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The Essential Rules of Bulk SMS Marketing

Bulk SMS Marketing is the most cost-effective method to promote your brand yet businesses tend to keep it on the sideline. However, with the correct strategies, SMS marketing can become your most potent tool.

Following are seven best SMS marketing practices to leverage your campaign:

Know Your Customer: The first and foremost rule of marketing strictly applies when you execute a bulk SMS campaign. Be aware of your customers’ age, gender, location, and preferences because without such details you would know nothing of their interests.
Work on your Database: Hence, things will be more comfortable with a well-maintained database with every customer’s purchase and demographic details. It also helps keep a track on those who have opted out of your list so that you do not keep sending messages to them.
Call-to-action: To the ones on your list, do not just drop a random promotional SMS without any call-to-action. Include links, buttons and offer discounts from time to time. One of the quickest ways to gain traction is by asking them to share the message for points and discounts. You may also ask them for feedback to boost a two-way interaction.
Recognize your Regular Clients: Some customers frequently avail your service, give you detailed feedback and refer your brand to friends and family. Watch out for such clients and invest extra time and resources into them. It is evident that they are quite fond of your brand, send them in-depth polls and messages of acknowledgment. A customer’s referral is the best kind of promotion.
Make the Most of Online Channels: SMS Marketing can work beautifully alongside digital marketing and social media platforms. Include an option for mobile subscription across your website and social media pages. As you send emailers, do not forget to attach an SMS opt-in button.
Create a Sense of Urgency but Don’t Overdo It: Words like “limited” and “last chance” make a distinct At the same time, choose the right frequency for your messages. Do not send them at any random hour and avoid posting the same marketing SMSes to clients.
A Reliable Bulk SMS Portal: Rather than recruiting an entire team of SMS marketing experts, choose a Bulk SMS Portal that can support your campaigns. With Kirusa Konnect’s bulk SMS marketing service, you can send hundreds of messages to your audience and keep track of delivery and ROI at the same time.

SMS Marketing is an integral and irreplaceable part of your campaigns. Combine the prowess of bulk SMS with online channels to supercharge your brand presence.

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.

Remembering the Do’s and Don’ts of SMS Marketing

We may have the best practices and tools for SMS Marketing at our disposal, but without remembering the following do’s and don’ts, we could go wrong.

Don’t bombard your customer’s inbox: SMS is a ubiquitous medium and has 98 percent higher open rate compared to other channels. But that does not mean that one has to keep sending messages to stay in customer’s mind space. Your visibility doesn’t depend on how frequently you drop an SMS to the customer, but what is it that you are delivering. If there is nothing useful to convey, choose a staggered time plan for delivery.
Don’t miss your CTA or Call-to-action: A call-to-action is vital across all forms of media. After you are done conveying a message or presenting your content, what is that you would have the audience do? Don’t leave them confused after delivering a marketing message, do ask them to take the next step!
Avoid regular sales pitches: If you always attempt to promote a new product, most people would stop opening your SMS. Add a personal touch to your message because they are real people seeking genuine solutions to their problems.
Avoid abbreviations and slangs: Not everyone can recognize short forms and slangs. Your customers may belong to various demographic categories and your smart attempt to make the most of limited space could fall flat. Avoid using abbreviations as much as you can and remember that SMS marketing, like all other fields, demands its code of professionalism.
Highlight the value offering: Begin your messages with words like DISCOUNT, SPECIAL OFFER, SALE, etc. that would quickly grab the customer’s attention. Find something useful that you can offer to the user.
A reliable Bulk SMS solution: Choose a reliable and scalable Bulk SMS Portal to support your campaigns. With Kirusa Konnect’s bulk SMS solution, you can send hundreds of messages to your audience and keep track of delivery and ROI at the same time.

Konnect also has a built-in Do-not-disturb or DND filter that identifies the numbers of those who have unsubscribed from receiving SMS messages. It also offers SMS tagging, a unique feature that piggybanks on the extra space in transactional messages. It allows the user to include promotions and advertisements alongside a transactional message for greater mindshare.

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.

Choosing Between Voice APIs and SMS APIs for Your Mobile App

The highly competitive atmosphere in enterprise communication calls for technologies that keep you ahead for bridging the gap between customers and relevant solutions.

Meanwhile, Application Programming Interface or APIs are on the rise, and it is essential to know how it benefits one’s customer communication channels.

What is an API?

API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of procedures that make way to develop applications which access the procured data of other applications or services. API is merely a set of communication protocols between components.

It offers you tools to build your software. A stable API would allow one to quickly develop their platform or interface by providing all the building blocks.

Understanding Voice and SMS APIs

Voice APIs serve as a bridge between enterprises and their customers. Using the power of voice technology, this tool developed using a simple API procedure understands the clients’ requirements and develops customized voice APIs. When you call a number which uses voice API, it automatically tracks the contact number of the person and saves it in its database to proceed further with outbound phone calls.

Your mobile or software application can automatically instruct the API regarding the way it wants to proceed forward with a call. Many leading businesses use voice APIs for good connectivity between its customers. For example, cab services use Voice APIs to automatically connect the person with the cab driver without providing personal information about the customer.

Similarly, Bulk SMS APIs use codes to send short messages to the customers using a software interface. It revolutionizes communication using codes and programming languages for better prospects of businesses. These voice and SMS APIs can be integrated into websites or mobile applications of the enterprises. Konnect uses Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for connecting calls.

Following are the benefits of availing an API:

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 expandability.
You can make the most of its high transfer and delivery speed, and send hundreds of messages or make calls in the click of a button apart.
A reliable SMS or voice API ensures data security.
Enterprises can also send messages in various formats and get real-time reports on response and delivery.

Kirusa’s Konnect’s API offers both inbound and outbound messaging/call services to its users. Using the interface, one can execute robust marketing campaigns with reliable metrics and response rates.

It is effortless to use Konnect’s API services with the following steps:

All you need to do is create an account on Kirusa Konnect’s website and log in.
Konnect has a vast number of codes loaded in its code snippet among which one will be provided to you.
You need to paste the code snippet provided by Konnect in your code base and proceed to pay for your API pack.

Well now you know how a voice API works, but you still may be in a dilemma as to what are the benefits of using these Voice APIs or SMS APIs?

Send alerts and notifications

You can use voice API or SMS API to send account-related alerts automatically. Customers can be sent a reminder about a product, event, discount, etc.

Call tracking and lead generation

By using APIs, enterprises can track and find the route of the customers in their marketing campaigns.

Masked phone numbers

Enterprises can choose masked phone numbers where the buyer and the seller will be connected without disclosing their identities. Use Interactive Voice Response to generate sales by targeting the prospective customers’ list stored in the database using API.

Products of Konnect using its API are:

API call Snapcall

For example, Jumia is an online shopping app which uses Konnect’s API to get closer with its customers by solving their queries and requests.

When customers figure out a flash-call ad on the Jumia app and as and when they flash the number, it gets connected to Konnect’s Snapcall API, and their number gets stored. This process continues for every customer whenever they dial the flash-call number, and all these numbers are stored as leads. With Konnect, you can trigger voice calling using apps efficiently.

API call outbound SMS

When an API call is initiated to Konnect’s outbound SMS, an SMS is delivered to the user with a link to download the app.

API call voice OBD

To check the authenticity of the user, the Konnect API call sends an OTP number by calling instead of an SMS API. This happens when the user selects the OTP by call option. Now an API call is carried out to Konnect’s voice OBD (Outbound Dialer) to generate OTP through a call. Thereby, the user receives an outbound call.

API call Inbound SMS

Right after a few months of installing the app, the user is sent a customer SMS to draw the feedback of the user for making the required changes. The collected feedback from the user is stored in Customer Relation Management or Database for further decision making.

Now that you know about Konnect’s API services and its benefits, it would be a good idea to combine and use the Voice and SMS API tools. Sign up for a 30-day free trial and avail further.