Why use SMS marketing in the run-up to Halloween?

Halloween has grown rapidly over the years and has become a popularly celebrated occasion in most of our social calendars. For retailers especially, Halloween brings a number of opportunities to boost sales and increase audience engagement with scarily good, well-timed SMS marketing campaigns.

Huge reach

SMS marketing has a proven track record for reaching customers right where they are. Many organisations incorporate it into their marketing campaign in a bid to improve their strategy when it comes to attracting new clients as well as keeping current clients interested in their services.

SMS campaigns are believed to be one of the most successful tools for a marketing strategy, and as text messages are a large part of our daily routine, there’s no better time to start your SMS campaign than now.

Open rate

Thanks to a majority of the globe owning and feeling attached to their phone, SMS marketing boasts an average open rate of 98% and a response rate of 45%. This alone makes SMS as a customer communication channel 4 times more successful than email marketing.Although, for many companies email is marketing bread and butter, so rather than abandon this tried and trusted channel, it’s better to adopt a multichannel approach and simply use SMS to support your customers’ journey with your brand.

Tricks…

Enhance customer data collection

Why not use features such as SMS surveys to gather more data from your customers such as their satisfaction with your cart to checkout process? Or even to collect more information about their purchasing preferences, favourite times of year, perhaps even pet preferences.

All this to say that you can use SMS marketing to build a relationship with your subscribers and grow your customer profiles to discover the best ways to engage with them. As a rule of thumb, the more you can enhance your customer database the stronger your customer relationships will be.

And this will in turn boost your success rate with your marketing campaigns. One of the great things about building a strong SMS customer marketing database is that you have a wealth of information that allows you to identify your target audience and tailor your marketing campaigns more effectively.

Keep it clear and concise

Ever heard the saying less is more? Short clear messages tend to get more engagement than chunky long worded texts. Text messages need to be a maximum of 160 characters which sounds very little but is more than enough to capture attention.

If you think about it, we use our phones for quick communication. This is one of the reasons why SMS marketing is so much more successful than email marketing - email comms are typically much lengthier and can sometimes fill a whole page before the recipient even come across a call-to-action (CTA).

Aim to design your messages so that they can be read at a glance. Using abbreviations, acronyms, and emojis to get straight to the point - ensuring that there’s no room for ambiguity and your target audience instantly understand why you’re contacting them and what they need to do next.

And whilst we’re talking about CTAs, make sure these are visible and stand out from your message copy. You will only have a few seconds to make an impact, and a clear call to action is key to getting the result that you want from your campaign.

Personalisation

If there’s one way to alter your messaging to boost engagement, it’s by using personalisation tokens.

Take the time to get to know your audience, and find out who they are, and most importantly what their preferred channels are. What group demographic are you targeting and how do they like to be communicated with? Edit your tone to fit the message style.

Use dynamic fields and personalise your comms. Using their first names can build trust and brand loyalty and let them know that they’re not just a number in your database. Send offers with birthday wishes or, send out alerts when their favourite products are reduced in price or back in stock.

Treats…

Simple opt-in and opt-out

Please remember that receiving SMS marketing messages is a choice. You should always present an exit option for your customers at the end of each message. There is nothing more annoying (or scary) than being pestered by unwanted text messages. Text marketing is bound by laws that prevent unsolicited communication, meaning that your customers need to opt-in to receive them.

The great thing about opt-in and subscription-based marketing is that it enhances the quality of your engagement. The subscribers you do have will have a genuine interest in your brand. In turn, you can maximise your ROI by getting more conversions rather than firing out randomised marketing messages to anyone and everyone.

We advise that you end your messages by letting subscribers know they can opt out at any time by replying ‘STOP’. Allowing consumers, the option to unsubscribe will make them less likely to, surprisingly!

Save customers from themselves with OTP

With phishing and cybercrime at an all-time high, it’s more important than ever to help your customers help themselves by keeping their login information and sensitive data secure. Seemingly innocent conversations with ‘customer service agents’ use social engineering to obtain data that allows them to access and use customer accounts and information as they please.

One way that you can help protect your customers from scams like this is by setting up a one-time password (OTP) verification process through SMS. This is a form of two-way verification and uses both a password and an extra security code to verify identity whenever your customers sign into their account.

With this in place, even if someone succeeds in stealing a password they still will not be able to access their account without entering the second piece of security information (usually an SMS with an OTP).

Discount strategies

Finding the perfect balance for discounting through SMS marketing all depends on selecting the right offer. The goal is to push less active customers or loyal customers into boosting their average purchase value by adding more to the cart than they usually would. The right product to discount depends on what customers like, how they buy and/or what you need to move.  

It’s always a good idea to analyse results from your previous SMS campaign performance before crafting your next text message - what did your customers respond to last time? This way you can experiment with types of offers, personalisation, and duration in a way that will help you grow your ROI from discounting over time.

Halloween SMS campaigns offer the perfect excuse to send out special discounts to subscribers. So have fun playing around with seasonal copy and themed offers!

The 101 of themed SMS marketing

Seasonal celebrations like Halloween offer the perfect opportunity to experiment with your SMS marketing strategy. Why not try something different and see if adding more dynamic fields for personalisation or extending your customer data collection process improves your campaign performance visibility and results?

Run some A/B tests, get creative with your copy, check that you have a simple opt-in/out process, and include clear CTAs for a better user experience.

Although we’re focusing on Halloween in this blog, the same tips apply to any seasonal occasion or event, and if you’re looking for more quirky and fun excuses to strike up a conversation with your customers, check out our 2024 marketing calendar here.