SMS: What Is Text Marketing?

More and more businesses are using text messaging as a marketing tool to reach their customers. After steadily growing adoption numbers, the past 2 years has seen unprecedented growth in text message marketing with an increase of 376% in 2020 and 75% in 2021, based on Omnisend data. But what is text message marketing, exactly?

Text marketing is the practice of using mass text messaging as a means for advertisement or marketing. SMS (Short Message Service) is the technology used to send text messages between mobile phones. MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) is an extension of SMS that allows you to send photos, videos, and other types of media files as messages. In this article, we’ll tell everything you need to know about text messaging as a marketing tool. We’ll include information on the differences between SMS and MMS text messaging, the best use cases for it, how much a mass text messaging campaign can cost and the top providers of SMS and MMS text messaging.

What’s the Difference Between SMS and MMS?

The main difference between SMS and MMS is that SMS messages are limited to 160 characters, while MMS messages can be up to 300 words. However, most mobile carriers will automatically convert an SMS message into an MMS message if it contains multimedia content like photos or videos.

Reasons Why You Should Be Using SMS & MMS Texting

At Scaleup, we recommend adding text messaging as an additional marketing channel as regularly as possible. This is because we typically see higher open and conversion rates with text messaging compared with other marketing methods. This is probably because people are more likely to open and read a text message than an email or social media post. In fact, Omnisend, recently called SMS text messaging “a must-have marketing channel”.

While we are seeing a significant increase in email open rates after the iOS15 release late last year, data from most of the major email providers also shows that these numbers are largely inflated and that actual numbers indicate declines in email open rates by as much as 20%. According to Hubspot statistics, email open rates today are between 28% and 33%, while the majority of consumers are opening, clicking and responding to marketing texts more quickly than they do to marketing emails; a staggering text open rate of roughly 99% and 97% of texts are read within 15 minutes after delivery.

When to use Text vs Email?

Text messages are a great way to send reminders, updates, or alerts. They can also be used to make special offers or as part of a loyalty program. If you have time-sensitive information that you need to get in front of your customers quickly, text messaging is the best option. They are a best used for communicating short bits of important information and its important not to overwhelm or bombard your audience with too many text messages. This is why we recommend using email when sending lengthier content or when you need to send

Best Use Cases for SMS or MMS Text Messaging Include:

• Reminding customers about an upcoming event
• Announcing a special deal or promotion
• Asking for customer feedback
• Thanking customers for their business

Top Providers of SMS and MMS Text Messaging

There are a few different providers of SMS and MMS text messaging. Some of the top providers include:

-SimpleTexting

-EZ Texting

-Slicktext

-TextMagic

How Much Does It Cost to Send Text Messages?

The cost of sending a mass text messaging campaign may vary widely depending on the following four factors, the provider you use, the plan you choose, the type of message you send (SMS or MMS) and your list size. Generally, we haves seen prices ranging from 1¢ – 6¢ cents for SMS and 3¢ – 18¢ for MMS. If you send 40,000 SMS messages per month, you could expect to spend around $400 each month with a pay-per-use platform. In contrast, if you send only 500 SMS per month, your monthly price may be lower at around $30 but your cost per message goes up from about 1¢ to about 6¢.