For years, marketers trusted email for its return on investment, huge base and the ability to build solid relationships with customers. But why should you consider using SMS or push notifications? Is there an opportunity with your audience?

‍

How SMS can help you improve your online customer experiences

Did you know that 85% of customers say they prefer to communicate with their favorite brands via text? 54% of customers would like to receive promotions via text message, but only 11% of businesses send them this way. On the other hand, 72% of customers are more likely to purchase from a website if the brand can communicate with them about their products in real time, with a real employee, via text messaging.

Basically, SMS is another way to engage with your brand in a way that's easy and convenient to them.

‍

Who should use SMS and push notification personalization

If you are wondering who should use SMS and push notification personalization, we have good news, because every eCommerce business of all sizes can implement it. 

No matter what stage of growth you're at, if you want to incorporate more touch points through the buying process to improve the customer experiences, you should at least try it. This strategy is perfect for industries with higher value products such as technology or jewelry, to prompt prospects and ask them questions. For businesses with repeating purchases, it allows you to follow up with customers when it's time for them to buy again, which increases their LTV. 

‍

Personalized vs Non-Personalized

Research shows 56% of abandoned carts happen because the consumer was not ready to purchase at exactly that moment, instead they wanted to save the cart for later. While cart abandonment messages have traditionally been sent via email, push notifications are a great way to reinvent this classic re-marketing technique and offer another touch point to your business. For example, you can send push notifications to individuals who have “abandoned” shopping carts as a reminder, and lead them to an in-app page where they can complete their order just in seconds!

‍

Batch and blast

• It doesn't bring any personal connection with the customers as it doesn't address the person with their name (i.e. "Hi there").
• The content isn't relevant enough as the notification doesn't make it clear for the user if the offer is online or in-store (i.e. "Enjoy our amazing offer").

‍

Personalized

• The notification contains the receiver's first name thus establishing a personal connection (i.e. "Hi Jeremy").
• The content feels relevant to user as the notification talks about an offer specific to where the customer is present in or resides (i.e. "Online offer only valid for Belgium").

SMS is a very similar situation. Personalized messages send relevant information to the user, such as offers, new launchings, latest updates, and more, while non personalized SMS can feel disconnected and very cold as they are clearly sent in a mass fashion. Who doesn’t want to receive a message with your name in it? “Hey there” has become a tell-tale sign of a batch message. 

‍

4 metrics you should track

> Subscriber or number of opt-ins. This is one of the clearest indications of the success of your campaign. But there's no big secret, if you want to get more subscribers, you need to be consistent. You can promote your SMS subscription on website forms, event footers, flyers, and even product packaging.

‍

> Delivery rate. It won’t matter how many subscribers you have if they aren’t getting your messages. Make sure that your delivery rate is never lower than 98%, or else it would indicate that there's a problem with your contact database or a carrier issue. Check out if you consistently have low delivery rates, there may be an issue with your text messages causing them to be flagged as spam.   ‍

‍

>Engagement and conversion rates. Measure engagement by keeping track of how many people click the link or use the offer code in the text message to understand which strategies work to get customers to take action. However, not everyone who engages will convert.  Remember that a conversion rate tells you the percentage of people that received the text and completed a conversion goal. 

‍

> Opt-out reporting. Opt-outs or un-subscriptions should always be below 2%. If you send texts too frequently, share irrelevant content, or simply do not meet customer expectations can all cause higher opt-out rates. 

‍

What's next?

At Froomle we are proud to have eCommerce and news personalization experts that will help you through the whole personalization  process. We adapt our modules to your needs, customizing the offering and guiding you to choose the best modules for your specific needs.

In the Push Notifications module for example, our algorithm identifies who should get a specific notification based on their individual behavior to ensure you engage with the right people. The same concept can also be applied to identify the best audience to send a specific SMS to.

Interested in learning more? Connect with one of our specialists to get started!