When planning an effective marketing strategy, your business should factor in both email and SMS for maximum impact. Through using both methods of communication, your marketing is more likely to reach and engage subscribers who may have missed one or the other. As now is the ideal time to market for the coming year, we have put together ways you can use email and SMS to your advantage.
Provide email and SMS offers to new subscribers
To ensure clients receive your marketing, they will first need to opt-in to your email or SMS channels. Clients may subscribe to one channel when providing their details for booking, but it is in your best interest if they subscribe to multiple. One way to encourage this is to provide a discount or adding value for new subscribers of a particular channel, such as an additional service or product. You could even state that email subscribers will receive exclusive discounts, or SMS subscribers will receive alerts. Make sure you encourage sign-up to both when clients register their details, perhaps sending a message later to recommend sign up to multiple channels so they don’t miss out on your offers.
Create a series of marketing messages
An important part of any email and SMS marketing strategy is to plan your content ahead in order to maximise their success. Creating an effective marketing strategy for at least the upcoming quarter will help you prepare the email and SMS aligned with your business goals. That includes when will be best to send your marketing.
Perhaps you are looking for to refresh your treatment menu and are looking for New Year bookings? Following your strategy, you may wish to send a series of messages at the very end of the year. The first week could hint that your new menu is coming. The second email or SMS could state that the treatment menu is imminent, telling clients to keep their eyes peeled for launch offers. The final email could reveal the full menu and exclusive discount code for booking in January, perhaps with options for alternative treatments to expand your client base or express beauty treatments. If sent at the right time, you could generate hype and provide reasons for clients to pay attention to what you’re offering.
Customise content for an effective marketing strategy
Having planned your content, the next aim will be to ensure marketing emails and SMS are read. There is plenty of customisation you can do to aid this, such as creating enticing subject lines and related pre-header text for emails, as outlined in our advice on how to improve your business email open rates. You can also customise emails and SMS further if you have Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, such as using client names, targeting them based on previous sales or items, and plenty more in order to increase their open and click-through rates.
Follow-up specific emails with SMS
According to Campaign Monitor, travel, hospitality and leisure email open rates are 20.2%. Whilst this is an impressive number, SMS marketing open rates are typically 98% (according to Text Anywhere). Both have their strengths, as emails have the room to provide the information you want to market, whereas text messages are short and to the point, making them accessible. By following up a marketing email with an SMS, you guide recipients back to the initial email (and/or your website) to ensure your promotions aren’t missed. Ultimately, you are leveraging the benefits of both email and SMS to create an effective marketing strategy.
Keep in contact with SMS for effective marketing strategy
SMS are often read within the first three minutes of receipt, making them ideal for sending a short but direct message that can be digested quickly. For that reason, SMS can benefit your marketing strategy with timely messages, such as by promoting last-minute availability, time-sensitive offers, or general updates such as for membership (as outlined in our advice on how to maximise membership retention with email and SMS). For example, we have five easy ways to bolster revenue using SMS Christmas marketing to help in the run-up to the end of the year.
Core by Premier Software® can be used to set up and schedule email and SMS marketing using data segmentation and filters. The system automatically removes clients who have opted out, ensuring you always remain GDPR compliant. To discover more about Core’s marketing features and find out how Core can help you, click the button below.
