If you’re a small business owner trying to figure out how to make text marketing work for your salon, spa, wellness studio or fitness center, Vagaro has great news for you about how easy it can be to integrate texting into your software and email marketing plan. Now there’s another way to expand your marketing horizons, maintain and strengthen client relationships, and make more retail sales.
Use Text Marketing to Grow Your Business
But First, What Is Text Marketing, and Why Does It Matter?
Did you know that the average mobile phone user checks their phone an estimated 85 times every day? Talk about a captive market! Text marketing—the act of sending promo codes, special deals, booking reminders, and other announcements by text message—helps you turn all those daily phone checks into cash. To put it simply: text marketing is a quick, easy, direct channel that helps you reach more customers every time. And since market research shows that text marketing messages have a 95% open rate, there’s a better-than-average chance that your marketing communications will reach your customers every time. Let’s review six of the top reasons more and more beauty, fitness, and wellness businesses are turning to text marketing to create a deeper connection with their customers!
1. Customers Love to Text
Marketing research shows that most Americans are more comfortable texting than they are with any other means of communication—and people love their phones! Text messaging functionality is included as part of just about every standard modern mobile phone service, so it’s one that’s easy for just about any customer to understand and navigate. These days, most people’s emails are flooded with unwanted junk mail and spam messages. But because customers must opt-in to receiving text marketing messages, you know that the customers you’re sending your campaigns to are interested in receiving your communications.
2. Text Marketing Delivers Immediate Results
Fact: over 90% of text marketing messages are read within 3 minutes of being delivered. While an unread email campaign can languish in someone’s inbox indefinitely, mobile phones alert customers when a new text arrives, prioritizing the message and giving it a sense of urgency. That means that you could send out a text marketing campaign in the morning, and start seeing results by lunchtime—or sooner! The direct channel of communication that text marketing opens can encourage customers to act faster on your offers.
3. Text Marketing Outperforms Other Marketing Channels
The higher the click-through rate (CTR), the more effective the marketing campaign. Marketing research shows that nowadays, the email open rate tops out at around 11%, with a response rate of about 3.5%. Text marketing, on the other hand, has a 90% (or higher!) open rate, with click-through rates averaging 19%. In fact, similar studies show that mobile users act on offers sent via text marketing more than they do on any other marketing channel. This isn’t to say that you should abandon all other marketing channels—but it’s a compelling reason to add text marketing into your overall business strategy.
4. Simplicity
Text marketing is easy to put into action, easy to manage, and campaign performance is easy to track. It’s a means of advertising that requires minimal preparation time and doesn’t require you to gather additional materials, wait for designs, approvals, or printing. Text marketing is the height of simplicity. You’ll get notification when your messages have been sent successfully, and you’ll be able to drill down on the details of who received your texts, which links were clicked, and when they were accessed. This kind of simplicity ensures you’ll get the most from every campaign.
5. Text Marketing is Cost-Effective
Compared to similar forms of advertising, text marketing is an affordable option that’s scalable to most small business budgets, with room to scale up or scale back as you measure the performance of your campaigns. However, the return on your investment is hard to deny. For most text marketing promotions, your targeted campaign costs just pennies to implement, while the new revenue it brings in you can calculate in dollar signs.
6. Tracking the Performance of Your Campaign is Easy
Measuring success with text marketing is easier than perhaps any other marketing channel. First, you look at the delivery success of your campaign, to see that your messages reached their intended destination. Next, track the click-through rate of your calls-to-action to see how many people acted on your text marketing, whether they booked appointments or clicked on a link. Measuring the impact of your campaign has never been simpler, and helps you target future campaigns better.
An easy to implement, cost-efficient, and highly effective addition to your marketing plan is just a few clicks away. How much income can your business bring in with just 304 characters?
Header Image and Icons: Mia Montemayor via Vagaro
