Did you know that 90% of text messages are read within the first 3 minutes?
Along with that, 98% of the people you send them to will open and read them.
That’s what makes text messaging a great platform for marketing, especially because it is highly underutilized and with customers being overwhelmed by marketing efforts on social media, it’s best to choose a marketing channel that’s less crowded.
The following text message examples are proof that SMS is a medium that conveys multiple benefits to firms and individuals that extend way beyond marketing:
#1. Personal Communication
Teenagers send 1500 texts per month, on average.
But that’s not all.
Texting is a medium that even our grandparents are familiar with.
It was introduced in the early 1900s when Generation Y was young, which makes them comfortable with using the platform as opposed to social media platforms; they can be confusing and thus, not very popular among the older generation (with the exception of Facebook).
The bottom line is, text messaging is a communication channel that everybody is comfortable with.
For marketers, this is a feature that currently no other platform offers.
Plus, SMS is highly accessible.
It’s in-built into all phones, whether you own a smartphone or not, so people of all income classes, as well as introverts, can be reached via text!
Last but not least, SMS messages cost very low.
Sure, WhatsApp is free, but you require an internet connection to operate it.
One SMS costs only a few cents on the dollar to send out.
If you sign up with an SMS platform like ExpressText, you can even enjoy lower rates when sending out text messages in bulk.
#2. Business Communication
Getting late for work? Just text your boss you’re stuck in traffic.
It’s much less intrusive than a call where you might be disturbing a superior in the middle of a morning meeting.
With text, there’s no chance of that happening and you make sure they are informed of any delays.
That’s why this text message example is great.
72% of business professionals prefer sending text messages instead of making calls and using texting apps.
A whopping 86% of the employees think that text messages should not be limited to customer communication
I could go on and on with these statistics, but you get the point.
Organizations and companies have been sending out text messages to their employees for swift communication for decades – be it reminders, meeting schedules or getting updates on the work being done.
Even then, statistics show that it is not enough:
Thus, if you own an organization or even head a department, consider SMS as both a formal and informal way of communicating with your employees.
#3. Customer Support and Engagement
In my entire experience in the industry, I’ve found that this text messaging example has proved to be very effective.
It’s highly personalised and it’s fast, making it perfect for resolving customer queries.
On top of that, a lot of brands currently use SMS as a channel for sending greeting messages to their customers.
According to a recent study by TextBetter, 67% of consumers tend to have a positive perception of the companies that offer text messages as a service channel.
Healthcare companies also send text messages to their customers and 70% of the people appreciate getting these messages.
For example, in the recent pandemic, many healthcare companies sent messages to their customers regarding the precautionary measures that can be taken.
As a marketer, you can hire customer representatives to deal with any issues that customers might face when purchasing from you:
This goes a long way in building customer loyalty.
#4. Government and NGO Campaigns
Governments and NGOs also use SMS to ask for funding and donations, as well as for other purposes.
This is a great text message example because it serves the good of the community.
Governments often use bulk SMS services to notify citizens of bad weather conditions, any unsafe neighborhoods and so on.
Marketing for politicians via text has also become increasingly popular in the past decade.
From Barack Obama to Trump and Sanders, every politician makes significant use of SMS in their marketing strategy.
In fact, in 2016 when Donal Trump was running for President the first time, his campaign was smeared when allegations of illegal use of SMS were made.
SMS is a permission-based platform, and Trump’s campaign used it to spam hundreds and thousands of voters without their consent.
This serves as a lesson not only to politicians but also marketers to always ask for permission before sending promotional messages.
In fact, these legalities even though they may seem challenging at first, serve as protection for consumer rights, making SMS a safe and secure platform for marketing.
Here’s how you can seek permission from customers:
#5. Advertising sales and discounts
Text messages are also used for marketing and advertising purposes. Companies and brands send information about sales and promotional offers to their customers.
For example, companies send messages regarding promotional offers on Black Friday sales. Research shows that sales prospects who are sent messages convert at a rate 40% higher than those who are not sent text messages. The average opening rate of text message marketing campaigns is closer to 98% as compared to the 20% opening rate of email marketing campaigns. (99firms)
#6. Integration with other apps
SMS has taken a role in making communication much easier in the world where technology was less recognized and in a world where advancements are being made.
With the technology industry taking a turn towards more competition, more applications come into being which seems to be better than the old ones, they all seem to be text message examples.
Facebook started Messenger, a separate application for their messages which has an option to integrate the SMS. If you don’t have access to the internet, Facebook will notify you via text!
All these applications take their base from the idea of traditional message system when a certain number of characters were allowed but those seem to be out of the world at that time until voicemails came into being and now almost everything can be sent through text and every application have different forms such as snapchat deletes the upper messages and offers several stickers or “bitmoji” which you send if you are too lazy to type whereas instagram lets you unsend a message without other person being aware of that and even you can send boomerangs in the chat and other posts that you see on Instagram.
Whatsapp is an application that is constantly updating with all the essential features and hence the usage accelerates at the highest amount as shown in the graph below.
This graph clearly shows a comparison and how WhatsApp exceeds messenger in usage but yet again all these offer what SMS offers in less amounts hence the messengers of all these applications are considered text messaging examples.
#7. Brand awareness
SMS or text messaging is a form of direct advertising which takes a fair amount of effort but targets the customers directly and allows a two-way conversation to be built.
As more brands integrate in the market, more awareness is spread or let’s just say there is a correlation between awareness and competition which leads to detailed emphasis upon the post-purchase feedback of the customers.
Many startups rely on feedback and the visitors of such startups rely on the reviews that they got. Text messaging involves a conversation between a buyer and a seller not by an automated chatbot but a manual person who also manages to build trust.Messages of promotions and deals are sent to random numbers which makes more people aware of such a brand and that’s the first step towards establishment in the society.
Many leading brands such as P&G and Unilever still send text messages to make people aware of the new product launched. The Internet has a community of people who own a smartphone and have the internet, which no doubt are many, but text messaging includes the excluded people too.
Someone in Texas receives a message about a nearby shop which is not known to many but as the message sweeps across different random sims people will get to know and hence word of mouth becomes strong.
A useful text messaging example would be by Noexam.com. This company experimented on text marketing by replacing calls by texts and hence the brand became more known towards the peers and their associates started taking interest in the offers made.
#8. Emergencies
A highly prioritized use of text messaging would be its use in emergencies. There are many situations in one’s life where text messages can save the moment for someone by reaching at a much faster rate than any other application’s messenger.
Every application that became a substitute of sms requires a proper internet to be functioning otherwise the message won’t just deliver hence text messages are life savers in such situations.
An example of mundane would be applicable to explain the importance such as there is a sick elder at home who is sleeping and you need someone to bring their medicine from the store nearby; you can’t call because they will wake up and you can’t use any other application because the internet of specified person is turned off hence you will text them and get your work done as soon as possible.
Marketing and advertising worlds also state the area of emergency by texting the target audience.
Some text messaging examples would include a brand like Mango or Walmart offering a clearance sale which is applicable for only some hours. That message might be sent through the phone but the customer might not receive it due to internet connection being down or a server problem and in case of emails, they might not have opened it hence they would send a text message to make sure that the message reaches the specified audience at least.
Like I already mentioned, sending messages in bulk is absolutely easy.
SMS services allow you to send out a text via computers/phones to a large number of recipients at once. All it takes is a number of seconds!
This comparison indicates how text messages surpass every other application.
Conclusion
These text messages examples are only a few of the many which serve as motivation to marketers that want to set up their own text messaging service.
The most important rule is to always ask for permission and keep sending your loyal customers exclusive offers in order to retain them.
SMS is a marketing channel with one of the lowest costs, yet, it has one of the highest ROIs; thus, making it great for easy revenue generation.
Use these text message examples to your advantage and incorporate them into your SMS marketing strategy.