Bulk SMS marketing explained: Benefits and best practices
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Bulk SMS marketing is an effective strategy for engaging customers and prospects at scale. Most people are more responsive to text messages than other communication channels, and your messages will feel more urgent when sent directly to their mobile devices. That’s why a robust bulk SMS marketing plan is critical to getting your messages in front of the right audience.
Whether you’re alerting users to a system update, offering a timely discount for potential customers, or looking to support your latest product update, bulk SMS can help.
What is bulk SMS marketing?
Bulk SMS marketing is a strategic approach to sending a high volume of text messages to customers and prospects via SMS technology. It helps you communicate with your audience via a channel encouraging immediate connection and engagement. According to a 2024 report by EZ Texting, 77% of consumers respond to text messages within fifteen minutes, and 59% respond within five minutes—significantly faster than other channels.
This immediacy is what makes bulk SMS marketing so powerful. However, it also means you must have a plan for following up. 66% of consumers expect a response to an SMS message within an hour. That’s why the content and links in your messages need to be reliable and secure. Providing a seamless experience from the message they receive to their end goal helps make it easier for them to convert.
When you understand how to use this channel effectively, you can foster stronger relationships with your target audience and scale your messaging strategy quickly and efficiently.
The benefits of bulk SMS marketing
Bulk SMS marketing is one of your company’s most immediately engaging communication channels. However, the benefits of implementing a bulk SMS marketing plan don’t end there. With the right bulk SMS gateway—the tool you use to facilitate sending high-volume SMS messages—you can quickly scale your SMS campaigns and streamline the process for your team.
SMS messages also have a higher open rate than other marketing channels, sometimes reaching 98% per EZ Texting. Bulk SMS marketing can also have a very high ROI, with some sources stating that SMS can generate $71 per every dollar invested in the strategy. This return can be especially beneficial for small to medium-sized businesses, where every dollar counts.
Text messages are a more familiar and user-friendly channel as well. Most people in your audience will already use the channel to communicate with friends and family. That means you can have more fun and add more of your company’s personality in SMS marketing campaigns.
When you partner with a link management platform like Rebrandly, you can also use bulk SMS marketing to send out secure, branded links to build trust and strengthen your relationships. Those branded links can also boost conversion rates by 39% for your mobile marketing campaigns.
Implementing bulk SMS for your business
The easiest way to implement bulk SMS is to use a solid and reliable tool. There are many to choose from including:
Once you’ve chosen your tool, you can simply open its app or web interface, sign in and type or paste your text message and branded link in. Most interfaces will show your character length and most services also offer the option to personalize your texts with the recipients first name, last name, as well as some more advanced options.
You’ll also be able to choose who the sender appears as and which lists you want your messages to go to. Don’t forget to check out the cost of your campaign before you confirm.
6 Bulk SMS marketing tips and best practices
Bulk SMS marketing is a critical part of your marketing campaign strategy. Here are a few tips and best practices you can use to help get your first SMS campaign up and running as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Choose a bulk SMS gateway
A successful SMS marketing campaign starts by choosing a reliable bulk SMS gateway. The tool you choose will determine how easy it is to build campaigns and your ability to customize messages. There are many to choose from, including:
Most platforms allow you to define character lengths, personalize with relevant information, and bulk-generate SMS messages. Rebrandly’s Bird integration lets you to add dynamic, branded links directly to your SMS messages and streamline the content creation process for each campaign as well.
Once you’ve chosen a tool that integrates with your current technology stack, you should start determining what you want to achieve from your bulk SMS marketing campaigns.
Create your bulk SMS marketing plan
At the start of the process, it is crucial to nail down the strategic goals and objectives for your bulk SMS campaigns. A clear strategy simplifies creating a high volume of SMS messages and gives your team the guidance they need to execute as efficiently as possible.
You can use bulk SMS can be for several different marketing and communications purposes:
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Once you’ve determined the kind of SMS campaign messages you want to send, define the metrics you want to impact and the potential ROI. Then, outline those goals in a shared document for your team and move forward, knowing that everyone is working towards the same results.
Include branded links in your SMS messages
Every message you send as a part of your bulk SMS campaign needs to be seen as credible and reliable to both recipients and their mobile carriers. Rebrandly provides secure, branded links for your bulk SMS marketing campaigns, ensuring every message is trusted and recognizable.
Branded links also help reinforce your company’s personality and create links for any type of campaign—like using a brand.store domain, for example. A consistent experience ensures that everyone receiving these messages knows who sent them and is confident to click through.
Segment your audience
Consumers expect a certain level of personalization whenever they interact with your company. Creating that experience starts by understanding the different kinds of people that make up your audience and their specific needs. And it can significantly increase conversion rates when you do.
Use your marketing and demographic data to build customer personas and profiles, which you can turn into target audiences for every bulk SMS campaign. With a link management platform like Rebrandly, you can create links that dynamically route traffic based on characteristics such as location, language, device type, and more. Dynamic traffic routing helps you serve audience content tailored to their native language and specific to their needs.
You can also use digital analytics platforms like Amplitude or Clearbit to enrich each SMS message with details such as name, account number, etc. And create messages that speak directly to the individuals in your audience.
Determine the best time to send your SMS campaigns
Timing matters. If your audience isn’t ready to engage with a message as soon as they receive it, you’ll miss out on conversion and the potential to build a stronger relationship. Segmenting your audience is the first step towards sending bulk SMS messages at the right time; then, you can designate the time zone based on their location and send messages at precisely the right time.
This time-specific experience is especially important when you have a sale or promotion that only lasts for a specific time. That’s where link expiration with Rebrandly can help. This feature lets you automatically create links that expire after the promotion ends, increasing your audience’s urgency and spurring more clicks. Over time, you can also learn what times work best for your messages and refine the send times accordingly.
Track and monitor your results
Like other marketing campaigns, bulk SMS marketing benefits from strategic monitoring and analysis. Segmenting your audience, using Dynamic Link Routing, and adding UTM parameters to your branded links help you track precisely how effective your bulk SMS messages are at connecting with your audience.
Granular tracking parameters let you see which content, topics, and CTAs best drive customer engagement and how those messages lead to conversions. This data makes it easy to optimize your bulk SMS marketing and create more effective campaigns in the future.
Bulk SMS marketing helps you engage at scale
The high levels of engagement for bulk SMS marketing and new features in SMS communications help you connect with a large audience.Using branded and secure links in your SMS messages boosts this engagement even further by ensuring a seamless experience for anyone who clicks through.
Rebrandly is a powerful tool for simplifying your bulk SMS marketing. Learn more about how our service can help you build bulk SMS marketing campaigns that strengthen your connection with your audience.
