How SaaS Companies Can Use SMS Marketing to an Advantage

Being the most used and popular device, mobile phones have the edge of communicating the message of your SaaS company in a personalized and timely fashion to your target audience. And what better way than to use SMS to reach out to them? Just use these tips, and your app company is all set to add SMS marketing to its marketing strategy.

SMS marketing campaigns prompt the user to open their messages just as they receive a notification and provide great prospects for software marketing.

90% of SMS messages received are opened within 3 minutes.

There are over 5.20 billion unique mobile internet users globally, with a growth of 2% annually.

With the number of mobile users increasing every passing day, it's only logical that your business starts addressing these potential customers through SMS messaging to sell your consumer software and apps.

SMS marketing can be a great addition to your digital marketing strategy if it's done strategically. Use this article to help your enterprise reach out to your target audience to promote your business and divert the attention of your target audience toward your software.

What is SMS Marketing?

SMS is the abbreviation for ‘short message service.'

SMS Marketing is the use of text messages to send promotional offers or engaging messages for marketing reasons. These messages are ideally meant to deliver time-sensitive offers, updates, and notifications to those who have agreed to receive them. SMS marketing usually takes little cost and is an excellent way of communicating software promotional content to people who are availing or want to avail your software services. This raises your chances of increasing your conversion rate.

SMS marketing guarantees high returns and provides an incredible platform to convey your software firm's messages to mobile users. When your customer fills up a form, make sure they get an option for them to subscribe to your SMS messages by adding their phone numbers.

Ensure that you mention how you would never disclose their contact details to anyone through the security policy hyperlinked in your form.

Benefits of SMS Marketing For SaaS Businesses

Among many other benefits of SMS marketing, its main benefits include:

It is a direct channel of communication with your customers, and the person who gets the SMS is likely to read it within a few minutes of its delivery. 83% of millennials open SMS messages within 90 seconds of receiving them.

SMS marketing software can integrate with other platforms, including social media and email. A simple message to ‘check your mail or visit our Facebook page' for promotional offers might do the trick.

SMS marketing is a great way to receive feedback from your customers. Customers feel great if they are able to respond to your text messages. 75% of consumers are particularly frustrated when they cannot respond to a text message from a business.

SMS is a great way to engage your customers and build productive relationships with them. 77% of consumers are likely to have a positive perception of a company that offers SMS.

You can send personalized messages to your customer base. This improves your relationship with your consumers. In fact, 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized messaging. If your messages are too generalized, it could come off as spammy and irrelevant to the receiver. 

Tips To Execute A Stellar SMS Marketing Strategy For Your SaaS Software

Let's look at some tips on how to maximize the impact of your SMS marketing for your SaaS business.

1. Make Your Message Brief, To The Point, And Engaging

75% of consumers are comfortable receiving SMS messages from brands as long as they opt to receive messages. However, they might not be too accommodating if you make your SMS messages long and full of fluff. The maximum length of your SMS messages should be 160 characters.

Use easy-to-understand words and avoid technical jargon and abbreviations. Using SMS messages that tell your customers about your software concisely and sweetly is the best way to make sure they are reading the entire text message. Shorter and to-the-point messages also increase the probability of your customer giving a response to your SMS. Your SMS should deliver high value, and the customer shouldn't think that they've wasted their time reading it.

SMS is a powerful tool when utilized correctly. Make sure your SMS campaigns are short and clear in order to increase your engagement rate.

2. Include A Clear Call-To-Action (CTA)

33% of SMS recipients react to CTAs in SMS marketing messages, and 47% of those end up making a purchase. If you want your customers to act after reading your SMS, you need to make sure that you have a clear call-to-action in your SMS. Adding CTAs like 'Buy this software now,' 'Text-to-vote for your favorite software,' and 'Click here to know more about this software promotional offer' can have an incredible impact on your software marketing.

You want the messages to your customers to take them out of the text and into another step in the sales cycle. That's why it's imperative to have a purpose in your messages just like you would with other marketing channels.

3. Choose The Right Time To Roll Out Your Texts

If you don't want to make your SMS marketing messages go unnoticed, go for a time that suits your customers. The best time to roll out your software marketing SMS messages is between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. and then between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. on weekdays. For weekends it's between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. and then between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. While selecting a time to send your app's marketing SMS, make sure that you don't send text messages too late at night or too early in the morning. Sending texts during lunch hours is a no-go as well.

Depending on what the consumer interacted with, you want to ensure that the messages are relevant to them and what they've already done with your business. SMS marketing is quite similar to email marketing when it comes to advertising your SaaS software. Both channels require you to understand the interactions your consumers have taken and that deciphers what your next step should be for your marketing efforts.

4. Avoid Spamming Your Customers

Another thing that you should keep in mind is that you should never send too many text messages. Only 10% of SMS marketing messages are marked as spam, but don't let this fool you. If you start sending too many messages, you can raise this statistic, and your customers WILL most definitely mark your messages as spam. And, with this, all your SMS marketing strategies go down the drain. Did you know that there are even laws to restrict businesses from sending spam messages?

The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations. However, some businesses consider this law as unjust because it restricts their ability to send promotional messages by reaching out to their customers.

Use email security protocols like DMARC, DMARC lets a domain owner know who is sending messages on their behalf and automatically quarantines suspicious emails.

Also, never text a customer if they've unsubscribed from your SMS service. If you do so, you bring bad rapport to your app company, and you don't want that. Mass text messaging everyone you can sounds good in theory when it comes to your reach, but it can severely hurt your business's reputation.

5. Offer Incentives

75% of consumers want to receive texts with special offers. Use this to win customers. You can compel your customers to buy your software by providing outstanding promotional offers they can't ignore.

When a customer subscribes to your SMS services, make sure you keep them updated on the latest deals and offerings. You can inform your customers about any special discounts and limited-time offers related to your software.

While doing so, never forget to add a closing date for such deals. This compels your customers to avail of that offer before the time runs out. You can offer your customers limited-time offers to convert their free accounts into paid ones at an exclusively discounted price.

If successful, this will result in an increase in your paid subscriptions. SMS messages are quick to deliver; SMS are delivered within 5 seconds and opened within 90 seconds. Use this advantage to communicate your promotional offers as soon as your software company makes them live. This gives your current customers exclusive deals and naturally increases your sales.

This tactic can help turn your free trial users into paid users. Offering a deal or price drop can increase your conversions. Dropping your pricing may seem like a negative thing, but it still helps you gain a customer when you do it in a strategic way. 

6. Experiment with A/B Testing

One tactic you can implement to narrow down what kind of messaging resonates with your audience is A/B testing. By using A/B testing, you can determine which type of message will give you the best results.

A/B testing for SaaS SMS marketing is a great way to find out what your customers are looking for in terms of messaging and content. You can test different types of messages such as promotional offers, customer service notifications, or even just general announcements to see which one gets more engagement from your audience. When testing different types of messages, make sure to measure both the response rate and the click-through rate to see how successful each message was.

By analyzing the data from your A/B tests you’ll be able to identify what works best with your audience and how often they engage with various types of messages. This information can then be used to craft effective and engaging SMS campaigns that are specifically tailored to your target audience.

7. Personalize Your SMS Messages

Having a personalized touch in their SMS texts is what customers crave. 64% of consumers think businesses should contact them via text messages more often.

Don't let your customers be disappointed by lacking a personal message in the body of your SMS text. While informing your customer about your new app launches and promotions, make sure you address them by their names. They'll love that.

Tailor your SMS texts in accordance with the needs and preferences of your customers. Tell them how your app is the only solution to their problems. Make them feel recognized and draft your messages in a way that speaks to them on a personal level. Do this, and you'll see your software firm flooding with customer responses.

You can also address the customers' questions regarding your app through your SMS messages. While doing so, you can prompt them to convert their freemium model into a premium version for added features. This encourages them to go further through the sales funnel and increase your customer loyalty.

An easy way to engage with your customers is to conduct surveys. You can ask them to fill out these surveys through SMS messaging. This gives you useful feedback about your SaaS software while also establishing a stronger relationship with your customers. This strategy shows that you care about customer satisfaction. If a company doesn't reach out to its clientele, it gives off a negative connotation that they're not willing to evolve the business to fit its customers' needs. 

Ending Thoughts

SMS marketing proves extremely useful in providing A-rated marketing strategies and insights. It has the benefit of being swift in its operations and provides a direct channel of communication between your software company and the customer.

When done correctly, SMS marketing can be extremely valuable for your SaaS business. It should be a key component of your content marketing strategy since it's an easy way to contact your customers directly. SMS marketing should help you with customer retention and conversion, not work against it. So, if you haven't thought of SMS marketing for your software company, it's time you do!