As the biggest shopping weekend of the year nears retailers need more than just a discount strategy, you need a solid communication strategy that cuts through the mass of generic marketing. This is where multichannel marketing shines. For Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the combination of email and SMS is often the winner. Let’s look at why!
Why combine Email and SMS?
Reach and Speed Combined
Email continues to be a top channel for marketing, rich content and detailed offers provide great flexibility for your marketing. It lets you showcase bundles that are curated for your customer, product guides, and eye-catching promotional graphics in a way that SMS can’t.
On the other hand, SMS offers instant reach. With open rates that often exceed those of email, texts are perfect for short time sensitive alerts, such as flash sales, last minute reminders, or VIP only deals.
When you combine both you tap into the strengths of each. Email builds awareness for your brand and sales, while SMS creates action and urgency.
Encourage Action
Your customer might glance at an email, bookmark it, then forget it. Then a timely SMS reminder could bring them back to the promotion. Or the opposite, maybe they saw the SMS and want more information which a follow up email can then provide. Using both channels increases the number of touch points which boosts conversion chances for both channels.
Delivery
Spam folders and crowded inboxes can see your marketing emails buried. But SMS goes straight to your customers phones making it more reliable. If an email doesn’t convert or isn’t seen, SMS can prompt your customer to reengage with the email or promotion, or go looking for it if they’ve missed it.
Why does Personalisation matter in marketing?
Conversion
We’re all flooded with promotional messages, especially leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Generic messages just don’t cut through the noise. Personalised messages result in higher engagement and higher conversions. By using data like past purchases and browsing behaviour you can tailor your messaging to what each customer cares about!
Customer experience
When your customers feel seen they’re much more likely to engage and convert. Personalised content, such as “We saw you looking at an exercise bike, here’s 20% off our newest release” is much more likely to convert. Your customer feels seen and that you care and you’re not wasting their time with things they’re not interested in.
Return on investment
Return on investment is important in any part of your business, marketing is no different. Because personalised messages make your customers feel seen, they tend to generate better click through rates and sales. During a heavily promoted period like Black Friday and Cyber Monday even small increases in engagement can result in a significant increase in sales.
How does Welcorp help with this strategy?
Welcorp provides an all in one digital messaging platform that makes combining email and SMS into a single marketing campaign seamless. Let’s take a deeper look at how Welcorp’s platform helps.
All in one platform
Welcorp’s all-in-one platform allows you to send email, SMS, voice, or even fax from the same place. This means you don’t need multiple platforms to handle your marketing communications, one platform to rule them all.
LinkIn SMS
LinkIn SMS is one of the strongest tools in SMS marketing. It allows you to send a short link by SMS to your customers that will lead them to a landing page. That landing page can be personalised to the customer and include images and videos. This gives you the personalisation of email with the better engagement rates of SMS.
Data Security
All Welcorp servers are hosted in Australia. This means Welcorp complies with Australia’s strict privacy regulations. So, your business and client information is safe. This is especially important when sending personalised offers, you’re likely including private information, like the customer’s name and contact details.
Cost
With Welcorp there are no hidden costs. You only pay for what you use, no ongoing or surprise costs. This means you can set your budget with confidence, knowing you’ll be able to stay within it.
Compliance with new Sender ID legislation
With the new Sender ID legislation rolling out, Welcorp is hard at work to ensure compliance and make it simple for your business to register. Sender ID is a powerful marketing tool, but it can be misused. With Welcorp and the new legislation your customers will be able to trust that a message comes from you and not some malicious party.
What are the best practices for a combined email and SMS marketing campaign?
Divide your audience
If you have a large customer base you’ll likely want to split them up into categories based on their behaviour. Whether they’re regular customers, large spenders, bargain hunters, or any category that works for your customer base. This will allow you to personalise the messaging to their spending habits.
Plan your timeline
You don’t want to just send one email and assume that’s enough, on the other hand you don’t want to blast your customers with a deluge of emails and messages either. Planning your timeline ahead of time can ensure you’re hitting the right spot. An example would be an email a week before the sale, then another the day before, a SMS notification when the sale goes live, then a last chance SMS towards the end of the sale. This ensures you have a few opportunities to catch your customers’ attention, with a couple of calls to action, without annoying them with too many messages and emails.
Personalise
As discussed above, personalisation is important in marketing. Make your customers feel like you see them as a person, and not just a number, and they’re much more likely to convert and stay loyal to your brand.
Calls to action
Calls to action are an important marketing tool. You want to encourage your customer to take action. Things like a limited time sale (Black Friday and Cyber Monday) create an urgency to act for your customers. Make sure they’re aware of the great deals and inspire them to take advantage of the deals.
Opt out compliance
Make sure your emails and SMS always have an option to opt out of receiving further marketing materials. This is a requirement under Australian legislation. Welcorp makes this easy with a recently implemented option to automatically handle SMS replies.
During Black Friday and Cyber Monday smart marketers won’t rely on just one communication channel. The biggest impact comes from combining multiple channels like SMS and email while ensuring the messages are customised to your customers. These strategies build urgency and trust at the same time.
Welcorp’s all-in-one platform is built to support these strategies. A secure and compliant message platform that gives your business the flexibility to run personalised campaigns across multiple channels for the highest conversion rates.
Is your business ready to level up your marketing campaigns? Speak to Welcorp today to make it happen!
