Are you deciding whether to manage your text message marketing in-house or outsource it to an SMS advertising agency? This article will help you make a decision.
Getting the same kind of return on SEO, email, or social media marketing is not as easy as it was a couple of years ago.
In fact, there’s often little correlation between the time spent on these channels and the results they achieve.
A lot of marketers are fed up with this situation. It’s why more brands are turning to SMS marketing. (It’s no wonder why: a $45 investment can net over $7K in sales.)
If you’re in the early planning stages of launching a text message marketing program you might be thinking, “Can’t I just pay someone to do that for me?”
Whether enlisting the services of an SMS advertising agency is right for you will depend on your answers to these three questions.
There’s a misconception that text marketing is complicated to set up.
Not a lot of people know how text message marketing works. On top of that, a lot of well-known SMS marketing examples are from the likes of IKEA, Jack in the Box, and Amazon.
We can tell you right now you don’t need to be a large enterprise to be successful with texting. Our proof: an entire library of SMS marketing success stories.
Not only that, but one of the most common things we hear from new customers is how easy our text messaging service is to use. (You can’t read these reviews here.)
Of course, if you’re reading this and thinking I really have no time at all, then it may be in your best interest to hire an SMS advertising service.
If you’re on the fence, you can always sign up for a 14-day free trial and then make a decision.
Hiring an SMS advertising agency can help you save time. But it will cost you above and beyond what a text message marketing platform would.
More importantly, SMS marketing pricing is not as expensive as most people think.
There are no set-up costs and no need to hire developers. The cost of an SMS campaign depends on the number of messages you plan on sending.
For example, our lowest plan is $29 and comes with 500 SMS, a toll-free number, dedicated support 7 days a week, and unlimited keywords.
On top of your messaging costs, an agency needs to bill for the time of a copywriter, an account manager, and anyone else involved in your text marketing campaigns.
Of course, that additional fee might be worth it if you’re strapped for time and budget is not as much of a concern.
We’ve seen SMS advertising agencies do incredible things with text messages. Here are just a few examples from agencies we work with:
The common thread here is that the agencies were doing more than writing texts and hitting send.
They were building out a launch strategy on multiple fundraising platforms, designing placemats and paper cups for a pop up deli, and operating world-famous billboard real estate.
If you want to send out weekly SMS promotions to your customers, you may not need the services of an agency. If you’re planning a large, interactive campaign with many moving parts then it could make sense to outsource it.
If you’re dead set on using an SMS ad agency, then make sure to ask these four critical questions.
To help your overall campaign success it’s important to make sure you get a steady flow of new phone numbers to send your messages to.
Will they include a web form on your website, use SMS keywords, or use a mobile sign-up widget? We recommend that you align it with your business and that it works for your customers.
Understanding the details of SMS compliance and text message laws and regulations is crucial for businesses and organizations before gathering contacts or sending text messages.
It’s worth picking any SMS advertising agency’s brains about their knowledge of the laws around texting. You can then cross reference what they say against our helpful guide.
MMS messaging enables businesses to send messages that include multimedia content to and from mobile devices.
That means you can include images and gifs in your text messages. We’ve run our own tests on the impact of MMS and seen photos increase the click-through rate on text messages by as much as 52%.
It’s worthwhile to make sure the agency you choose uses a text messaging platform that can send MMS messages.
As with all digital marketing channels you outsource, you need to make sure any agency clearly understands your broader reasons for using SMS. You’ll then want to know how they’ll measure and track these campaigns.
While it’s difficult for someone to provide hard numbers, from thousands of campaigns, we’ve come up with an SMS CTR benchmark of 30%. (We’ve seen conversion rates around 29%.)
While those are for multiple industries and brands, it gives you a rough idea of the potential of SMS marketing to drive impressive results.
We hate ending any article with “it depends.” But whether you need an agency or not comes down to multiple factors.
Like most marketing engagements, it’s worth taking the time to properly vet anyone you consider working with.
If you have questions about text marketing, email us at support@simpletexting.net or start a conversation with a member of our team by clicking the blue chat button in the right-hand corner. We’d be more than happy to chat with you.
Drew Wilkinson is the Head of Marketing at SimpleTexting. Drew has more than a decade of experience managing successful integrated marketing programs to build brands, raise awareness, and generate demand.
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