How SMS Marketing Can Boost Sales For Retail Franchises

"Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart."
- Joe Chernov

It is needless to say how much of an impact marketing has on sales. Since the dawn of business and trade, the people in business have always been looking for easy ways to advertise their products to potential consumers to boost their sales. So, marketing has come a long way- from "town criers", who ran all across the town shouting their throat out all the way to SMS and mobile marketing that gives marketers direct access to a large number of consumers without having to leave the comfort of the room. Thanks to the ever-evolving technology.

Mobile marketing is a relatively new thing since the first mobile devices came about a little over a couple of decades ago. And SMS actually began to take off during the early 2000s. But over the short period, it has managed to be the best tool in the digital marketing industry that every advertiser includes in his/her mix of strategies.

Marketing isn't just reaching out to customers. That is only half a work done; it hasn't properly served its purpose unless it has driven the customer all the way to making purchases.

It's like Joe Chernov suggested, "Customers need to feel smart about the purchases they make." And the facts prove that the best marketing strategy that makes the customers feel smart is "SMS marketing".

How SMS marketing can boost sales

Among all the marketing strategies, SMS offers the best ROI for marketers. Stats show that more than 90% of SMS messages are opened within three minutes and 98% of the them are read while the figures are considerably low for others- 29% of tweets, 20% of emails and only 12% of Facebook posts are actually read.

Smartphones and apps might be the craze in the town but even today, smartphone penetration in the US is only about 65% which means there is still a large portion of the market untapped by apps and smartphones. Nearly 100% of the mobile phones are SMS enabled, which is why SMS is undoubtedly the most effective marketing tool.

The retail industry has benefited largely from mass text messaging campaigns because SMS is not just a broadcast medium to funnel consumers, it actually drives prompt actions and conversions, directly boosting sales. A single SMS marketing campaign can help rocket sales significantly high.

In the US, approximately 50% of consumers make direct purchases after receiving brand messages/QR code/discount coupon via SMS. Coupons delivered via SMS have 10% higher redemption rates than printed coupons. And only about 10% of SMS marketing messages received are considered spam.

Retailers feel that migrating to SMS loyalty programs from traditional point cards has earned them more value and consumers feel the same way. More than 50% of the consumers would be happy to sign up for SMS loyalty programs and over 90% of them who signed up for such schemes feel they have benefited from the programs.

The effectiveness of SMS marketing in the retail market has made it a dominating mobile ad strategy and now there are hundreds of companies on the market these days, helping B2B and B2C companies to set up SMS marketing campaigns with their nifty software. Companies like Trumpia that provide SMS Marketing software call it high impact communication- and the figures show how much of 'high impact' SMS really is.

Trumpia: The Most Complete SMS Solution

One of the leaders in the SMS marketing and communication arena is Trumpia that has been providing texting solutions and many other marketing services to thousands of customers, including some of the Fortune 500 companies like Coca Cola. Reportedly, Coca Cola has invested 70% of their mobile ad budget on SMS Marketing.

Trumpia's automated communication platform has connected hundreds of retail franchises to thousands of their customers via mass messaging, smart targeting and automation, ultimately boosting sales. Their complete SMS software provides the most complete texting solution with features like SMS, MMS, mobile coupons, mobile customer loyalty programs, SMS surveys, mobile voting, auto reminder, and many more to meet the retailers' marketing requirements in very affordable prices.

7-Eleven Hawaii, a group of 62 locations of the world-renowned convenient store chain, is one of many satisfied customers who have subscribed to Trumpia's service. They did a test run of Trumpia's system in Oahu and the outcome was more than just satisfactory.

Using Trumpia's software, they ran a mobile keyword campaign which gained over 3700 sign ups. They were able to grow business by sending text promotions and weekly product specials, and it didn't stop at simple messaging. They were able to boost coupon redemption rates by sending a reminder five days before coupon expiration to anyone who hadn't redeemed it yet. The campaign was driving the traffic to their stores at an unexpected rate and their contact database was rapidly growing.

Thrilled with the significant business growth in Oahu locations after a successful test run, Edna Ching, the Merchandising Manager at 7-Eleven Hawaii said, "The test run of Trumpia in Oahu was so successful, that we've already decided to expand our use of the software to all 62 of our locations."
Success stories like that of 7-Eleven Hawaii can be the story of every retail franchise with Trumpia's powerful technologies for SMS marketing.

According to Ken Rhie, CEO of Trumpia, "Trumpia's complete SMS solution is ideal for franchises like 7-Eleven, because they can send the right message to the customers automatically. With our enterprise feature, each location run their own campaign based on their demographic needs."