Top 5 SMS Marketing Trends For 2023

We have entered 2023 and it is important for those who work with e-commerce to prepare their SMS marketing strategies. In this article, we will go through SMS trends for 2023 and how you can make the most of them.

Digitization and technology continue to grow and most of us use our mobile phones daily. Therefore, it is a great idea to market your e-commerce via SMS to reach your customers quickly and easily. We see that some areas of SMS marketing will boost sales and profitability - and based on our data, we think the following areas will trend in 2023.

1. Measurable Marketing

Measurable marketing is all about making your marketing activities measurable. It includes everything from branding campaigns to customer retention. Due to a tighter economy, it will become extra important to ensure that e-commerce stores get the most out of their marketing budget. One way to ensure this is to use measurable marketing.

The easiest way to start with measurable marketing is to set goals for what you want to achieve. When you set measurable goals and KPIs for your marketing, you should consider your company's sales goals and which sub-goals are on the way to a conversion. Maybe you want more people to know your brand, or get more people to sign up for a new product launch. If you set up a plan for what you want to achieve in terms of results, it will be easier to analyze and optimize, which leads to better results.

It is common for measurable marketing to be used for social media. But it is easily forgotten when it comes to SMS Marketing. Something that is widely known is that SMS has proven to be one of the best channels for ensuring that the message gets seen, as SMS has a proven open rate of 97%. What many people often miss is that there are more KPIs you should keep track of to optimize your SMS marketing, such as Earnings-Per-Message (EPM), Click-Through Rate (CTR), Conversion Rate, and Return on Investment (ROI ), to mention few.

In other words, there are many ways to improve your SMS marketing with the help of measurable marketing. Remember that the customers want you to send SMS, your customers have given you their phone number for a reason!

2. Customer Retention & Personalization

Since the economic situation is a bit uncertain, many companies have to prioritize retaining their existing customers, as it has historically been cheaper than attracting new ones. SMS is a fantastic channel for developing existing customer relationships. Therefore, SMS will be a key channel to use when it comes to marketing in 2023.

Another reason why it will be attractive to use SMS marketing in 2023 is that it is easy to use measurable data to segment and find the customers who are most likely to convert. This means that you can send as few SMS as possible, which costs less for you as a company.

Something to remember when it comes to marketing is that the customer should not always understand that you want to sell something. Instead, the focus should be on developing customer relationships. Therefore, you should consider sending personalized messages that increase customers loyalty instead of only sending an SMS with discount codes.

Why is it essential to invest in personalized SMS? Because when you personalize your messaging and build relationships with your customers your customers will become more loyal, plus your sales will increase in the long run. An example of how you can do this is by remembering customers' birthdays and sending out personalized offers based on the customer's purchase history.

With other words, the goal is to make the customer feel unique, to create a closer relationship with the customer, and ensure that the customer stays and becomes loyal.

3. Cross-selling

Cross-selling is offering related products to get the customer to buy more. For example, if a customer has put a make-up brush in their shopping cart, "recommended products" can appear to convince the customer that they should buy an associated brush cleaner.

77% of consumers have a positive attitude towards companies that contacts them via SMS. You can help your customers to get the most out of their purchase by cross-selling products that belong to or supports the original product they bought. 

4. Replenishment Campaigns

Replenishment campaigns can be an SMS or a series of SMS, which prompt customers who buy consumables that their product is about to run out. The purpose of using replenishment campaigns is for the customer to replenish the products that they are about to run out from you, instead of turning to another store.

The goal is for your customer to be able to easily refill products. Therefore, you need to find out the customer's behavior and what the customer buys and calculate the product's consumption time.

Let's say a customer has purchased a face cream that usually lasts for 30 days of daily use. Then it is a perfect opportunity to send an SMS and remind the customer to renew their face cream a few days before these 30 days have passed after the customer has received their item.

5. Send less, earn more

It is essential to be concise when sending SMS. Because if you write an SMS that contains more than 160 characters it will be charged as two or more SMS. So what we mean by "send less, and earn more" is that you should convey your message with the right words and with as few characters as possible.

Using links can be difficult as they often contain too many characters. That is why you should use a link shortener because a link shortener can help you shorten your URL to just a few characters.

It is crucial to select the right target group for the right product. That's where your measurable data, which we mentioned earlier, will be useful. Because how else should you know who is most likely to convert from an SMS about a specific product?

By segmenting your customers based on data when you send out SMS messages, you avoid sending unnecessary SMS messages that do not benefit you. You, therefore, want to send out as few SMS messages with as few characters as possible to the right target group, to optimize your ROI.

So why should you use SMS in 2023?

As previously mentioned, most of us use our mobile phones every day. Digitization continues to develop and SMS is the fastest way to use when you want to contact someone. Smartphones account for 70% of all website visits in retail, which is why SMS is an important marketing channel.

To summarize, we at Jojka believe that these five trends are the most important for 2023 and that they are the ones you should focus on.

Here is a brief overview of the trends we have gone through:

1. Measurable Marketing → Set clear, measurable goals and analyze the results and optimize based on KPIs

2. Customer Retention & Personalization → Personalize your communication to create loyal customers

3. Cross-selling → Cross-sell your products based on purchase history for an improved customer experience

4. Replenishment Campaigns → Replenishment campaigns are fantastic for an increased sense of service

5. Send less, earn more → Send as few SMS as possible with as few characters as you can to the right customer for a maximized ROI and cost savings

Do you want to get started with your SMS marketing before 2023? Book your demo here!