Size of the Company
There are various text messaging and SMS Marketing software available and a lot of them built specifically to cater to specific segments - SMB, Mid Market and Enterprise. The complexity of the software varies based on the target market segment. Choice should be made based on the fitment of the company's market segment.
Standalone Product or an Integrated Suite
Very often, SMS Marketing capability is available within an integrated suite along with other capabilities like Email Marketing and Chat. Software like Sendinblue, Avochato are such examples. There are specialized text messaging software like Ez Texting, Textus which focus only on text-based channels. Depending on the company’s channel strategy, the choice can be made to go either for text only platforms or integrated platforms which can support more than text.
Technology and Feature consideration
Depending on the company’s marketing strategy and the type of usage, businesses need to look at the capabilities of the SMS Marketing software - bulk SMS capabilities, scale, and performance, AI support, personalization.
Data Migration Support
A good SMS marketing software will have the ability to import, export and transform customer data from the other marketing platforms you already use.
Integrations
SMS Marketing needs to integrate with a number of other applications like Marketing Automation, CRM, Customer Data Platforms and other omnichannel marketing applications. Ease of integration and out of box integration support available can be a key factor for choosing SMS Marketing Software.
Pricing
Pricing plays an important role in the choice of SMS Marketing software. Pricing can vary based on a number of factors like feature support ( MMS for example), message volume, keywords.
ROI of SMS Marketing Software
Experts have reported response rates of SMS marketing campaigns as high as 45%, with a Click-Through Rate at 19%. These numbers alone tell you in clear terms that SMS marketing is very cost-effective and will be a money saver for your advertising budget while generating sales.
In fact, according to Broadnet.me, eight out of ten businesses use SMS marketing software for communication and promotion. These business users are growing every year and are likely to peak by the year 2020.
As in any other marketing activity, the RoI of SMS marketing is calculated by stacking costs against revenue generated. An SMS marketing software allows you the flexibility of choosing specific metrics, depending on the results you want to measure.
The tool that empowers you is the analytics arm, which gathers, organizes and makes sense of all the data needed to judge the success of the campaign. It also helps businesses optimize their future campaigns based on inferences from the data. Based on this, you can weed out the underperforming campaigns and add fuel to those that are firing.