No matter how good your website or online store is, some people will leave it for many random reasons.
Suppose your website has excellent conversion optimisation and your search engine optimisation (SEO) and ad campaigns are bringing you traffic.
But if a user suddenly needs to do something else unrelated, they might leave your website without doing anything but landing on it. Or they may start shopping and if something comes up on their end, they’ll abandon their cart.
You may have the best website in the world but that doesn’t guarantee that you won’t see significance bounce or cart abandonment rates. In fact, most websites have an average of 61% bounce rates and many consider that to be a normal part of eCommerce operation.
But you can save those lost customers through several effective marketing channels. And one of them is SMS marketing – a cost-efficient channel that you should leverage.
In this article, you will learn how you can get bouncers back to your website via SMS marketing so you can convert them.
What is SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing is the use of text messaging to get people to do business with you.
You can use SMS to promote a product or service, upsell or cross-sell, send vital business information, or save lost customers, i.e. reduce bounce rates and cart abandonments.
What is a Lost Customer?
A person who visits your website but leaves without doing anything contributes to a bounce and is considered a lost customer. The more this happens, the higher your bounce rate.
A person who starts shopping and adds items to their cart but leaves without checking out is another type of lost customer. The more this happens, the higher your cart abandonment or cart abandonment rate.
A person who has done business with you but has stopped for some reason is also considered a lost customer.
You can get these types of people back to your site and profit from doing business with them via remarketing strategies like an SMS campaign.
How SMS Marketing Works for Saving Lost Customers
Essentially, you can use SMS at any stage of the marketing funnel. It is highly effective in saving lost customers.
To use SMS to save lost customers, the main idea is to send them SMS messages that will entice them to come back to your website. When you effectively get them to return, you can potentially convert them and profit.
With an SMS marketing platform, you can automate SMS messages that are triggered by actions like leaving your site, leaving a cart unchecked-out or cancelling a subscription.
You can send a single text message for individual instances or methologically send consecutive SMSs that will funnel your recipient back to your online store.
It’s all a matter of sending the right message at the right time to the right person.
What are the benefits of SMS marketing?
- It is cost-effective.
SMS marketing is far less expensive than other marketing channels such as social network ads, Google ads, television, and print. So it’s definitely worth a shot!
- It is seen as a reliable communication channel by consumers.
When you receive a text message, you probably will check on it at once, unlike when getting emails.
In fact, SMS is one of the ways stores ensure secure transactions with you. And that gives SMS a perceived reliability in the mind of the general users.
- It can be automated.
Of course, you won’t have time to individually text people who left your website. So you will have to use an SMS marketing platform where you can automate when, what and to whom messages are sent.
SMS remarketing doesn’t take much effort, especially with a proper tool. You can automate messages where you send out reminders 12 hours after they’ve left something in their cart or fifteen (15) days since their last purchase or visit to the site. This saves you time, effort and hassle.
- It is one of the most effective channels for saving lost customers.
SMS, when done correctly, can power much more than just the acquisition stage of your marketing operations. It has the potential to become a vitally helpfull component of your overall customer retention strategy.
SMS is a personal channel of communication that you can effectively use to ensure that customers stay with you and engage with your business.
Tips on SMS Marketing for Saving Lost Customers
- Make it simple and enticing for people to subscribe.
Do customers have to jump through hoops to join your SMS list? If you want to recoup lost customers, make it as simple as possible for customers to join your SMS list.
This is dependent on your shop’s configuration, but you can make SMS signup easier by:
- Making SMS signup part of a subscription
- Including an SMS opt-in at the checkout
- Including a popup on your website that offers a discount to SMS subscribers
- Allowing customers to sign up via a simple SMS shortcode
Ensure to do a double opt-in for all of your customers. This maintains the integrity of your SMS list guarantees that you’re only talking to interested customers.
- Make your copy personal.
The most common error that retailers make with SMS marketing is adopting robotic jargon.
SMS provides potentially sizable interactions with your customers. So feel free to use emoticons, pop culture themes, and friendly language.
While having individual discussions with customers might take longer, you can still create personalised, automated SMS messages:
- Requesting that customers vote on new looks, patterns, colours, or items
- Notifying SMS users about future specials or deals
- Celebrating the birthdays of your customers with your store, include a few amusing GIFs
Whenever possible, try to send particular, tailored SMS messages. Include the shoppers’ names in each message if at all possible.
- See to it that it doesn’t contradict your email marketing efforts for lost customers.
You just have a few seconds to deliver a message and create a call to action. Provide all pertinent information in clear, concise, and persuasive language. Make sure that your SMS does not contradict your email marketing efforts to avoid discrepancies and inconsistencies.
- Target dates when your recipients are more capable to return to your site and buy.
Paydays, peak seasons, birthdays, Christmas – SMS marketing is associated with a sense of urgency, as customers have a limited amount of time to act. Don’t give them a week to contemplate a forthcoming deal; instead, inform them about it just before it occurs.
- Offer irresistible deals.
Giving a discount is most likely the simplest and most popular technique to recapture an abandoned cart sale. Retailers frequently offer 10% off an order if the shopper buys right away (or soon). If 10% isn’t enough, some organizations go as high as 15% or give free delivery to clinch the bargain, as costly shipping rates are the most common reason buyers abandon the checkout process.
SMS can help you to not miss sales.
You can deliver engaging experiences and recover more abandoned orders at scale with SMS marketing.
SMS abandoned cart notifications are an excellent approach to reaching cart abandoners practically immediately after they leave products behind, whether through marketing automation or one-on-one live chat.
You’ve probably heard it before, and you’ll hear it again: SMS marketing has consumed the world.
Guest Author’s Bio:
Kas Andz is a multi-award-winning marketing leader, and the founder of KAMG. He is one of the top digital marketing experts in the UK and has helped companies and brands across Europe, North America, and Asia to achieve greater revenue and expand sustainably. He also tries to play football when he can but doesn’t succeed as well as he would like.
