One of the most important things you can do as a marketer is grow your audience. Use these tips to grow your SMS subscriber list and collect phone numbers.
Having someone follow your business on Instagram is nice, getting their email address is even better, but getting their phone number is by far the ultimate sign you’ve earned a loyal fan.
Why do we feel comfortable making this statement?
It’s why your goal should be to capture cellphone numbers.
Before you go and Google ways to “buy mobile numbers for marketing”, you can’t buy contact lists. That’s because express written consent is required for text message advertising.
Don’t let this intimidate you. Legally collecting mobile numbers for marketing is a breeze, especially if you follow these seven tips.
An SMS keyword is a word or phrase that people can text to your phone number.
Some people won’t subscribe as soon as they see your keyword. They may want to wait for a more convenient moment. That’s why it’s essential to make your keyword easy to remember and relevant to your product.
For example, if you’re a bakery, your keyword might be, “FRESHBAKED.” If you run a salon, you may want to choose the word “RELAX.” It’s always better to make your keyword memorable rather than amusing.
Walk in your customers’ shoes and imagine all the marketing channels they use to interact with your brand. They may browse your website, peruse your social media profiles, scroll through your Instagram feed, read your email newsletter, or grab your business card.
Your keyword, along with a call-to-action, should be displayed prominently in all of these places. The more people see your keyword, the more phone numbers you’ll collect.
When you do this, don’t forget to include all the necessary legal disclosures next to your call-to-action to remain compliant with TCPA guidelines. Here’s an example of what that looks like in practice:
If, like Artist Couture, you’re looking for an increase of +3,000 SMS subscribers, then you need our mobile sign-up widget. It makes it effortless for visitors to your website to text in your keyword.
When visitors click on a button, it opens a pop-up with more information on your text marketing program. When they click the button within the pop-up, their native text app opens with your keyword and number prefilled. Now they just need to send the text.
Take a look at how it works.
It’s completely free to make a widget for your site with our tool. You’ll want to customize it to match your brand. Adjust the font, colors, images, copy, alignment, and everything else until you’re happy.
👉 You can check out our other free SMS tools here.
For your SMS marketing efforts to be successful, you need to make it as straightforward as possible for potential subscribers to subscribe to your messages.
This means giving them options. As we discussed above, you can ask people to text a keyword to your phone number. But don’t stop there.
To collect more cell phone numbers, create a sign-up form, and add it to the homepage of your website. There’s no need to be a tech guru either. Our web sign-up form builder makes it as easy as copying and pasting a short piece of code. This video explains how to do it.
Mobile phone numbers are valuable, and your customers know that. They’ll only share theirs if they have a good reason to.
Make sure to offer your text message subscribers exclusive perks that they won’t be able to receive elsewhere. If your subscribers feel they can receive the same discount for your product or service by doing a quick Google search, they’ll likely unsubscribe. Make it worth their while!
Our customer Toroe Eyewear offers its customers 10% off their first order. It’s a tactic that in the first month alone generated $7k in sales–or a 156x ROI.
This is a fun way to collect phone numbers and entice people to join your list. Offer customers the chance to win a prize or discount if they subscribe to your text messages.
Our Text-to-Win feature makes the whole process automatic. All people have to do is text in your keyword, and our platform will take care of randomly selecting a winner.
Here’s how it works.
No one wants to feel like they’re signing up for spam. A customer is more likely to provide you with their mobile phone number if you tell them upfront about how often they’ll be hearing from you.
Include this information in your call-to-action. Doing this doesn’t just help you grow your list, but it also helps you remain compliant with text marketing laws.
Trust is important. When collecting mobile phone numbers, you must let your customers know that their information will never be sold to any other business. Assure them that they’re signing up to receive text messages exclusively from you.
We’ve written before that you can turn your email subscriber list into SMS subscribers in 10 minutes. It is that easy.
For example, you can send your email marketing list an email saying something along the lines of:
“Hey, do you want first access to our product launches? If the answer is yes, sign-up for our SMS list and you’ll be the first to know.”
Text message marketing can increase sales, build brand loyalty and grow your business. Before you can reap all of the rewards, the first step is to start collecting phone numbers.
You can sign up today for a free, 14-day trial to see how easy it is to start capturing phone numbers with SimpleTexting. You’ll even get access to a free keyword of your choice, plus 50 complimentary SMS messages.
Alfredo is SimpleTexting's brand manager. He's passionate about using his 10+ years of marketing experience to help small businesses grow.
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