SMS marketing is only as effective as the strategy behind it. According to a survey by Statista, “in February 2021, nearly half of the respondents stated that on average they spent five to six hours on their phone on a daily basis”. Taking this into consideration, not having a SMS marketing strategy is a huge missed opportunity for your business. 

What is SMS Marketing?

SMS refers to Short Message Service. SMS marketing is a strategy focused on sending users messages regarding special offers, sales, reminders or updates through text messages to their mobile phones. People need to give businesses their consent to receive promotional SMS. 

There are different types of messages used in marketing that are all covered by the term SMS, but have different characteristics:

• SMS – Short Message Service: messages that are text only. 

• MMS – Multimedia Messaging Service: they’re messages that focus on sending multimedia files such as images, videos, GIFs or phone contacts. 

• RCS – Rich Communication Service: rich media messaging is the evolution of SMS. They allow to send text messages that include multimedia content and links. 

Are SMS marketing campaigns intrusive?

Popular belief dictates that SMS are intrusive. However, it’s important to note that said misconception can be caused because of the abuse in sending bulk/mass SMS. 

These types of campaigns lack segmentation and personalisation, so they can be perceived as annoying from the users’ end. If you implement a well-though automated SMS marketing campaign, the results will shock you. It’s an amazing channel with the highest ROAS, surpassing 100x (10000%).

“Frizbit SMS marketing campaigns have generated clients a ROAS of over 100x. 

Every SMS marketing strategy should be planned carefully and thoughtfully. Is not to be taken lightly as it presents a direct communication channel to connect on a more personal level with customers. In a study conducted by GSMA, 61% of people said that they would engage more with businesses if they offered a more personalised service. 

Here are some interesting insights on the effectiveness of SMS marketing: 

• 59% of users want their communications built into the phone – not as a separate app, that they need to download (GSMA)

• 77% of consumers are likely to have a positive perception of a company that offers SMS. (eRetailers)

• 83% of millennials open SMS messages within 90 seconds of receiving them. (OpenMarket)

• 75% of millennials prefer SMS communications for deliveries, promotions, and surveys. (OpenMarket)

• SMS messages have a 98% open rate compared to 20% of emails. (SMS Comparison). 

• SMS messages have an average click-through rate of 36%, while email click-through-rates are a dismal 3.4%. (DSIM)

• 90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes of being received. (SMS Global)

• Using short, branded links in your mobile marketing campaigns can help improve conversions by up to 34%. (Rebrandly)

• 77% of consumers said they opted-in to a brand’s text messages to receive coupons or deals. (Exact Target)

• 97% of companies found they communicated with consumers more efficiently after launching texting initiatives. (GSMA)

SMS COMPARED VS. OTHER CHANNELS

CTRs by channel from automated behavioural retargeting campaigns

 

Conversion rate by channel

If you’re already on board with the idea of including SMS marketing in your strategy, keep on reading for:

SMS Marketing: 7 Tips for a Winning Strategy

1. SMS Marketing Tip #1: Create an opt-in strategy

The first thing you need to think about when deciding to implement a SMS marketing strategy is how are you going to get SMS subscribers, people to opt-in and share their phone number with you. You have to design a strategy that allows you to collect subscribers to add to your lists. Here are a few ideas on how to approach it:

• Website pop-up: is one of the most common methods used to capture subscribers. You can add it to your homepage and include an engaging offer such a special discount in return. 

• During checkout: it’s normal to ask a lot of personal information through the checkout process, including phone number. Make sure you include a message that requests the users’ permission to send information and updates and be explicit about using their phone number for promotional purposes. 

• Email: if you already have an email subscriber list, you can use it to your advantage and send a campaign to direct them to a landing page asking them to leave their phone numbers. 

2. SMS Marketing Tip #2: Exclusive Content

A marketers life is a very hectic one. It’s understandable that we might not have the time to design a different message for each one of the channels we use to communicate with our audience. However, when it comes to SMS marketing success, exclusivity of the message is of utmost importance. 

Send exclusive offers and deals to your subscribers. Include a text that indicates the offer you are sending is for VIP SMS customers only! This type of message will make them feel special, helping you create a tighter bond with your audience, which ultimately decreases opt-outs, increasing CTRs and conversions.  By using a provider such as Frizbit, you can do this by using dynamic parameters and adding users’ names. 

Take the time to strategise specifically for SMS marketing. Design sales, promos and offers that are exclusive to this channel and make users know that. When you ask them to opt-in: make it clear that they will receive special and unique benefits from subscribing to your SMS marketing channel. 

3. SMS Marketing Tip #3: Segment your Audience

You might have thousands of subscribers to your SMS channel, but each of them is an individual with unique tastes and preferences. That’s why it’s so important that you segment your audience for every campaign you send. 

Your segmentation can be as general or as specific as you want it to be. You can segment from language, location, purchasing history, gender and much more. Taking your time to do this will highly increase the effectiveness of your SMS marketing campaign. 

Let’s say you’re an online sports store. There’s a big, important game coming up between two rival soccer teams and you want to send a special sale on their t-shirts. If you don’t segment your audience only to people who have shown interest in soccer, there’s a really big chance your CTRs are going to be really bad and you might end up with a lot of opt-outs from people who will find the SMS irrelevant and annoying. 

This goes for all bulk SMS campaigns you send. You have to take your time and segment your audience to deliver the right message to the right person. 

4. SMS Marketing Tip #4: Send a Sequence of Messages

With Frizbit, you can do  SMS marketing by automating messages to reach subscribers every step of the marketing funnel. You can set up triggered SMS that are sent a period of time after a subscriber completes an action on the website:

• Product viewed
• Product added to cart
• Post-purchase reminders

Design, automate and schedule a message for each event targeting users by behaviour. Event-based SMS are great to maintain a communication flow and seek an immediate response. 90% of the messages are read within the first 3 minutes after receiving it. By designing a sequence of SMS you keep your brand on the user’s top of mind with ongoing communication. 

In addition to that, by configuring a flow, you’ll have a long-term marketing strategy without extra work. The setup of the sequences only needs to be done one first time so you don’t have to invest more efforts every time you want to send out a campaign. 

5. SMS Marketing Tip #5: Include an Image

Is no secret that including images in your communications have a direct impact on click-through rates. In a study conducted by Simple Texting, they discovered that messages with an image had a 52% higher CTR than the ones that didn’t.

People are very visual and respond well to images. That’s why it’s always advisable to include a photo as long as is pertinent for the message and your industry. If you’re in real estate, include a photo of the listing the subscriber shows interest in, if you own a restaurant include mouth-watering photos of the plates you offer, or maybe you have an e-commerce so you can add images of the articles the person liked!

Remember that the objective is to make the communication as personalised as possible. Including a photo will make the message more relatable, as when users open it the first thing they’ll see is something they liked. 

6. SMS Marketing Tip #6: Include an appealing CTA

If you know anything about digital marketing, you might be tired from hearing about the “include a great CTA” tip. But the importance of the call to action justifies the repetition. The CTA is the element that closes the deal: this is when you tell people what to do. 

The copy of the call to action lets people know what to expect if they decide to click on that button. If you want recipients to finish a purchase, see what’s new, discover new products or to not miss out a sale,  tell them here. 

Put yourself in their shoes. For example, what would your reaction be if you get a SMS from a travel website with a wonderful photo of the Eiffel Tower and a copy that says “Paris in the Spring is beautiful” but nothing else. It doesn’t specify what you expected action should be, it doesn’t include a CTA saying something like “book a flight with 15% off before spring is over”. Don’t leave people hanging and include a CTA that lets them know what their next move should be. 

7. SMS Marketing Tip #7: A/B Testing

Either you’re a new or an experienced SMS marketer, A/B testing needs to be part of your strategy. You might have a lot of knowledge about your audience and have developed a strong instinct on what they respond to the best. However, these types of analysis will help you sharpen the strategy and make it the best it can be. 

Changing the CTA, the image or the copy can have a major impact on the results of your SMS marketing campaign. It’s important to try different versions of the same message, track their performance and adjust it in order to get better and better results each time. 

A/B testing your SMS campaigns will give you amazing insights on your audience likes and dislikes. You can then take that knowledge and apply it to your overall strategy to optimise and enrich user experience.

8. SMS Marketing Tip #8: Select the right provider

None of the amazing ideas you have for your SMS marketing strategy is going to be effective if you choose the wrong provider. You have to do your homework and research the features available from each option you consider.

Is extremely important that you choose a SMS marketing provider that offers automated and personalised SMS, rather than only bulk ones. The key of success with SMS marketing campaigns is automation and that’s exactly what Frizbit offers. 

In addition to complete automation and sending of campaigns triggered by users’ behaviour on the site, Frizbit also offers dynamic parameters for hyper personalisation. The SMS include:

• Sender ID
• User name
• Product name
• URL
• Call to action

Bonus tip!

To increase effectiveness of your SMS marketing campaign, we strongly recommend you to integrate it in a multi-channel marketing strategy. With Frizbit you can implement an orchestrated campaign that includes web push notifications, email marketing and SMS to offer users an enhanced experience and increase retention. 

Related blog post: 

• Marketing Funnel Explained: Optimize your Full Funnel Strategy
• Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategies for E-commerce – Recover Lost Sales
• Web Push Notifications Done Right – 7 Mistakes To Avoid!

Cart abandonment recovery is the biggest issue e-commerce sites face every day. According to Statista on a study including different industries, for March 2020 an average of 88.05% of online orders were left behind without completion. Specifically, the online retail sector has an average of 84.51 percent shopping cart abandonment rate.

Since it represents a huge leak of sales, it’s one of the most (if not the most) important problems to tackle if you own or run any type of online store. There are many reasons why customers abandon their shopping carts. Before we go into detail on how to mitigate this issue, let’s point out some of the:

Main reasons shoppers abandon carts:

• Confusing site
• Unexpected costs in shipping or taxes
• Confusing checkout process
• Online “window shopping”
• Security concerns
• Found a better deal on another site

If you want to implement cart abandonment recovery strategies, there are many techniques you can apply as for today and start getting results. Even though all users are different, with their own likes, dislikes and needs, there are some similarities and commonplaces to be identified within the segments and come up with a strategic approach that offers the right solutions.

Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategies

1. Use retargeting channels strategies

Marketers are very lucky. Yes, cart abandonment is a big issue for online stores, but there’s a wide variety of channels and marketing tools to use and tackle the problem from all angles with a tailor made strategy that fits your needs and fulfill customer’s expectations. One of the most important moves to make is to implement retargeting strategies. 

The following table shows an estimate of how each channel performs for cart abandonment recovery strategies. The numbers where measured for a average e-commerce site.

• Opt-in rate: The op-in rate shows how many visitors subscribe to each channel.
• % of subscribers in sequence: the % of subscribers in sequence makes reference to how many of those subscribers can be reached by the respective channel.
• Number of messages in sequence: when it comes to the number of messages in the sequence, it shows how many messages where designed to include as a series.
• CTR: is the click-trough rate for each channel, it show how many subscribers who received the messages clicked on it.
• Conversion rate: how many subscribers who received the messages and clicked on it, finished a purchase.
• Increase in sales: how much revenue said channel generated for the site.

Channel	Opt-in Rate	% Of Subscribers in Sequence	# Of Messages in Sequence	CTR	Conversion Rate	Increase in Sales
Email – Cart Abandonment	1- 3%	100%	3	17,2%	3,8x	4%
SMS – Cart Abandonment	0,5-1,5%	100%	1	35,4%	5,2x	2%
Web Push – Cart Abandonment	5-10%	10-15%	3	12,1%	2,3x	1%
Web Push – Full Funnel	5-10%	100%	3	10,7%	0,8x	2%

Users that have reached the checkout stage of the shopping funnel are easier to convert than visitors or potential customers. There’s no reason not to make the biggest effort on this step. 

You have three main channels available for cart abandonment recovery and recover lost sales while retaining users: automated web push notifications, emails and SMS.

• Cart abandonment recovery automated Web Push Notifications

Web push notifications are messages sent through browsers to, either mobile or desktop, to subscribers that opt-in to receive them. They’re delivered the moment users open the browser and start navigating online, indistinctly of the site or page they’re on at the moment.

Automated web push notifications allow to send users automatic messages related to the step of the shopping journey they were on the moment they left the site. For example, when users put an item in the basket, but abandon the web without completing the order, they will receive an automated web push notification reminding them about the product they left behind. 

You can recover lost sales from abandoned carts by sending automated notifications to users who left products in their basket but didn’t complete the purchase. You can schedule a sequence of messages to be delivered after certain amounts of time, like 1 hour, 1 day and 3 days after the user abandoned its shopping cart. 

The most engaging feature about using this channel to recapture lost customers, is that you don’t need any type of personal data from them. Unlike email or SMS, you can retarget visitors and anonymous users with web push notifications and bring them back to your site so they can finish their purchase. 

• Cart abandonment recovery emails

Cart abandonment email might be the strategy online stores use the most to tackle this issue. When using automated emails, they’re automatically sent to users that left the site on some step of the checkout process without completing a purchase after they added products to their cart.

Frizbit allows you to set up automated behavioural emails to recover abandoned carts.  The configuration process only needs to be done once, so implementing this strategy won’t represent a continuous effort or add to your normal workload.

Recovering abandoned carts emails should be as highly customised as possible. When users identify and relate to the content of the message, click-through and conversion rates increase significantly which translates to a recovery of lost sales and an increase in your revenue. 

This strategy has always been so popular, because it has presented a direct communication with users by contacting them through their email accounts. The downside is that, in order to do so, you need people to share with you their personal information and they don’t always do that. So, basically, if a user leaves the site before reaching the part of the checkout process where they’re supposed to submit their email address, you lose that user for good. 

Even though cart abandonment emails have always presented encouraging results for online stores, combining them in a strategy that also includes automated web push notifications will help you optimize your strategy and take it to the next level. Keep in mind that with emails, you can only reach those people that registered, while losing visitors and anonymous users. Adding an additional channel, that allows you to communicate with all visitors might be what your strategy is missing. 

You can check out our Success Story with Bidcom, an online retailer in consumer electronics that uses a combination of Frizbit’s automated behavioural emails and web push notifications campaign to recover abandoned carts. 

• Cart abandonment recovery SMS

SMS cart abandonment are messages sent to users that left a site during some step of the checkout process after adding a product to their basket. They work with the same principle of cart abandonment emails, but instead of receiving the message in the inboxes, users receive them on their mobile devices.

The format of SMS presents a great opportunity for online stores, since the information is delivered directly to the hands of the user through their phones, which makes it a very direct form of communication. Everyone has their mobiles nearby and constantly checks them during the day. Unlike emails, with SMS you don’t have to wait for users to go and check their inboxes to get the message. 

They are also highly customisable as well, and can include user name, product name, category name, brand or pretty much anything you wish to highlight about the article. This helps by making the message more relevant and harder to ignore by the user. 

However, the way it happens with emails, you need users to provide information: their phone number. If people are already reluctant to share their email address, this unwillingness increases a lot when it comes to sharing much more personal information like their personal number. If they don’t, you’ll lose them as well. 

Create a multichannel cart abandonment recovery strategy

There are multiple roads you can take to deal with cart abandonment: optimizing the web experience, using retargeting emails, sms or web push notifications. The way we see it, the real solution for this issue is to combine all of them in a well-planned retargeting strategy. 

FYI, we’re not saying that you should harass your users with messages while you follow and stalk them through every possible channel. What we’re saying is that you need design and execute a multichannel cart abandonment strategy in a way each channel complements the other.

Create a strategy thought out like a service you’re providing your customers. You want to bring them back to finish their purchases and recover lost carts in a way they feel they’re also gaining something. You can use each channel available in a different way, with different types of messages, different frequencies and segmenting by users by creating a flow of messages. 

Remember to always make the message as relevant as possible by using the dynamic fields available such as user name, product name, image, price or any information you see fit. The most important thing you need to keep in mind when designing your multichannel cart abandonment strategy is to use the frequency cap parameter so you can regulate the time periods your messages are delivered.

This is especially important if you work with different providers for each channel. You’ll have to coordinate the time frames in which you want each message to be delivered so they don’t clash with each other. For example, if the recovery cart email is sent after one hour, you’ll have to change the web push notification timing to be sent after two hours. If the user clicks on the email and completes a purchase, that event will be fulfilled, hence cancelling the web push notification automatically. 

If you work with the same provider for web push, emails and SMS, this won’t present a problem or extra work. Frizbit allows cross-platform event triggering coordination, meaning that if a user clicks on the cart abandonment recovery notification, the email and the SMS won’t be sent and so on.

Additional Tips to Reduce Cart Abandonment Rates

1. Optimize your site

When we talk about cart abandonment issues, we’re referring to the last step of the shopping funnel. So why are we even mentioning the quality of the site as an important element here? Simple: user experience from top to bottom. 

• Simplify navigation

Simplify the journey as much as you can. A lot of users abandon carts because of a confusing, complex navigation. The more clicks you put them through, the higher the chances that they leave before completing a purchase. The ideal number here is up to three clicks. To get there, make sure you organize your products in different, identifiable categories with names that clearly describe what’s in them.

• Create engaging informative product pages

Remember that before any user even thinks about adding a product to the basket, they browse through your site. They get a feeling from what they see, from the homepage to the product page. You want to focus on creating an engaging experience for them that also presents all the information they might need to know before making a decision.

Include product visuals that portray as best as possible the characteristics of the article: photos from different angles, videos, details. When shopping online, customers don’t get to touch, smell or experience the product in any physical way, and that can be a huge barrier to the shopping process. Reduce it by adding as much visual and descriptive information as you can.

• Reduce loading times

Long loading times can greatly affect cart abandonment rates. Keep in mind that people get easily bored and distracted when browsing online. If you make them wait too long to go through checkout after finally deciding to shop for a product on your site, you can very easily lose them. 

This risk is even bigger for mobile users who already present higher cart abandonment rates as they are. Bottom line, if your site is slow, users will abandon. The checkout page is the step where you want to boost your site’s loading time as much as possible. Making the shopping journey easy and fast in this stage is crucial for customers to complete their purchase and avoid cart abandonment. 

2. Increase site trust

As we mentioned before, one of the main reasons for cart abandonment is a lack of trust in the shopping process. Even though by now most of us are extremely used to shopping online and we do it all the time, there are still a lot of barriers regarding the level of trust on online transactions. 

You’re asking people that don’t know you from anything to trust you, not just with personal information, like email or phone number, but with very private and sensitive credit card and bank account details. It’s your job to increase the level of trust. You can do it by:

• Displaying logos of security companies your work with: One study done by Actual Insights found that, on average, 61% of people did not buy because a trust logo was no were to be found on the site, and over 75% said they didn’t buy because they didn’t recognize the logos used.

 

 

• Including social proof: If you also let users know that others have purchased products from you and had a great experience doing so, you might tilt the balance in your favor. It’s all about adding valuable information that reduces hesitation by increasing trust leves of your site. 

 

 

• Avoiding to request unnecessary information: nobody likes to share their personal details on the internet. Especially if you don’t know what they’re going to be used for, so refrain yourself from asking people to fill endless forms with personal data. If possible, create a “guest checkout” option that doesn’t require users to create a profile on your site.

3. Be honest about your prices!

Unexpected and hidden additional charges in the checkout page is the biggest reason customers leave without completing a purchase. 56% of shoppers claimed to have abandoned their cart because extra rates were not mentioned before. 

To lower this stat, be as transparent as possible from the get go. Make sure to display shipping rates and tax charges as clearly as you can so people can see it and don’t be surprised when they’re about to click that final “complete purchase” button. 

You can add a shipping calculator where customers can introduce their addresses and learn how much it will cost them. Another option is to offer free shipping when a certain basket price is met. This way, not only will the costs be clear, it will be an extra incentive for customers to maybe spend a little more on your site. 

You can reduce cart abandonment rates dramatically if you plan and execute a seamless retargeting strategy. If you want to request a one month demo period to try it out on your site, let us know by clicking here, we’ll be happy to help. 

These articles might also interest you!

• Bidcom reached a 37x ROAS with automated Emails and Web Push Notifications from Frizbit
• Web Push Notifications: A Complete Guide for all Levels
• How to Conduct Successful A/B Testing: Go from Beginner to Pro

Text messaging has been used as a marketing platform for years, but in relatively ineffective ways. Some may view Short Message Service (SMS) marketing as costly for businesses, since sending out a massive amount of texts can be expensive. Moreover, critics may point out that text messages can only convey limited information or that recipients may find it intrusive and consider the messages as spam. However, these drawbacks only apply to the current way in which SMS marketing is being employed–in a uniform, impersonal manner.  When used in a hyper-personalized and automated way, SMS can be an extremely effective avenue to both engage and re-engage customers.

Universal Advantages of SMS Marketing & Communication

1. Instant communication

In today’s day and age, the majority of people who own a mobile phone carry it with them at all times. This makes SMS an especially effective medium when it comes to communicating messages that are dependent on time, such as a notification that a promotion is ending soon or a reminder that another customer might take the item a user left in his or her cart. Being clear-cut and convenient, unlike lengthy emails or tedious phone calls, time will be saved on the sides of both the sender and receiver. This leads to an efficient, effective transmission of information.

2. Highly Likely to be read

While not everyone has email notifications turned on, most people receive text notifications. According to research, 90% of text messages are read within three minutes of being delivered and 82% of people report reading every SMS they receive. This is about four times the open rate of emails, which is around 20%. Even if one does not open your message, a preview of the text is likely to show up on their phone, still reaching your consumer.  

3. Unsaturated form of marketing

It is estimated that the average person is bombarded with 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements a day. With social media and digital advertising being the more commonly used platforms at the moment, users become desensitized to these ads, making them more likely to scroll past and ignore the content. The usage of ad-blockers also inhibits these tactics. A text message, on the other hand, stands out because it is more direct and eye-catching, which is important considering the high volume of ads one sees in a day.

4. Can maximize user reach

While Whatsapp, Facebook, and other mobile messaging apps require smartphones, text messages are accessible to all mobile users. In the United States, for example, while 95% of the population owns a mobile phone, only 77% of those are smartphones, which renders 17% unable to receive communication through push notifications, app notifications, or emails on their phones. Globally, only around half of all mobile users have smartphones. Using SMS will enable you to contact a significant portion of users you could be missing otherwise.

5. Less likely to be marked as spam

Research suggests that while a whopping 53% of emails are marked as spam, only 2.8% of text messages are. Thus, SMS can increase both your overall reach and chances of user re-engagement.

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Benefits When Used in an Hyper-personalized Fashion

Using automation and behavioral targeting, Frizbit can mitigate for the general faults that SMS advertising is thought to have, as well as add further benefits to those listed above. Reach your highest engagement rates ever thanks to the following capabilities of hyper-personalized text messaging:

• Call the users by their names
  • Let them know they are important
• Use advanced personalization parameters
  • i.e. price, product name, product category
• Trigger messages based on user behavior
  • i.e. geolocation, related products, cart abandonment

Sample Use Cases of Hyper-Personalized Text Messages Sent via Frizbit

1) Incomplete transactions

Remind customers to complete their purchases if they left any products in their carts.

2) Appointment reminders

Make remembering appointments easier on customers and reduce no-shows. This is perfect for salons, dentists’ or doctors’ offices, restaurants, or any other service that offers reserved timeslots.

3) Event Promotion

Behavioral targeting will enable you to recommend content your users will enjoy.

4) Geo-location

When a customer is in a certain area at a certain time, it can trigger a relevant SMS.

5) Promotions & Sales

Encourage users to take advantage of limited-time discounts.

6) Travel Alerts

Arranging travel can be complicated for clients. They will be more likely to return to your agency if their experience flows smoothly with helpful reminders and suggestions.

7) Holidays

Wish customers a happy holiday and encourage them to let your company help them celebrate.

8) Opinion Polls

Figure out how to improve customer service and ratings by encouraging feedback.

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You can start utilizing automated and hyper-personalized SMS to bring customers back effectively and generate targeted conversions having high return on investment. Frizbit will enable your business to create timely, meaningful connections with users, via behavioral text messages. Register to Frizbit now for an online demo to see how you can take your communication with your users to the next level!

A multi-channel marketing strategy is key to success for any digital business nowadays. Many companies opt for managing their communication with their customers over multiple channels, using different teams, third-parties or providers. This can result in customers receiving messages through a variety of channels that can easily overlap each other with repeated, irrelevant information and end up wearing users out. 

Companies should focus on personalisation and start to cater to their customers as individuals with personalised needs and interests, while managing their communications centrally. If you’re not engaging to your user’s preferences, they’re more likely to opt-out from all the channels you use trying to connect with them, due to finding your communication irrelevant and annoying.

In today’s day in age, customers have a lot of power over what type of communications they receive from brands by refusing to subscribe, refusing to share personal information and installing browser extensions such as ad blockers.  This leaves sellers constantly trying to find new and effective ways to get the end result necessary, which of course is to bring that customer back to complete a conversion. 

To adapt to this reality, businesses must strive to make it as easy as possible for customers to gain access to their site. This is made possible by the sheer orchestration of an automated, engaging, attractive and relevant communication strategy through different channels. This will allow you to interact with your users in the most effective way possible. 

Why should you use automated multi-channel marketing campaigns?

Value has more to do with being there for people, rather than selling the industry’s best. having this kind of mindset will result in an increase of customer retention. This is vital, because even a five percent increase in customer retention can raise profits by 25-95 percent. If you are not already sold by this statistic, imagine this: It costs from 5 to 25 times more to get a new customer, than it does to keep the one you already have. Therefore, it’s important to keep that user engaged by communicating through multi-channel marketing and a sequence of messages that’s relevant, useful and attractive.

The Performance Comparison of Each Channel (Email, SMS, Web Push, Ads)

Channel	Opt-in Rate	Deliverability	Average CTR
Email	1-3%	98.2%	17.2%
SMS	0.5-1.5%	>99%	35.4%
Web Push Notifications	5-10%	>98%	10.7%
Retargeting Ads	N/A	Depends on CPC	0.7%

Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy: Benefits of SMS, Email and Web Push Notifications combined 

• Reach more customers by offering multiple options for them to choose their preferred channel
• Engage customers through the channel of their preference
• Drive more traffic to your website/app, therefore generating more revenue
• Connect with anonymous users who prefer not to share their personal info, via push notifications
• Create a customer engagement journey through scenarios and templates designed for each channel to be sent at the best time
• Track performance of your campaigns on each channel through Frizbit user and campaign reports
• Optimize your communication and discover how to connect better with your customers on a more personal level with A/B testing and machine learning

Multi-Channel Marketing Strategies

1. Email Marketing

 

Email marketing has always been one of the most common and preferred channels for online businesses to get in touch with their customers. It’s a tool that offers many possibilities, especially if you use the correct provider platform to plan and send your campaigns:

• Ongoing communication: Frizbit is able to strategically build a sequence of emails that will grasp your user’s attention, bringing them back to visit your website once again. You can design messages series for cart abandonment recovery, product suggestions based on behaviour and much more to keep in touch with your customers during periods of time you can define yourself.  

• More leads: when a user decides to share their email address with you, you can easily start building a new leads database through email communication. With this information you have the possibility to get in touch with your customers on a more personal level. You can nurture those leads with inbound and content marketing campaigns that will create a more long-lasting relationship with your clients. 

• Hyper-personalisation: Customers appreciate and want to learn more about what you have to offer. Especially if you send a message with specific information that’s relevant and useful for them, helping you increase engagement. You can include their names, product name, image, price and more to make the email as personalised as you can, which will highly increase CTRs. ç

• Automation: Frizbit allows complete automation of the email sequences you create. this means you won’t have to invest lots of time to configure and send a campaign whenever you want, you’ll just have to do it once.

2. SMS Marketing

SMS marketing strategies have been around for a while, just like in the case of email marketing. There are many similar benefits of both channels, however SMS offer some additional ones worth revising that will help you take your multi-channel marketing strategy to the next level: 

• Immediate communication: SMS marketing provides an immediate channel of communication with your customers. If we keep in mind that most of us don’t separate from our phones for nearly 5 minutes a day, SMS is a great option if you want an almost immediate response from your customers. SMS also highly guarantees the delivery of the message, since you don’t have to wait for users to go online and check their inboxes like in the case of emails. 

• Closeness: Texts messages are an intimate channel of communication. They relate to close relationships which gives customers a feeling of a more personal and less commercial communication.

• Automation: As it does in the case of email marketing, Frizbit is able to send out automated and personalized text messages to each customer based on their actions on the site. The SMS can be scheduled to be sent after an exact amount of time after being triggered by an event on the web without adding additional work to your planning and execution.

 3. Web Push Notifications

Web push notifications allow a one click process to redirect customers back to your site. They’re short, direct messages based on users’ behaviour and delivered through their browsers when they go online. This is a very new channel, so its benefits are not so well known like in the case of email and SMS marketing:

• Reachability: web push notifications are delivered to the subscriber on both desktops and mobile devices, even if they’re not browsing your website. 

• Connect with anonymous users: in order to send web push notifications, you don’t need to request users to share any type of personal information like email address or phone number. Visitors only need to Allow them via  the opt-in prompt shown when they enter the website for the first time and, with just one click, they become subscribers. This allows you to connect with visitors, giving you the chance to turn them into customers. 

• Immediate traffic generation: with manual or bulk web push notifications sent to all subscribers, you can send flash sales alerts, out of stock availability, price drop alerts or special offer messages that can generate a lot of traffic to your site very quickly. 

• Full funnel communication: web push notifications messages can be completely automated and triggered by events for every single step of funnel. They offer a channel through which you can communicate with your subscribers with a specific message throughout the entire shopping process: first visit to the page, category viewed, product viewed and product added to cart. 

• Deliverability: web push notifications offer guaranteed deliverability. This channel is browser based, meaning that as soon as a subscriber opens up its browser, the message will be delivered.

4. Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads are one of the main channels used by online advertisers to try to reconnect and bring back users to their site. By using retargeting ads, brands “follow” users that didn’t convert to show them images and messages inviting them to come back and finish a transaction. The benefits of including them in your digital marketing mix are:

• Branding: usually, retargeting ads are shown multiple times to the same person. This contributes to increasing brand awareness by displaying the image of the brand, its logo and, maybe the slogan during a period of time making it stick in the users’ mind. 

• Reach: retargeting ads have great reach, since they allow you to get to almost every user that accepted cookies. This channel allows you to reach people practically anywhere on the internet after they have visited your site only one time. 

Integrating multi-Channel marketing strategies

It can take up to twenty impressions across multiple marketing channels to convince a potential customer to take action. Keep in mind that people are usually not ready to make the purchase the first time they visit a web. Users need to see the message you are trying to convey multiple times before they actually begin paying attention and more so, before converting. You can greatly increase the possibility of that happening by consistent messaging across multiple channels with a well-though digital marketing strategy. 

It’s predicted that people will likely interact with at least two marketing channels out of the many offered. Platforms such as Frizbit ensure that you’re consistent with the information you send across all marketing channels in order to create a great experience for your customers. 

Start marketing your brand with a  multi-channel marketing strategy by signing up for a Frizbit demo! 

Meanwhile you can also read, 

• Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategies for E-commerce – Recover Lost Sales
• The Future of Digital Marketing Without 3rd Party Cookies
• Are Web Push Notifications GDPR Compliant?