When it comes to implementing a SMS marketing campaign for your business, it’s important to consider the characteristics of your industry and tailor your approach accordingly.
Whether you run a restaurant, bar, pub or club, the hospitality industry is ideally suited to mobile marketing campaigns. Intense competition exists between venues and low profit margins mean a low-cost marketing tool like bulk SMS can be vital in giving your business a competitive edge.
Most importantly, operators in the hospitality space are selling an experience, not merely a product or a service. Used strategically, SMS marketing is an effective tool for making your clientele feel special, driving loyalty and encouraging repeat bookings and visits.
Here are three ways to use SMS marketing to reach, engage and surprise your customers:
1. Reach your customers where and when it counts
The general availability and ubiquity of SMS is perhaps its greatest advantage as a marketing tool. Supported by a vast majority of mobile phones and not dependent on smartphones and costly data allowances, SMS can be an effective tool to reach under-served customers and geographic regions.
Boasting a 99 percent open rate and with 90 percent of messages read within three minutes of being received, SMS is a flexible channel for notifying customers of time-sensitive information and offers. For instance, this could include happy hour specials, discounts during slow periods, and so forth.
2. Involve your customers in the experience
The best experiences aren’t created, they are shared. Make your customers feel special by allowing them to contribute to the experience. For example, use SMS to consult customers on menu changes, obtain recommendations for themed nights, or quickly reveal details of exclusive, member-only events.
3. Don’t just talk to your customer – surprise and spoil them
A common tactic used by many venues is to send discounts and promotional offers to customers who have opted in to SMS communications. Real-time updates can be an effective means for your venue to remain top of mind, but genuine engagement requires more innovative and creative approaches.
With the help of a reliable SMS Gateway, you can send targeted marketing messages from any email client to SMS. Better still, you can manage replies directly from your inbox. For instance, customers can be sent invitations to exclusive events, receive a customised text on their birthday, be treated to seasonal promotions (e.g. during Easter or Christmas), or notified of upcoming events.
However, none of the above would mean a thing if SMS didn’t improve your bottom line. Thankfully, it can.
There are three generally accepted ways to boost sales:
Acquire more customers
Sell more to existing customers per visit
Sell to existing customers more often
SMS can do all three, but its flexible, real-time nature makes it particularly effective at increasing the revenue generated per customer.
SMS marketing should be implemented alongside your email, website and social media marketing activities as part of an integrated, multi-channel strategy. This will maximise the reach and impact of your SMS communications, and enable your business to reap the many benefits of SMS marketing.
Source : http://www.hospitalitymagazine.com.au/
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