If you aren’t using text messages to attract and engage your customers, you’re missing out on a major opportunity.
Nearly 70 percent of shoppers subscribe to brand SMS messages and most read text messages within just five minutes. More than half of consumers receive texts from 1-5 different businesses, and you want yours to be on that list!
To help you kickstart your SMS marketing strategy, let’s explore what SMS lead generation is, how to effectively engage your SMS leads, and example lead generation texts to inspire your next campaign.
What is SMS lead generation?
SMS lead generation involves your marketing team using text messages to attract customers to your store or site, and nurturing their interest through ongoing text messages.
How to run a successful SMS lead generation campaign
There are many benefits of ecommerce SMS marketing, including the fact that it has high visibility with consumers and is ideal for two-way communication. But running a successful SMS strategy requires more than simply sending out messages and hoping for the best.
Follow these tips to build an effective SMS strategy:
Get customers to opt in
An initial hurdle of starting an SMS strategy is building your text subscriber list. Your team must gain explicit permission from your customers to receive your brand text messages, even if you’ve previously collected their phone numbers for different reasons.
Getting customers to opt in for your business text messages will require you to lean on your existing communication channels and emphasize the value that customers can get if they sign up for your text messages. Incentives can go a long way, and you can quickly build your list by offering a discount for new subscribers.
To help you build your SMS subscriber list, check out these posts where we share example messages to get customers to opt in for SMS and four foolproof tips to grow your SMS list.
Set up triggers
Triggered SMS messages reduce the heavy lifting for your team and provide a consistent experience to your customers. An SMS “trigger” means that whenever a customer takes a specific action, they receive an automated text message based on that action. There are plenty of text messages that you can trigger, such as:
- Abandoned cart messages
- New member welcome messages
- Membership status and offers messages
Evaluate which SMS triggers you should set up by reviewing your customer journey maps. What are your common customer touchpoints? What challenges do your customers face as they engage with your brand? How can text messages be used to help them overcome those challenges, improve their experience, and ideally, drive a sale?
Create SMS drip campaigns
SMS drip campaigns are an opportunity to send your subscribers a consistent stream of text messages to fit a specific need, with each message spread out across days, weeks, or months. Much like your triggered SMS messages, your SMS drip campaigns can be tied to specific customer actions, such as when they sign up for your loyalty club.
Using a loyalty club SMS drip campaign as an example, your new member could receive an initial text message welcoming them to the club and providing them with a welcome discount. Then, they could receive a message two days later that explains how your brand’s loyalty point system works. A couple of days later, they could receive a message that reminds them of their welcome discount and highlights your new collection.
The goal of an SMS drip campaign is to deliver sustained value on a specific topic, creating a cohesive experience for your customer instead of a barrage of messages asking them to buy from you.
Segment subscribers
The key to keeping your text subscribers happy is to approach them with relevant offers that appeal to their unique needs. Segmenting your SMS leads will help you tailor your campaigns and approach customers in groups with similar needs or interests, such as sending messages that appeal to specific ages, genders, locations, or job roles.
Consider sending text messages with the sole purpose of segmenting subscribers, such as asking them—in a way that they can easily respond with a word or letter—about their shopping needs. The below example from Brooks Brothers is one way you can segment your subscribers.
Personalize content
Taking your segmentation one step further, customers should feel like the messages you send are specifically for them. At a minimum, personalize your text messages by using the customer’s name, and write your text to match your brand’s voice and personality. Sending personalized birthday text messages is also a great way to show your customers that you care about them as individuals.
Don’t forget your CTA
Every message you send needs a clear call to action for the customer. What should they do after reading your text message? Is there a time limit for the opportunity or offer? Before sending any text to your customers, ensure there is a CTA that supports your team’s overarching SMS lead generation goals.
Qualify leads
Each of your text subscribers is at a different phase of their journey with your brand, meaning that some SMS leads are more likely to make a purchase than others. Continually qualify your leads to optimize how often you reach out and what you provide. For example, a customer that first signs up for your text messages likely does not want to receive daily texts, especially if they’ve never purchased from you before.
Integrate data with CRM
The valuable insights you gain on customers through SMS can improve your other engagements with them, too. Ensure that data from your SMS leads integrates with your CRM so your reps can access the most complete customer details in one location. This way, your marketers will know how frequently they’ve reached out to individual customers, on which channels, and how the customer has responded.
Examples of lead generation campaigns using text
One of the best ways to kickstart your SMS lead generation strategy is to review sample messages that brands have sent their customers. What can you learn from your competition? How can you take a normal message and infuse it with your brand’s voice and personality? Why will customers love to read your texts?
To start your discovery process, let’s examine three popular SMS lead generation messages with examples.
Product launch SMS
A new product is perfect to message your customers about. Not only will this create immediate excitement for your new product, but it will re-engage customers who haven’t shopped with you for a while.
Dermalogica used the above text message to promote its new Biolumin-C Gel Moisturizer, quickly highlighting its benefits and encouraging subscribers to shop. This text can be especially effective if sent to customers that have used Dermalogica’s other Biolumin-C products or that have expressed interest in brightening their skin tone through other purchases. We love to see that the brand gives its subscribers an easy way to opt out of texts, too!
QALO also used SMS to promote a new product—its Men’s Faceted Ring. The brand even included an image to pique their subscribers’ interest.
Coupon SMS
Coupons sent through text can be incredibly effective for driving immediate sales. Use codes that are unique to SMS so you can track how effective your campaigns are.
Leesa shared an exclusive offer with its text subscribers for 25 percent off a duvet comforter and mattress protector. This is a great opportunity to re-engage customers that have purchased a mattress, but not any of Leesa’s complementary products.
Bling Jewelry also sought to drive sales by texting leads with an SMS-exclusive 15 percent discount for the entire site, which ends tomorrow (so act fast!). Its team can track code redemption to measure how many sales the texts generated, making it easier to customize their future messages.
Drip campaign SMS
We discussed earlier how drip SMS campaigns can address a variety of customer needs and opportunities automatically—let’s look at some real drip campaign SMS examples to inspire the sequences you set up.
The above text from Peter Thomas Roth is a perfect first message to segment subscribers and start a summer flash sale drip campaign. In the message, subscribers are encouraged to reply if they want to be alerted about weekly Friday flash sales. The subsequent messages spotlight new sales and provide an ongoing stream of messages to engage interested shoppers.
An especially common drip campaign SMS is the welcome drip—in which you onboard your new subscribers.
These two messages are the start of Boka’s new subscriber drip campaign, in which the subscriber is welcomed when they sign up and then reminded about their discount the next day.
Ready to try SMS for lead generation?
Texting leads with relevant and personalized offers can be a powerful way to boost your sales and enrich the customer experience.
Test different text message types and formats, and A/B test your campaigns to learn how to best engage your customers through text. Be conscious of how you use each communication channel and how often—reaching out too frequently could sour your customer relations.
Measure your SMS lead generation success by monitoring KPIs like subscriber list growth, click-through, and direct sales. If you receive a sudden burst of unsubscribes, pause your outreach until you can identify what has caused the issue.
One of the best ways to start your SMS strategy is to review other brand text messages to see how they text their customers. Try MailCharts for SMS campaign inspiration, including access to thousands of SMS marketing examples from leading brands.
