Tag: sms tagging

Why B2B SMS Marketing is a Must

SMS Marketing is very often associated with B2C or Business to Customer strategies. As marketers, we tend to forget that business clients can sometimes share similar traits with individual customers. While their requirements may differ, let us remember that everybody is quickly accessible via mobile.

Most business professionals use SMSes for business purposes, and messaging is a popular channel of communication in the B2B space with over ninety percent open rates.

Following are some reasons to see how an enterprise can benefit from SMS marketing in the B2B space.

  • Inbound Marketing: Just like your regular customer, a business client would not want to spend their time reading a message that just promotes your product. A B2B client would appreciate your help or suggestions rather than being sold to. Therefore, initiate an inbound SMS marketing campaign for clients on your SMS list by offering free podcasts, e-books, training sessions, and attaching website links and URLs in the messages.
  • SMS List: Compile an SMS list of potential and existing clients and promote the same across social media platforms. This is because, without an updated SMS list, you will be shooting in the dark and would not know who is genuinely interested in receiving your SMSes. With a complete SMS list, you can pitch webinars and online events across your client base.
  • Leverage interactive messaging: While you are utilizing all channels to boost your inbound b2b campaigns, seek feedback from the clients who have signed up for your SMS list. Include short-codes, polls, questionnaires, or URLs to derive a two-way engagement.
  • Monitor your Messages: You also need to keep a regular check on the SMS response rates and ROI. Check out Kirusa Konnect’s Bulk SMS marketing platform offers tools to evaluate the ROI of the bulk SMS campaign.

Apart from boosting SMS marketing and keeping track of success metrics, it aDND filter provided to prevent enterprises from sending promotional SMS to people who have opted out officially.

 

 

Optimizing your SMS Marketing Campaign

SMS marketing may seem like a “thing” of the past, but you would be making a mistake by believing that. Consider this, SMS has 98% higher open-rates compared to other forms of communication. Therefore, most people open SMSes with more urgency than they would open an email or social media updates.

Shouldn’t you be thinking about ways to boost your SMS marketing campaign then?

  • Segment Your Messages: Always make sure to target your audience based on age, gender, demographics, and other categories. That way, you have better chances of getting the message right and staying relevant. As a rule, integrate an SMS API across all your CRM and communication networks. With a reliable SMS gateway API, you can send out customized messages based on client profile.
  • Prompt your Customer: How do you do that? By keeping track of a buyer’s online purchase history. For example, if somebody has recently bought a table from you, there are likely to respond to an SMS that offers discounts on chairs.
  • Call-to-action: SMSes lose their purpose if they are only making announcements and not nudging the reader. What is the point of promoting a new launch if your customer doesn’t get a 20 percent off on their next order? Include links, coupons, and keywords to send them to your website.
  • Branding: Do not be anonymous while sending out messages. Show your brand’s name as often as possible because it helps customers remember you, and boosts visibility. Kirusa Konnect’s Bulk SMS API allows senders to personalize their ID.
  • Keep Track of your ROI: A cost-effective and measurableSMS marketing tool can draw the best results from your campaign. Kirusa Konnect offers tools to evaluate the ROI of your bulk SMS messaging campaign. With a complete metric of the messages, you can keep track of the number of clicks.

Sign up for a 30-day trial on Konnect, and watch SMS Marketing boost your campaigns.

Five ways Bulk SMS can boost your Business

The Unsung Hero of Marketing, SMS, also happens to be the most potent tool. As a direct channel of communication, SMSes have 98% higher open rates compared to emails or social media marketing. As long as you integrate Bulk SMS marketing with various platforms, the results are going to be optimal through the entire customer lifecycle.

Following are the five ways in which you can use SMS to supercharge your marketing campaign:

  • Optimize your online platforms: Considering that SMSes have higher open rates and are read in less than three minutes, you have more chances of your conversion rates by including URLs within the messages. By making short-codes and keywords a part of your bulk SMS campaign, expect increased traffic website traffic and subscriptions.
  • Use the Whitespace: The two-factor authentication and transactional SMSes that we send to users often have remaining whitespaces that can be utilized to add shorter promotional codes or URLs. It is an excellent opportunity to initiate a clear call-to-action by making sure that they blend well with the transactional message and do not lose their importance. You may even look up quite a few SMS marketing services that enable this.

Kirusa Konnect’s SMS Tagging is a unique service that solves this problem by sending promotional messages alongside transactional SMS. The promotional message is added, or ‘tagged’ in a transactional SMS, ensuring that no new SMS is sent.

  • Enable a two-way Communication: Initiate an SMS campaign that lets you interact with your target audience via text. For example, during elections or a contest, customers can be approached for feedback or given points/discounts for completing a survey. This exercise can highly boost user engagement.
  • Bulk SMS for Social Cause: Another example of Bulk SMS application is the mass dissemination of messages during social initiatives. In 2015, the Ghanaian branch of Vodafone together with Kirusa launched the ‘Ebola Public Health Project.

The initiative shared free content via SMS on the Ebola Outbreak to all Vodafone subscribers for free and ran on the Konnect platform.

Therefore, Bulk SMSes can also enable you to create a dialogue on various channels by promoting such initiatives and boost your visibility.

  • Offer Incentives: Offering personalized promotions and discounts is a great way to boost customer engagement and initiate CTA or Call-to-action. Be original and stay true to your brand voice while reaching out with the offers.

API Service Provider for Your SMS Marketing Campaign

We use various applications for personal and professional reasons- food delivery, apparel, bookings, job search, messaging, transactions, etc.

Businesses also use applications that cater to their unique requirements. For example, we do know that Bulk SMSes are an important component of marketing. But do you also know that there are application tools that let enterprises build their software including bulk SMS?

With a bulk SMS API or Application Programming Interface, you can exchange any number of customized messages with your audience over a self-styled SMS sending and receiving channel.

SMS marketing is a crucial component of enterprise communication, and a Bulk SMS API will benefit you in the following ways:

  • With a Bulk SMS API gateway present across all your technological networks and business platforms, you can have a unified functional core to boost seamless communication.
  • APIs offer flexibility and scalability, which means that you can easily integrate new features without seeking a third party’s assistance.
  • It is a cost-effective solution considering the expandability.
  • You can make the most of its high transfer and delivery speed, and send hundreds of messages in the click of a button apart.
  • A reliable SMS API ensures data security.
  • Enterprises can also send messages in various formats and get real-time reports on response and delivery.

Meanwhile, Kirusa Konnect offers an API SMS platform that enables inbound and outbound messaging via Konnect SMS service. You can provide your purchased number as ‘from’ number and include the text message that will be sent. You can also add sender mask in the API request which is not mandatory. When sending SMS using Konnect SMS API Token, you can personalize your sender ID. This means that when the user receives a message, it will show your company name or brand from where the SMS message has come from rather than a number.

Konnect API also enables you to execute outbound calls and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) campaigns. Use cases Include payment reminder, OTP authentication, social appeal, travel updates, mass awareness, and audio content.

The Konnect APIs enable you to send text messages to end users, receive messages into Konnect platform, make outbound calls to end users and configure IVR campaigns for user engagement. All events are notified via a call back mechanism to your web server. Subscribe to a 30-day free trial to avail the service.

Bulk SMS for Business

Ekon is in the middle of an important client meeting when his phone starts buzzing. Assuming an emergency, he excuses himself and takes the call. However, the call is from an insurance sales agent regarding a new health scheme. Visibly appalled, Ekon hangs up and slams the phone down.

On the other side, the sales agent, Mary wonders what went wrong. She immediately moves on to another lead only to receive a call on her mobile number. Not wanting to miss what might be an important message, she takes it. The person on the line is another sales agent offering a housing scheme. Mary instinctively wants to slam down the receiver, but she does not. A thought strikes her. They have been making cold calls at all hours. This is precisely what went wrong with the previous customer.

Mary communicates the problem to the team lead, and they decide to find a different approach. The team realizes that cold calls hardly work for brands anymore if executed with a vanilla approach.

More brainstorming and research bring them to the conclusion that a strategized SMS engagement plan is perhaps a smarter alternative to reach out to their audience. The company already has hundreds of customers. All they need to do is collate their databases and send the right text message, that will asynchronously reach them.

Before they begin sending them out, it is necessary to have an efficient SMS marketing system for regular delivery and response. The Insurance Agency decides to sign up with Kirusa’s Konnect portal that offers a robust strategized set of bulk SMS solutions.

Initiating a Bulk SMS Marketing Campaign
  • The Konnect CPaaS portal offers a free trial for users to register and activate a new account.
  • Upon successful account activation, the insurance agency is asked to select a Sender Mask. The Sender Mask is the identity of the SMS sender. Brands can use a custom name or number as the preferred Sender Mask.
  • They are then asked to upload a list of those to whom the messages are to be sent. The option of a DND or do-no-disturb filter is provided to prevent them from sending promotional SMS to people who have unsubscribed.
  • The agency uploads its content or message on the platform and schedules a preferred shoot-off time.
  • They also have a complete metric to keep track of deliveries and response rates. The Konnect CPaaS portal also offers tools to evaluate the ROI of the bulk SMS messaging campaign.
Complementing Your Bulk SMS Marketing Campaign

The Agency also takes effective measures to generate quality leads for their scheme. This is also to ensure that word gets around quickly amongst as many people as possible. Hence, they advertise the insurance policy across various media channels with an SMS code. This serves as the CTA or call-to-action.

People who see the advertisement send a text to the number and express interest regarding this policy. The Insurance Agency captures the phone number of the sender. This is how a lead is generated. The agency sales team then reaches out to these leads to turn them into customers.

SMS marketing is an effective method to gain traction for your business. In spite of the popularity of smartphones, SMS remains the most accessible means of communicating to the masses. One must also remember that SMS marketing methods should not be implemented in isolation. It is always a good idea to integrate them with various channels. An omnichannel experience provides leeway for maximum customer engagement.