Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
What is Text Marketing and What Makes it so Effective?
Published on 7 November 2022
High-performing marketers understand the need for different marketing channels in achieving their goals. Each popular digital marketing channel, such as display advertising, native advertising, influencer marketing, search engine marketing, and email marketing has its own strengths and weaknesses. For example, display and native advertising offer better traffic results when compared to email marketing, but the latter is better at retargeting existing customers to increase customer loyalty.
In this post, we will talk text marketing and about the unique value proposition that makes it so effective.
What is text marketing?
Text marketing utilizes text messaging to send subscribers offers, promotions, and reminders. The messages can be in plain text or contain various media formats, depending on the text messaging platform used. Traditionally, text marketing is done via SMS, but can also be done via various other text messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, LINE, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, etc.
In order for text marketing to be effective, it needs to be done via a popular channel. As such, a channel or a platform that works well for a region may not work well for another region. For instance, even though SMS is still a popular messaging channel for the US population, it has not been popular in Indonesia for years as Indonesians primarily send and receive text messages via WhatsApp – making it suboptimum, given the choice, to do text marketing in Indonesia using any other text messaging platforms but WhatsApp. As most marketers inherently understand, for a marketing campaign to have a higher chance of success, we need to meet our customers where they are.
By using Knal for your text marketing needs, your text messages are sent via WhatsApp. Furthermore, using Knal makes it easier to comply with WhatsApp Business Policy.
What makes text marketing so effective?
Customers carry their mobile phones everywhere they go and they check their favorite messaging channels frequently for convenient communication with their friends and loved ones. Being able to have a two-way interactive conversation with their favorite brands via the same communication channel makes it natural and convenient for customers.
Text marketing is also an effective way to drive revenue and build customer loyalty as, unlike other marketing channels, text marketing naturally allows businesses to have interactive two-way conversations with customers. And because WhatsApp requires brands to obtain consent from customers and for brands to offer an easy way to unsubscribe from the text marketing program, the audience for the brand’s WhatsApp text marketing programs consists of very few to none no-intent customers – increasing click-through rates and conversion rates. With the right tools and execution, text marketing is a powerful channel to increase sales.
It is certainly possible to do text marketing manually, but without the proper tools, it can be very difficult to do it effectively at scale. For example, it can be very difficult and time-consuming to manually build and segment a brand’s subscribers – making it almost impossible to only send customers offers they are interested in. At the same time, it can be almost impossible to keep track of the results of each text marketing campaign, making A/B tests and improvements attainable only with the right text marketing partner. Without the right tools, even just complying with WhatsApp Business Policy, i.e. its easy opt-out policy, can be a hassle when there are hundreds, if not thousands of subscribers.
Innovative brands use text marketing to engage customers at every point of the customer journey in a more personalized and measurable way. Without personalization, text marketing messages are in danger of being categorized as spam. Without measurability, marketers only have a ballpark estimate of the performance of the campaign they just send – and if multiple marketing campaigns are running, it is not possible to know with certainty which campaign brings in the most value.
The time has come for (Indonesian) brands to launch a WhatsApp text marketing channel
As mentioned in our other post, it has never been easier for brands to start selling, but it has never been more difficult for brands to differentiate themselves. Email marketing program has seen decreasing click-through rates over the years, while display advertising has also seen a similar drop in performance results. Not only do customers want more convenient brand interactions, but email marketing and display advertisements have seen a drop in performance results, with overcrowdedness being a factor. It does not help that recent privacy changes by Apple on iOS mean more challenges for display advertisements.
It has never been clearer that digital marketers need to diversify their marketing channels.
—————
If you are keen to learn more about Knal and how we can help you grow your company or brand, fill up the form at https://knal.io/request-demo/ and our team will be in touch with you.
