The economy of love is back and in full swing. UK businesses are gearing up for another seasonal sales rush as couples, friends, and situation-ships look for the perfect way to celebrate.
But in the age of fleeting glances and short attention spans, ghosting has started to become the norm for some business-to-consumer relationships. Maybe there was an initial spark with a promising first-time order, and then interest started to drop off. They stopped responding to your comms, and eventually, became distant, inactive, and disengaged.
Stick with us as we unravel some top SMS marketing strategies that encourage engagement, renew the spark, and ultimately make it harder for customers to ghost you this season.
Be thoughtful with your SMS marketing
The planning stage
One of the most important steps of any successful SMS marketing campaign is the planning. Gather customer data, and segment your audience into groups to avoid a ‘spray and pray’ approach with your communications. Grouping customers by activity, gender, or age will allow you to create a more relevant and personalised message for that specific audience.
For example, you might decide to:
Target your database with a last-minute gift idea via SMS a few days before Valentine’s
Decide to target inactive customers with a message that seeks to boost loyalty by offering a free delivery or discount code.
Messaging that resonates
It’s also worth taking a bit of extra time to brainstorm the messaging behind your Valentine’s campaign for each subdivision of your audience. Why not use this opportunity to go beyond the surface level and connect in a way that might break the one-time transaction curse?
For many, this holiday is all about taking relationships to the next level so it’s the perfect time to lay the groundwork for an emotional connection with your customers that will help drive abandoned carts to purchase.
Perfect timing
Get in there early with your SMS marketing campaigns. According to Google Trends, traffic for Valentine’s Day gifts started to peak as early as the 21st of January in 2023. So now is the perfect time to start getting a Valentine’s Day campaign out there ahead of the last-minute rush.
Be inclusive
Remember to target as much of your audience as possible with your Valentine’s SMS campaign. With the traditional holiday evolving over the years to include more than merely romantic couples, there’s a great opportunity to be there for other groups of people too.
For instance, search traffic for self-care and self-love has been trending more and more recently. So, it could be time to remind customers that they don’t have to wait for someone else to treat them – they can treat themselves.
Likewise, Galentines has become a huge topic on social media and your offering could also be ideal for the perfect girl’s night in.
Top strategies for your SMS Valentine’s campaign
Now that you’ve got your audience divided into groups, and your messaging finalised, it’s time to think about the best way to leverage SMS to boost your campaign’s performance. We’ve put our heads together and thought of some top SMS marketing strategies, so let’s dive in.
Encourage customers to shop early
Valentine’s Day always divides people into two categories: those who are prepared at least two weeks in advance and those who operate on a last-minute schedule!
Why not kick off your Valentine’s campaign with an SMS alert that introduces your top gift ideas or packages for the upcoming season? Target the early birds and seal the deal ahead of your competitors with a bulk SMS send in the last two weeks of January.
You could even use SMS reminders to start a countdown until the hallmark occasion or to build hype around a limited-time Valentine-related sale or event.
Start a two-way conversation
There’s nothing more romantic than a good listener, so open up the floor to your customers. Use an SMS short code to allow customers to participate in a themed giveaway competition where they could win a voucher or a gift to treat themselves or someone else.
Create a playful and fun experience that adds more personality to your brand and offers customers insight into your behind-the-scenes. It could be as simple as submitting ideas for a new Valentine’s campaign that celebrates customer-led content, or it could be poll asking customers which special edition range they’d most like to see next.
Either way, building an interactive relationship with your customers can only serve to boost brand loyalty and drive ROI on your SMS marketing campaigns.
Use SMS to promote valuable content
So you’ve got email and social media sorted but why not explore an SMS web page linking your top recommendations for Valentine’s gift guides? Some of the most-searched terms on Google around this season relate to finding gift inspiration, so sharing valuable content like this directly with your customers could be a powerful move for boosting your conversion rate.
You could even accompany this with a free delivery offer or a special discount code to provide a final push to purchase.
Show a little post-purchase affection
Don’t let the support end at the point of purchase. It’s important to ensure that your customers feel guided throughout the post-order and delivery process for the best experience. You could leverage bulk SMS to set up automated workflows that keep customers in the loop with their expected delivery time to manage expectations. If you want to move things to the next level, you could even include an incentivised SMS survey to check in with how well your logistics process performed and offer a discount on their next purchase.
Is SMS a love match?
Amid the Valentine’s sales rush, we’re giving you the cheat sheet to building a compelling and relevant SMS marketing campaign that breaks through the noise. By taking the time to plan your perfect campaign, and using a variety of SMS products to enhance the content of your texts, you’ll make it much harder for customers to ghost you and become disengaged.
Remember to stay relevant with targeted messaging that’s inclusive and resonates with a much larger audience than that of traditional romantic couples. If you’re looking for more ideas on how to reach customers at the right time and in the right place then have a read of our blog looking at the most effective time to send SMS campaigns.