What is SMS mean? Most telephone, Internet, and mobile device networks provide a text messaging service. It makes use of common communication protocols to allow mobile devices to send and receive short text messages.
SMS message meaning is an abbreviation of ‘Short Service Message’ which is commonly referred to as text message in the layman language whereas it is important to acknowledge the thin line between the two.
Text message is an umbrella term that includes MMS as well as SMS.
It is also the most readily available form of messaging medium with such fast delivery time.
The benefits it provides encourages more and more businesses to use SMS widely in the marketing domain.
This article will provide you more clarity about the SMS meaning, its working mechanism, and how numerous benefits it can provide for marketing and other spheres of life.
How SMS has made communication fast and easy:
Over the years, SMS has gained great popularity owing to its useful properties such as cost-effectiveness, speed, and convenience.
It is the oldest and most widely used form of text messaging service in the world. 95% of the texts are read and responded right away within 3 minutes of receiving, which is incredible.
When you send an SMS it reaches your nearby cellular tower before reaching your intended recipient.
From that very cellular tower the message is then transferred to the tower located in close vicinity of your respective recipient and that is where the receiver receives the message directly from. So it is a process that takes place in steps.
Today nearly all the cellular networks provide SMS or text messaging capabilities.
Costs and features may vary, with platforms offering a wide variety of payment plans to suit individual and business demands. Typically there are three options provided by the carriers:
- Free of Charge – text messaging is free as it is included in the selected plan.
- Charges per message- users are charged per message.
- Monthly Plans- a fixed number of messages is provided in specified monthly charges.
It hardly takes a few seconds for an SMS to travel large distances from one end user to another hence making communication worldwide relatively an easy process.
Due to its fast speed and user-friendly nature it is a preferred medium of communication by the people and most businesses.
Applications of SMS in different fields:
SMS can be employed for several actions which are discussed in an elaborate manner below, given its convenience and rapid delivery.
You would want to reach your customers before your competitor does so for achieving the goal you need to adopt clever strategies that allow instant communication between you and your customers.
Emergency text messages:
SMS has an exceptional speed, meaning that it can be sent from one part of the world to another in a matter of seconds.
The incredible speed allows one to notify others immediately in case of an emergency, accident or any other scenario that calls for a quick action.
The opening rate of an SMS is about 98% which is huge. This is due to the fact that 5 billion people can send and read messages as they have phones in their hands for most part of the day.
For example, if authorities of an institution decide to shut down the campus all of a sudden due to some security threat or any other reason, they can instantly send SMS messages to all the students and faculty members to leave the campus as early as possible.
Moreover, it can be used for making quick communication for informing people about an unforeseen or dangerous situation as in the example below.
Another great benefit that comes with the usage of SMS is its ability to transfer information from a sender to a recipient literally at the speed of life, ensuring greater connectivity between the two.
The speed, cost and usage of the SMS text messages worldwide make it an effective medium for sharing information without any doubt.
Personalised communication:
Besides, SMS is an excellent way for personalised communication that helps people connect with each other despite being physically distanced.
A user can rely on SMS usage for reaching out to his/her loved ones living in far away places.
Living away from the family is not actually that tough anymore given the technological advancements that have made communication possible in the blink of an eye.
However, you need to be associated with the right SMS platform that endeavors to provide cost-effective plans for SMS message communication with your friends and family.
E-commerce marketing:
E-commerce is something that is achieving a greater foothold in the market with the establishment of more and more online businesses.
Unlike any other business, online businesses are marketing dependent as well. They need to be properly advertised for reaching the target audience.
Inarguably, marketing is like some magical tool that allows businesses to sustain by engaging millions of their potential customers quite enough through SMS marketing.
You need to pick a reliable platform that responsibly does the job for your business by providing you suitable plans.
This is a decision that has to be taken wisely as it is going to make or break your customer chain.
Choose the one that actually defines the SMS meaning when it comes to marketing of your brand.
However, express text ranks among some of the best platforms that strives to provide best of the payment plans to its valued customers for marketing purposes.
It is a platform you can trust with a blind eye as it is used by most of the big brands around the globe. It never fails to amaze its customers.
Appointments:
SMS allows you to lock appointments easily with your customers. For example, a bride looking for her perfect bridal dress can have her appointments booked with the fashion designer easily over an SMS conversation without any trouble.
You can also remind your customers about the scheduled appointments and liberate yourself from the frustration of your clients showing up late.
Birthday texts and invitations:
You can show that you care for your customers by establishing a strong rapport with them beyond just the business. Send them good wishes through SMS on the occasion of their birthday letting them know that they are important to you.
Without crossing the professional boundaries, send them messages that express warmth and compassion. Such ideas help build customer’s trust in you a lot.
Moreover, you can send e-invites for a party or any other event over the SMS without having to hand over the invitations in person. Again, it is not redundant to say that SMS has made our lives so much easier!
Notifications and updates:
Brands and companies need an instant channel to notify their employees and customers about the recent decisions, last minute cancellations or changes in a plan. They can easily achieve that through SMS.
Moreover this medium can be used to provide updates about your brand to the customers, for example a discount update that could urge them to come and shop more.
Feedback:
Taking feedback from the customers is a necessary step to be able to improve the customer service.
You can send them an SMS right after they make a purchase or take your services, asking for quick feedback regarding their experience with your brand.
Try to keep these SMS surveys brief in length to encourage more survey completions. Customers are more likely to drop a survey without completing if it takes long to finish.
Keeping in touch with employees:
If you have a large number of employees in the company, it can be hard to convey important and urgent messages to each of them individually.
You can send them an email, but they may not see it immediately. The worldwide opening rate of e-mail is quite lower than that of an SMS.
As we are often too lazy to check our emails so SMS is a great alternative to ensure that everyone receives and reads the message on time.
Queries can be answered over SMS:
SMS can be an effective method of communication for getting queries answered from your customers in case of any ambiguity or otherwise, and vice versa.
SMS marketing:
Send SMS text messages to the people out there for marketing. SMS Marketing is sending promotional campaigns or transactional messages for marketing purposes using text messages (SMS). These messages are mostly meant to communicate time-sensitive offers, updates, and alerts to people who have consented to receive these messages from your business.
#1. Rules for SMS marketing
Make sure that your customers have opted for receiving SMS from you. That is one of the fundamental texting etiquettes. Furthermore, consider the timing and refrain reaching out to your customers at odd hours of the day. Although SMS messages are a great source of communication with your customers but as they say “excess of everything is bad”, so try maintaining the number of texts you send out.
Moreover, always ensure that the SMS you are sending out has your company’s name as most companies send bulk text with a short code which does not reveal your business’s identity to the customer. The customer would not know where the texts are coming from so always add your name.
#2. Benefits of SMS marketing:
SMS marketing ensures higher engagement rates from your customers and can drive more people to show up at your outlets.
Basically, SMS marketing involves sending out two distinct types of SMS messages i.e Campaign messages and transactional messages.
Campaign SMS messages are sent from a company to many people out there for informing them about a discount offer, new collection, promotional deals etc. Transactional messages allow one to one communication. The confirmation SMS you receive after placing an order online is an example of transactional SMS.
#3. How can you make it effective for a business?
If you own some business and haven’t yet tried SMS marketing for your promotion, you must definitely give it a shot without any further thinking.
You have been underestimating the power of SMS all this time. What are you waiting for, join hands with a good SMS platform, express text could be the one actually given its outstanding customer service. Get registered, choose your payment plan and commence your SMS marketing journey right off the bat.
If you sign up for express text, you will get to know the actual SMS meaning in terms of marketing as it can do wonders for your business by drawing larger audiences towards your brand. I am saying this because an SMS’s reach is far greater than any other source of communication as a considerable portion of the world’s population has mobile devices.
For example, Kylie Cosmetics is an American cosmetic brand founded by the famous celebrity Kylie Jenner, well who doesn’t know her.
This brand also employs SMS to achieve greater engagement and revenues.
Conclusion for SMS message meaning:
By now you should have a clear understanding of SMS meaning in text. The basic SMS message meaning is something that we all know well however there is more to its meaning that a lot of people have yet to explore, for example, its outstanding capacity to carry out effective marketing.
Here’s a little tip for all the business owners who want to boost their sales and have not tried SMS marketing yet. The sooner you shift to it, the soon your business will experience engagement from the customers positively.
In addition to providing a channel for personalized communication via SMS meaning you can send unique short message service to customers, it serves the purpose of a reminder, a savior in times of an emergency, an answer to multiple queries, a medium for ensuring coherence in workgroups, and a great source of information to inform millions of people about a particular happening/thing.
Hence, SMS is the most useful and powerful tool for marketing and communication.