#278 How to Use Text Message Marketing to Make More Sales

1:52AM Nov 30, 2020

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Keywords:

strategies

brands

text

bra

text messages

business

marketing

buy

people

marketing strategy

create

opt

messaging

sms marketing

thrive

repeat buyers

creative

important

shop

applications

Analyze the text messages that actually get you to buy or kick some curiosity. Take time to review a few options from other successful brands and make a list of the texts that really grabbed your attention. So keep going out there, like do your research.

Welcome to Thrive by Design, the podcast for ambitious, independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business. So you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? All right, let's do this.

Welcome to the Thrive by Design podcast, Episode Number 278. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews, Chief visionary Officer of Fourish and Thrive Academy. I'm thrilled to be here today to talk about one of my favorite marketing strategies for e-commerce, especially jewelry and creative product brands. And that is how to use text message marketing to make more sales.

Now we're going to be talking about text messages from an app. But you can use texting in a variety of different ways, which if we have time, I might gloss over a little bit. Now this strategy came up for a very specific reason, which I'm going to share during this podcast today. And it is something that has gotten me to buy from many brands multiple times during the last six to nine months. So it's really working because a lot of people who like to shop like ideal are on their phones all the time and think about it this way. How often do you look at your phone to respond to a text? Probably every couple of minutes. So most people check their phone frequently and respond to SMS or text messages pretty quickly.

So this is a great strategy, which I shared in a masterclass that I have for you to listen to while you're doing your holiday sales season. It is called How to end the years strong with marketing that matters. This masterclass is designed to help you with implementable strategies that you can use right away to discover the secrets of highly profitable jewelry and creative product makers to create a financially secure algorithm proof business that consistently grows all year long. This is literally how you can set up your business to thrive with current strategies that work. And this is regardless of what's happening in the world. And I know a lot of people are worried about that. But what I am telling you now is that everyone is going to be shopping online, this holiday season, for obvious reasons, you know, the pandemic still going on? certain states here in the US are back on lockdown, people aren't going to probably be shopping in brick and mortar as much, which is heartbreaking. And if your state is still open or you're in an area where it's open, definitely go into those stores and shop small business.

But either way, this is a great opportunity for you to capitalize on what's working now in your marketing strategy. So you can head on over to flourishthriveacademy.com/marketing and get that free class right now and start implementing stuff in your business so that you can have a better holiday season than expected. This is going to be amazing. Well, I want to just dive right in and ask you, how many hours a day do you spend on your cell phone? I set one of those little timers and I'm on mine for one time I looked at it it was like five or seven hours, five or seven hours because I am embarrassed to say it was probably more than that.

We are on our phones a lot. You know you're using social media, you're on Instagram, you're promoting your business. And you're always checking your phone. You're on it all day. I am at least and Adweek reports that 80% of people aged 18 to 44 had their cell phones with them 22 hours a day. Well, I guess you were sleeping, are they sleeping next to their cell phone? Maybe that's what it is. Anyway, I was just doing some research for a new program that we just dropped called Sold Out Shop. We closed it's going to be closed for a while now. But it's amazing because I was doing this research, all about text marketing. And they said that text messages get anywhere upwards from 90 to 98%. open rates.

That means like almost every single text that someone gets on their phone is open. And when you compare that to email, if you have a good open rate on your email, that's typically about 20% open rate. So I'm not saying that you should not be email marketing, because that is still very important. And it's a great way to capture sales. But think of the power of text marketing if you do this, right. It can be super powerful. And I want you to be thinking about how you can actually weave this in to the conversation. So you know we could talk about being addicted to our phones and other conversation but as creativity business owners this information means big things for our marketing plans. Because in marketing, it's all about going to where the audience is right?

So why don't we go in their text inboxes now this strategy has been booming for the last couple of years, Gartner shared that in 2018 SMS marketing texts were open on average, as I mentioned 90% as opposed to 20% for email marketing, which is huge. Now, here's I just want to show this example with you. I mentioned this kind of a few seconds ago, but a while back I purchased a bra from a company called wearLIVELY are their URL online is wearlively.com definitely go check them out, check them out on Instagram, I was served an ad I think somewhere on Facebook. And I liked it because the bras were touted to be for curvy women who wanted to wear a bra, let's it's like they call it the curvy bra that wherever you could wear it. And it looks super cute. On boob sorry, TMI for all of you, I'm not gonna share my bra size.

But at the end of the day, I'm always searching for bra lots that are comfortable that also fit someone with a small back with a larger cup size. So this was something that I was really interested in. So I went and I bought it I got a couple of the braas they were sent to me I loved them, I bought a few more loved them, then somehow I got on their text list I probably filled out something Hey, do you want notifications of your order shipping or something like that? So I said yes. And this it's so good, what they're doing.

So when I came to Fountain Hills, Arizona, in March, when COVID started, I scrambled out pretty quickly, my apartment, I thought we were only gonna be on lockdown for like six weeks. So I brought about a couple weeks of clothes, I'm like, I can just do laundry, who cares if I'm wearing the same thing or not going anywhere doesn't really matter. And five months later, still in Arizona, I was still in Arizona. And I left a lot of stuff and I you know a lot of things that I liked. And so I started getting these text messages from WearLively. So I was like, You know what, I'm gonna order a few here. I kept getting them I kept getting them, I kept getting them I purchased from them seven times over a nine month period. Not kidding. I actually probably purchased from them more,

I am embarrassed to even admit I don't even want to look at my order history. But it's amazing because their text messages are so good. And every time I was like oh my gosh, this piece of selling out or oh my gosh, it's back in stock, or whatever it was, they knew exactly how to create urgency with it. You know, some of the things that inspired me to buy were messaging like this bra sold out 24 times and now it's back in stock or our best selling comfy bra back in stock, free tote with purchase today only buy two, get one free. And that's really just like an option for a bundle offer. So I would buy these packages abroad. And trust me I have a lot of bras right now. I really need anymore, but it really worked. And one of the things that I loved about what Lively was doing is they weren't just sending plain text messages.

You know, I was on this company on a text messaging less for a sneaker company called the Great or great, the great as a sweatshirt company. Also great company love their sweatshirts. Great is a sneaker company, they're based in Brooklyn. And I found these animal print sneakers that I loved and ended up buying several pairs of sneakers from them. I was on their text messaging list, actually, I kept buying their sneakers. And they were very expensive. So I opted out of their text messaging list because it was just too tempting. But they were sending me texts that were getting me to buy as well. And they didn't even have images. And one of the things that I loved about what lively was doing is that they were using GIF.

If you don't know what a GIF is, you can google it gi F. And it's basically like an image that moves. So it looks kind of like a video. And you can overlay images on top of each other with tax that like deliver a message. And so they it totally works. And this is something that I'm going to share with you that you can actually do for yourself today, which is very exciting. And you might be saying to yourself, Tracy, this is a massive brand with a way bigger marketing budget than me How can I do it? Well, that is exactly the point. Here's why. Smart marketers know what to do. And they copy bigger brands. And I'm not saying copy word for word, what they're doing. They mimic their strategy. See these big brands, like a company like WearLively.

I'm certain that it's a multi million dollar company. Because it's scaling so fast. I'm seeing it everywhere. And they have a lot of money to spend on a marketing budget. So when you can mirror what people like that are doing and use it with your products, your imagery, your messaging, your brand voice, you're already a leg up because they spend a ton of money on split testing, and figuring out what actually works to get their customers to buy. So if it's getting someone like me to buy or whatever gets someone like you to buy, then you know it's working. Why not borrow the strategy from that. And this is one of my favorite things because these strategies are winning strategies and if they're using them and they're continually using them you know, it works. And a lot of, you know, novice marketers or people who are just kind of getting on to this more techie stuff, they blow it off saying like, Oh, I can't afford to do that.

But I'm going to share with you, there's a bunch of apps. And if you're using applications, like Klaviyo, or Omnisend, for your email marketing, they have integrations for text and SMS marketing in them. So Lucky you, it is going to be super easy. Now we break down these strategies in depth with our Momentum program here at Flourish and Thrive Academy, we're always trying to help them work smarter, not harder by taking the manual labor out of marketing to create winning strategies that convert prospects into repeat buyers. And that's what I want to really encourage you to do. And if you're interested, you know, we are rounding out the end of the year. And I just want to mention this.

So if you're interested in actually getting some help from us in the new year, and really elevating your marketing strategy, getting your website working for you, making sure that it's fully optimized, and that you're scaling your sales, I'd love to invite you to actually apply for a Momentum program and a business accelerator audit, what we're gonna do on that audit is just take a look at your business right now and kind of identify what's going on, we're gonna actually dig deep into your three year big vision for your company. So we want to really know where you're going. So we have Northstar to point with. And then as we're taking a look at your company, we're going to kind of identify some of the roadblocks that might be standing in the way.

So if you're ready, and you're kind of like I'm over this, you're you're ready to take your offline business online, then I definitely encourage you to jump on one of these calls, if you're ready now to start in 2021. And really scale your business next year. And it doesn't matter if you are just starting out. Or you're kind of in that growth mode, or you're ready to scale to like high six figures, or multiple, seven figures and beyond, we can help you at every step of the way. So I'd love to invite you to apply for that business accelerator audit, you can head on over to flourishthriveacademy.com/strategy and see if you apply, we're also have a link in our show notes.

The truth is anyone can scale their sales with marketing that matters. It just takes a commitment to do it, and some guidance from a mentor. So let's talk about four tips to create amazing SMS marketing campaigns. When you're creating and crafting your text messages, I want you to be clever, have fun experiment with it. This is for you. It's a unique opportunity for growth to capture your brand's voice in a different way by hooking your audience in and getting them to click through to your website. So I want you to use tools, this is where we're going to start.

We don't want to just whip out your cell phone and start sending out mass text messages to everyone in your contacts, you need to use an SMS tool to make the process easier, but also make sure that you don't get into legal trouble. So there's a couple of apps that you can use to make this worth it. Now, if you're using Klaviyo or Omnisend, for your marketing, or for your email marketing, or even Active Campaign, they all have text messaging integrations in it. And I highly recommend that if you are using any of those applications, we're also going to have links in the show notes for those. If you're using any of those applications, that you just use the text messaging functionality with it, try it out. If you don't like it, then move on to something else.

The reason why this is important is because you can integrate this with everything else that you're doing in your marketing strategy. There's a couple of other applications, including Twilio, Community, and EZ Texting and also Send in Blue. These are all very popular SMS marketing tools that are currently available. And we have a lot more that we've actually fleshed out for our students over here at Flourish and Thrive. Now the cool thing about this is a lot of these applications already have flows in place. So for opt in flows for you know, abandoned cart sequences for promotional emails, broadcasts for nurture sequences, anything that you're doing, they have them oftentimes built in so that you can just like replicate them, input your stuff, and go, it's a great opportunity for you.

Now, you want to make sure that you're getting set up with the proper systems to collect phone numbers for your customers legally and provide the necessary opt in and opt out options. So typically, when you're setting up and using one of these applications, they're going to have an opt in functionality like opt into SMS messaging for me. And that way you're you're legal using their number you can't just like put phone numbers in there and start messaging them they have to opt in. And you also need an easy way for them to opt out. Plus, it makes things way less stressful. So your personal phone isn't constantly pinging all day like I wouldn't necessarily use this straight from your personal phone number.

Just something to think about if you thought about doing this manually, because you can send and monitor text exchanges online on your computer so it's easier to see everything that's going on. Now the next part of this is to get creative because just because you can get into your customers' SMS inbox does not mean that they are going to click that link to buy so you need to grab their attention so So I mentioned earlier some ideas for kind of capturing their attention from Wear Lively like, this bra sold out in 24 hours. It's back in stock, like, how can you create urgency or engagement like new in the shop, only three left or something like that, make sure that you're using visual imagery.

So, images, graphics, GIF, moving gifts are really important. I think that is a great way because it acts like one image, but you can like basically tell a story by using an image because you can put word on the gifts, and so many other things that communicate whatever it is that you're trying to communicate, this is an awesome way to do it. So make sure that you get creative, sign up for a bunch of brands, text messaging options and see what they do and mimic what works on you. Or sign up for Wear Lively, you'll love what they're doing. It's super awesome. I also want to say there are going to be a limit to characters that you can use in text messaging, so or text marketing, I should say, shorter is sweeter.

So unlike marketing platforms, like social media, or email, successful text marketing, tends to be on the shorter side, there's a limit to the number of characters you can use. So you don't want to be that brand who's sending long drawn out things. And probably you won't even have that capability at all. Stick to keywords and phrases, headlines work on creating hooks, you know, you can use, one of the things that you can do also is, you know, we have a bundle here called the emails that sell done for you bundle and we have 600 subject lines, a lot of those subject lines can be used like as a hook to get for something like this because they're short and sweet. And they are super easy to just like capture and go. If you haven't grabbed that bundle yet, I'll put a link in the show notes, I'm gonna make a little note here.

So that you can grab it that is super important because the more that you can capture someone's attention and get them to move to the next phase, the better it is going to be for you. Now, I mentioned this before, and I'm going to mention this, again, research brands that are doing great things with text marketing, you know, these people have big budgets, or these brands have big budgets, find some of your favorite places to shop with. small, medium and large see what they are doing with text marketing, the bigger brands are going to have a lot of budget on that. So they're split testing things and see what works on you this is going to be huge, huge opportunity. So if you are really stumped for good ideas, as I mentioned, analyze the text messages that actually get you to buy or pique some curiosity, take time to review a few options from other successful brands and make a list of the texts that really grab your attention.

So keep going out there like do your research, like write things down, keep a running list, anytime you click through, make a note of that, because that is going to be the thing that probably will work on someone else to and mirror those strategies in your own SMS marketing efforts. super important. So three key things here, use tools and tech, as I mentioned, that's really important. You want the right technology, get creative with your assets, that's going to be really important, shorter, sweeter texts are going to be very important here to use some emojis to in your text if you if your platform supports that. And research brands for popular inspiration, I just like to say swipe what others are doing. And don't copy them cater towards your brand, mirror what other people are doing because this will work for you as well.

Now creating a base of happy customers who become repeat buyers is the number one thing that will keep your business in growth mode even in times like these because there are some people honestly I'm gonna break it down and be real here. There are some people who are really struggling right now. But there are a lot of people who are really thriving and I want you to remember that this is your opportunity to continue to grow to continue to do great things for your business and to keep it going. And that's exactly what you can do with the right guidance with your marketing is to thrive in times like these and so I'd love for you to take me up on the offer to join my free masterclass marketing that matters and, and that you're strong.

We're gonna chat with you about how to diversify your marketing strategy, and learn how to beat those pesky social media algorithms from text messages to email marketing, social media, direct mail, leveraging your network and so much more. So sign up and save your seat over at flourishthriveacademy.com/marketing

I honestly can't wait to see you there. All right, we're gonna end it there. I like the little short to the point sweet podcast. So this is Tracy Matthews signing off till next time. Thanks so much for listening today. And I truly wish you an amazing holiday season and come say hi to us over on Instagram or at flourish_thrive and you can come see me personally @tracymatthewsNY now let's go crush it this holiday season.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. It's a My mission to help thousands of creative businesses inside and outside the jewelry space use their creativity to make money. Make sure that you're subscribed to thrive by design on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever podcasts are played. And we'd love to hear what you think. Please rate and review the show and if you're inspired, please share this with your friends. Cheers to seeing you flourish and thrive.