Leveraging Text Message Marketing to Boost Sales 

Social media influencers have shown us how a great text marketing strategy can help to generate income without much effort. When deciding to get started with text marketing, it’s important to learn why text surpasses email marketing, how to use text messaging for affiliate marketing, and how to use SMS messaging effectively. In this article, we’ll outline and discuss the value of text-based marketing, i.e., text message marketing to help increase affiliate sales, and the most crucial tips.

Text vs. Email

An email has long been a major part of traditional marketing strategies. Sending an email is a great way to personalize your messaging and keep your followers up-to-date with new posts, products, and special offers. But the fact is, we all get so many marketing emails per day that it can just become noise. There are strategies to make your emails more attractive to customers, but open rates for email are still very low. Text messaging-based marketing strategies are blowing email out of the water with a 98% open rate.

Text marketing is also more effective because it is easier for customers to opt in. Nobody likes typing out and verifying their email address. Texting a keyword or entering a phone number in a form is much less time-consuming. You get immediate verification, and you’re ready to go. And it is just as easy to send marketing texts as receiving them. There are many platforms you can use to streamline and automate SMS messages, and as soon as you hit send, your customers get an alert right to their cell phones.

Types of SMS Marketing

Text messaging is effective in marketing because it gets right to the point. If done effectively, the person reading your text will know exactly how to get the offer, all within less than a minute. There are a few basic types of texts that you can send to drive sales.

Promotions

Send your followers a text with new product announcements and sales. Sending regular coupon codes is also a good way to encourage purchases.

Updates

Keep customers in the loop with your brand by updating them when changes occur. Text marketing is also great for notifying your customers about their orders and account activity.

Feedback

You can also use automated marketing strategies to collect valuable customer feedback in a format that is easy for your customers to respond to. SMS messaging is one of the pillars of a multi-channel automated marketing campaign.

Affiliate Marketing

If you aren’t already using affiliate marketing to make passive income online, then you are missing out on a great opportunity. With so many brands offering affiliate opportunities, it has become an almost essential way to make money with your existing website. If you have a blog or sell a product online, then affiliate marketing is a good way to monetize your website. Essentially, affiliate marketing is when other brands pay their affiliates for referrals. As an affiliate, you help promote a seller’s products, and in exchange, they pay you a bit of commission for sales generated from your links.

For example, let’s say you are an Amazon affiliate. Amazon provides you with creatives like banners and links that your site visitors can click on. If they make a purchase after clicking on your link, then you make a small percentage of that sale. At that point, the only thing left to do is to keep track of your affiliate sales. To do this, you can invest in cloud-based accounting services that can display detailed reports allowing you to filter by the product, website, and customer demographics.

Text Message Marketing – Getting Started

While it can generate more interaction, text marketing is not meant to replace your entire marketing strategy. It’s a great compliment to your existing marketing efforts, another tool that you can use to keep in touch with customers and drive affiliate sales. Here are some tips to integrate text messaging into your existing marketing strategy.

Ethically Collect Phone Numbers

In order to text someone, you must have their cell phone number. The most important thing to remember about text marketing is that your subscribers must opt-in. There are many different tactics you can use to get the green light to send promotional texts.

Go the ethical route and ask for your customers to opt-in, for example, by texting, “jellybean” to 22222. Another way to get a phone number is to offer a text-only discount that they must sign up for. When people sign up for your email list, give them the option to sign up for texts at the same time. However you acquire your customer’s numbers, you should only use them for promotional purposes and never sell customer data to a third party.

Choose an SMS Marketing Platform

Automation is your friend when it comes to text message marketing. There are tons of messaging platforms to choose from to drive your affiliate sales through the roof. Some services, like SimpleTexting, allow you to engage in bulk messaging and one-on-one conversations with customers. Others, such as ClickSend, can integrate with platforms like Salesforce and Slack. Think about what your sales goals are, what your budget looks like, and what SMS service features are important for your business.

Know What Your Customers Want

Next, you need to find out what customers want to be delivered to them and how often they want to receive texts from you. By analyzing trends and engagement, you will be able to determine what kind of messaging works best for your brand, what time of day your customers are most likely to engage with your messages, and how often you should be making contact with them.

Tips for Effective Text Message Marketing

One of the huge plus sides of using text messaging to make affiliate sales is that there is a direct call to action every time you hit send. So, what should you be saying in your marketing messages?

Keep It Natural

Obviously, you want to drive sales and make money. But it is important to keep your affiliate plugs as natural as possible. You don’t want to seem like you are just trying to make a buck. Messages should sound genuine and offer something that has meaning to you and to your followers.

Link Effectively

The links that you choose should lead your visitors exactly where they need to go to purchase or learn about a product. This will depend on your affiliate program and how you make commissions. You want the link to lead your visitors exactly where they need to go, whether that is to a specific product page or to a category landing page.

Consider Seasonal Messaging

Text marketing is about having a closer connection with your customers. Pay attention to seasonal trends and consider using language that reflects that. This is a good way to incorporate holiday sales and promotional codes too.

Learn from the Major Players

Influencers typically have large loyal followings that can put products on the map. Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective strategies for generating revenue online, and becoming an influencer can be a very effective way to boost affiliate sales.

If you don’t have the following or fashion-savvy of an influencer, then learning from the strategies that they use in text messaging and social media is the next best thing. Do a little research on the kind of influencers that your audience follows to get some ideas of how to be relatable in your marketing campaigns.

Text Message Marketing – What Are You Waiting for?

The key to success with text message marketing is to catch your audience’s attention and create an authentic connection. There are many techniques and services you can use to help automate your marketing campaigns. If you’re a seasoned affiliate or you’re just beginning to learn how to monetize your website, text message marketing can unlock a new level of revenue opportunities.