11 Best SMS Marketing Platforms for Businesses in 2022
11 Best SMS Marketing Platforms for Businesses in 2022
SMS marketing is more than sending messages to a mass audience (bulk messaging). A good SMS marketing tool offers features to make your SMS campaigns more effective. Here are some features you should look for in a good SMS marketing platform
1. Bulk messaging
Bulk messaging or mass texting is the practice of sending a message to a large number of phones. It’s SMS marketing reduced to the bare bones. It’s a safe bet to say that mass messaging is the most sought-after feature of SMS marketing tools. You have a list of phone numbers to reach out to and promote your products through mass texts.
2. Two-way conversation
Going a step further than bulk messaging, you need a way your contacts can respond to your messages. You need to have a two-way conversation with your customers. This feature enables you to send and receive your customers’ responses in your inbox. It’s an essential feature when it comes to providing a great customer experience.
3. MMS
4. Opt-out management
5. List building
- Manual import: the most basic way for adding phone numbers to your list. You should be able to enter a recipient’s information in your database. All SMS marketing services have this feature.
- SMS opt-in: people can subscribe to a list by sending a short message (keyword) to a phone number (shortcode). For example, sending the keyword “DISCOUNT” to 33339 to receive discount offers via SMS. This is a basic list-building capability every SMS marketing software should offer.
- Online forms: people can subscribe to a list by filling in an online form on a website or social media platform. This is ideal to get your website visitors, email subscribers, or social media followers to subscribe to your SMS list.
6. Keywords
7. Shortcodes
Shortcodes are short phone numbers (5 or 6 digits) that can receive and send SMS or MMS. Contrary to typical 10-digit numbers, shortcodes are easier to remember. And they have higher throughput.
Keywords and shortcodes are the inevitable part of a list building campaign. A coffee shop can ask its customers to send the keyword “COFFEE” to the shortcode 33557. Then customers receive their latest promotional codes.
8. Segmentation
Segmentation is a great way to send targeted messages to your contacts. A good SMS marketing software allows you to segment your contacts based on different criteria (such as the subscription date/method, gender, etc.). You’ll be able to send personalized text messages to each of your segments.
9. Automation
Automated text messages are great for saving time and increasing text campaign productivity. Autoresponders are ideal for confirming a person’s subscription to your list and sending delayed messages (coupons, tricks, tips, special sales, etc.).
10. Integrations
11. Analytics and link tracking
12. API
For example, your developer can use an SMS API to send SMS directly from your email client. Typically, SMS marketing platforms have API documentation that could help you with this.
Best SMS marketing platforms
TextMagic’s top features
TextMagic’s distinguishing feature is its global sending coverage from Afghanistan to Virgin Islands US. Using their pricing calculator you can get a straightforward quote for your SMS campaigns. Just select where you want your campaign to be delivered and the number of your messages to get the total cost of your campaign.
Personalized bulk messaging: TextMagic lets you to send bulk messages from their web app. What’s interesting about their web app is that you can easily create templates with personalization tags (first name, last name, company name, phone, email, and appointment time). Your conversations will then appear as a chat conversation in TextMagic’s web app.
Amazing team features: you can add an unlimited number of users (or sub-accounts) to your account for free and share your credits with them. You can also monitor your users’ SMS history and costs to manage their future activities.
Phone number/email validation: easily identify the invalid phone numbers or email addresses through their validation service and API. This will improve your deliverability and reduce costs.
SMS surveys for collecting feedback: you can easily create automated SMS flows and add multiple steps and questions to them to get feedback from your contact list.
TextMagic pricing
TextMagic offers a 30-day free trial which is great to test out all the features. After that you have the option to choose a pay-as-you-go or a monthly plan. Through their monthly plan you get to pay 2.5% to 25% less per text for a monthly fee that starts from $99. Their full pricing is on their page as well as a calculator to estimate the cost of sending.
Create Your Own SMS Marketing Campaigns
It’s easy to see great examples of creative SMS campaigns and feel intimidated by them, or feel like there’s no way they could translate to your business. However, creating amazing text message marketing campaigns doesn’t have to be daunting. SimpleTexting’s SMS marketing platform makes SMS marketing a breeze. You’ll be able to write out your text messages, add links and images, and schedule out when you want your messages to send. SimpleTexting helps take the complexity out of SMS marketing and let’s you focus on reaching customers.
How Do You Use SMS Marketing?
As the examples above demonstrate, there’s no one single use for SMS marketing. In fact, it’s not even exclusive to promotional content! However, some of the most common use cases include:
How Do I Write Marketing SMS Messages?
The best thing about SMS marketing messages is they’re completely customizable to fit your needs. To write a good text message, be sure to introduce yourself, address the purpose of the message, and close with a call to action a customer can take immediately.
How Do I Advertise With Text Messages?
We’ve got text marketing fever, and the only cure is more creative campaigns! Do you know of one we missed? Share it with us! Or better yet, get started with text marketing today and perhaps your brand will make the next roundup of knockout text campaigns!
Meghan Tocci
Never miss a beat!
Learn more about Twilio’s SMS marketing platform
Whether you’re a developer, marketer, or something in between, we have the text marketing software solutions you need to start sending personalized text messages at scale. Small business, ecommerce, software as a service (SaaS)—whatever you are, we’ve got you covered.
Plus, we support every other channel your business needs: email, voice, video, live streaming, Facebook Messenger, chat, and contact center. So when you’re ready to add another layer to your multichannel marketing experience, we have the features, integrations, and APIs you need to get started.
Sources:
https://www.emailvendorselection.com/sms-marketing-platforms/
https://simpletexting.com/8-must-see-sms-campaign-examples-to-learn-from/
https://www.twilio.com/blog/best-sms-marketing-platforms