Shopify SMS Marketing: A Behind The Scenes Guide

Email may still be one of the best ways to grab the attention of your Shopify store customers, but if you’re not investing in SMS marketing too, you could be missing out. 

Worldwide, around 23 billion text messages are sent every day. And the SMS marketing industry is set to be worth around $12.6 billion by 2025 alone. 

While your customers might miss the occasional email from your business if they’re not connected to the web, you can reach them through SMS anywhere. With countless people now using phones every day, this makes SMS a perfect way to keep your business “top of mind” with your customers.

Today, we’re going to take a closer look at SMS marketing on Shopify, how you can leverage it, and some of the best practice strategies for ensuring success. 

Why Use SMS Marketing for Shopify?

Shopify store owners can already use built-in SMS functionality on the platform to notify their customers about orders and transactions. But investing in SMS marketing is a whole new ball game. 

With SMS marketing, you send automated messages to existing and potential customers, to drive brand awareness, increase sales, promote products, and enhance customer relationships. It’s similar to email marketing, but you don’t need to wait for customers to check their email inbox. 

Shopify SMS marketing can deliver some amazing outcomes to business leaders. After all, in an average day, people check their text messages constantly. 1 in 3 people even read text messages within a minute of receiving them. This means SMS marketing gives you a convenient opportunity to stay top-of-mind with every buyer, and interact on a daily basis. 

Additionally, compared to email marketing, SMS has a 98% open rate. While it’s relatively easy to ignore an email, it’s much harder to leave a message on your phone untouched. 

Used correctly, SMS marketing can help you strengthen relationships with your target audience, boost your sales strategy, and turn one-off buyers into local advocates. 

Quick Tips for Successful SMS Marketing on Shopify

While SMS marketing can be extremely valuable for Shopify store owners, it does require some careful planning and strategy. Just like with email marketing, what you get out of SMS marketing depends on the work you put in. Here are some quick tips and best practices to get you started. 

1. Define Your Goals First

Before you dive into any marketing campaign, it’s important to establish what you want to achieve. A set of clear goals will help you to figure out which metrics and KPIs you should be tracking, to ensure your SMS strategy is a success. 

If you’re trying to spread awareness about an annual sale, you might track the number of open rates, and the number of people who click from your message through to your website. If you’re looking for ways to increase customer loyalty, track how many people interact with your SMS messages over time, and how many sign up to your loyalty program. 

2. Always get Permission 

There are rules to follow with SMS marketing. CAN-SPAM and similar guidelines require all companies to get permission from customers to send them text messages before they start contacting them. You could risk serious legal problems and fines if you don’t follow these rules. 

It’s also worth making sure your customers always have a way to “opt out” of your marketing campaigns. Although you might lose some subscribers this way, it’s important to ensuring your campaigns remain compliant. Plus, you don’t really want to waste your messaging budget on customers who don’t want to hear from you, anyway. 

3. Be Cautious with Frequency

While 41% of customers say they would rather receive an SMS message from a brand than an email, they also don’t want to be inundated with endless texts. The more messages you send, the more likely to are to appear pushy and spammy. 

With that in mind, start by sending a few messages per month to customers, experimenting with different sending times and days to see what works best. If you use the right messaging platform, you should be able to track which cadence appeals to your audience over time.

4. Don’t be Overly Promotional

Although one of the major goals of many companies investing in SMS marketing is to promote their products and increase sales, it’s important to ensure you’re doing more than just “selling”. Your SMS messages, just like your emails, should be informative and valuable. 

Think about how you can actually benefit your customers with your messages. Let them know about an upcoming sale, or tell them when a popular item comes back in stock, but don’t constantly try to push them to buy products they might not be interested in. 

5. Make Messages Personal

Just as you shouldn’t send mass, generic emails to your customers or create one-size-fits-all blog posts, you shouldn’t sending un-personalized SMS messages to your audience. Remember, SMS marketing is an excellent way to build a relationship with your audience. 

With that in mind, use your SMS marketing app (integrated with Shopify) to segment your audience, using data like purchasing history, demographics, location, and shopping preferences. Use your customer’s names in your messages, and be conversational with your language. 

6. Drive Action

Remember, the end goal of your SMS marketing campaign is to convince your customers to do something. That could be visiting your brick-and-mortar store, going to your Shopify site, or downloading an app. If you want your customers to do something specific, you need to tell them.

Include a clear “call to action” at the end of each message, letting your customers know what you’d like them to do next. Make it easy to complete your action with embedded links and buttons.

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5 Great Shopify SMS Marketing Apps

As mentioned above, while there are some SMS features baked into the Shopify platform, you’ll need a more comprehensive tool if you want to actually create a full marketing campaign. The good news is there are a tone of add-ons in the Shopify marketplace you can use for SMS marketing. 

Here are just some of the highest-rated options. 

1. Automizely

Automizely is an all-in-one marketing platform with pre-built templates for SMS, email, and conversion popups, all designed for your Shopify store. You can create personalized and automated email flows based on your customer’s shopping behavior, and run A/B tests to optimize results. 

Plus, the Automizely app comes with handy tracking and reporting tools, and a built-in CRM, so you can create relevant customer segments and profiles. 

Pricing: Free for up to 300 contacts, followed by plans of $11 per month. 

2. SMSBump

Another highly rated tool on the Shopify app store, SMSBump by Yotpo makes it easy to grow your email and SMS contact lists in no time. You can create campaigns for recovering abandoned carts, and SMS flows based on real-time events and custom conditions. 

There are options for crafting, personalizing and A/B testing every campaign you create. Plus, you’ll be able to develop hyper-targeted segments in the platform back-end. 

Pricing: Free to install, with message rates starting from $0.0165 in the US. Paid monthly subscriptions are also available with extra features. 

3. Postscript

Designed to boost Shopify store conversions with email and SMS marketing, Postscript is a convenient tool for enhancing all stages of the customer journey. Users can create personalized campaigns and automation flows, with custom triggers. 

You can also track revenue and ROI to optimize your strategies over time. Plus, there’s the option to leverage data straight from Shopify for your segments. 

Pricing: $1,000 free credit for the first 30 days, then $0.015 per SMS. You can also access paid monthly subscriptions with bonus capabilities. 

4. Klaviyo

One of the top tools for email and SMS marketing available today, Klaviyo makes it simple for business owners to upgrade their revenue. The solution allows business owners to leverage data straight from Shopify to create personalized email campaigns and workflows. 

You can use historical and real-time insights for segmentations, build coupon codes within the app, and even leverage a wide variety of templates. 

Pricing: Free to install and free SMS for up to 150 messages. Plans start from $15 per month for up to 1250 SMS/MMS credits. 

5. Recart

Combining the power of SMS marketing with artificial intelligence, Recart is a fantastic Shopify app used by thousands of brands around the world. The fully-managed service manages your SMS strategy for you, so you can focus on running your business. 

There are automated workflows for all kinds of SMS messaging strategies, custom pop-ups for desktop and mobile, and AI tools for creating and optimizing content. Plus, you get built-in real-time analytics and compliance features. 

Pricing: Free 21-day trial with paid plans starting at $299 per month. 

Mastering SMS Marketing for Shopify

SMS Marketing can be an exceptional tool for business leaders in the Shopify landscape. It’s a great way to boost your chances of connecting with and nurturing your customers through the sales cycle. Plus, you might even find you can increase your sales. 

If you need help making the most of your Shopify marketing strategy, the experts here at Storetasker can guide you through every step. Reach out today to find your own Shopify expert. 

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