book a demo with us today, or get in touch with your account manager.
