SMS Marketing Campaigns That Effectively Increase Conversions

Our Product Marketing Manager Katie Ash looks at how companies are using SMS, both to increase conversion rates, and to improve customer retention. 
When SMS remarketing is used in a relevant and personalized way, it can be the most effective channel for engaging your audience.
Indeed, SMS messages have an average open rate of 98% with 90% of messages opened within three minutes. It also beats email on click through rate (CTR).

Here are six examples of SMS marketing campaigns that effectively increase conversions, recover abandoned sales and drive customer loyalty.

SMS Campaigns that Increase Conversion Rates

Mobile phones now account for half of all web traffic, making SMS an ideal channel to target your mobile audience.
Visitors abandon online for a variety of reasons, and high shipping costs is one reason. We found that 23% have abandoned carts due to shipping related issues.

Dapper Dan’s SMS message trumpets their free shipping thresholds and, with a link back to a persistent cart, users are encouraged to return and also prompted to spend a little more online to take advantage of the offer.

MyRealty sends an SMS message to visitors who they see are looking to rent an apartment.
This SMS sets out to remove the workload the potential customer, offering the assistance of one of their agents.

SMS Campaigns that Recover Abandoned Sales

Targeting visitors who have recently left a website without completing a purchase via SMS can be especially effective when the items they’ve left behind are time sensitive.

This could be items discounted in sales, or purchases like flights or theme park tickets.
SMS works well in this context as it’s more likely to be seen, opened and clicked than email. It’s direct and to the point.

Thorpe Park use SMS to deliver messages to visitors 30 minutes after abandoning an online booking.

The campaign has generated fantastic results, with 32% of recipients clicking on the link, and 7% of these returning visitors completing their booking.
This has resulted in a massive 5% increase in online sales for Thorpe Park.

Here’s another example from Firefly, which prompts customers to complete a booking and sends them straight back to the booking page.

SMS Campaigns that Drive Customer Loyalty

SMS can be used as a great channel to follow up with customers after a purchase.
For example, Papa John’s looks to learn from its customers by asking them about the service they received.
This can produce some valuable insights which can inform future improvements, and also sends a message to the customer that they are a company which is concerned about the service it provides.

SMS can also be used for replenishment messages, in this case from MegaOil.
It provides a useful and convenient service which make customers lives easier, while increasing the number of repeat purchases.