Engaging your audience and motivating them to take action is a tough ask. Leads aren't always ready to buy, and even on occasions when they are, marketers find it challenging to keep them engaged. Fortunately, SMS from Salesforce enables you to influence your target audience and keep them engaged over time.
What Is an SMS Drip Campaign?
An SMS drip campaign is a series of pre-defined texts sent to recipients at specific intervals. Drip campaigns are a popular tool for marketing engagement that aims to connect contacts with personalized messages at the appropriate moment.
Depending on how the recipient responded to the last communication, you can determine which communication in a drip campaign should be sent next and to whom. Drip campaigns are typically carried out by means of particular triggers, including click-throughs or sign-ups, and automated text message series that are sent out according to a predetermined calendar.
What Is Bulk SMS Messaging?
Small as well as big businesses have long relied on bulk SMS marketing as a means of communicating with their audience and sending promotional offers. In today's digital context, an increasing number of businesses across multiple sectors use bulk SMS messaging to grow and optimize their customer service initiatives.
Bulk SMS messaging refers to sending the same SMS message to thousands of recipients. Bulk SMS messaging is mostly used for marketing, including scheduling appointments, sending urgent notifications, updating a large recipient base about promotions and offers, and much more.
Bulk SMS messaging allows you to go around the already congested email channel where your emails typically get lost in the multitude of marketing emails. Reaching your subscribers via SMS messaging gives you access to a channel that they actively use and respond to. Additionally, industry research shows that SMS marketing contributes to a return on investment that is roughly 10–20 times higher when compared to email.
5 Key Benefits of Salesforce SMS Drip Campaigns
Drip campaigns are a popular marketing approach because they work. Let's look at some of the benefits of SMS drip campaigns from Salesforce.
- Increase engagement. Drip campaigns use timing, cadence, and message personalization to boost audience engagement. An effective SMS drip strategy targets specific contacts or leads at the optimal point in their buying journey, increasing the possibility that they will interact with your message.
- Boost sales. One of the primary reasons firms employ SMS drip campaigns is to increase conversions. According to research, implementing lead nurturing tactics such as drip text messaging increased revenues by 20%.
- Reduce churn. Drip campaigns also allow brands to reengage dormant contacts who haven't lately connected with their brand. This campaign is a mild nudge that keeps you top-of-mind with existing contacts, reducing churn.
- Ensure delivery of messages. SMS texts have a 98% read rate. This makes it the most efficient communication channel for getting your drip messages across.
- Improve brand awareness. SMS drip campaigns help brands to build brand awareness for their products and services. Marketers, for example, can utilize drip campaigns to notify customers and leads of new product or service launches.
In summary, an SMS drip campaign can help you achieve time efficiency, automation, personalized customer experience, and instant reach.
9 Types of SMS Drip Campaigns
Lead Nurturing Campaigns
Most people are not ready to make a purchase or renewal right away. In such cases, you can employ an SMS drip campaign to nurture leads. These text message drips should provide useful information to guide contacts through the marketing funnel and convert them into sales-ready leads.
Welcome Series Campaigns
A welcome drip campaign is one of the most popular marketing strategies. With welcome SMS drips, you can greet new subscribers and update them on your company, offers, promotions, or upcoming events. Many contacts get engaged immediately after enrolling in an SMS program. The purpose of this drip could be to increase sales or simply welcome new subscribers depending on your use case and sector.
Re-Subscribe Campaigns
Many technology and online services have subscription plans. Companies try their best to prevent losing customers, yet it happens. Now they can utilize SMS drip campaigns to re-engage these contacts. This campaign is often designed to reduce churn and win back dormant customers.
Re-Engage Campaigns
Another effective SMS drip strategy is to re-engage old customers and get them back into the fold. This is an excellent campaign to launch if you discover that certain customers haven't interacted with your brand for quite some time.
Abandoned Cart Reminders
Cart abandonment is common among e-commerce firms. The abandoned cart rate across e-commerce businesses is at a staggering 70%. As a result, in order to minimize this number, numerous businesses have implemented SMS drip campaigns for abandoned cart reminders.
Promotional Drip Campaigns
Many firms utilize SMS drip campaigns to advertise limited-time bargains or new products. These drip marketing campaigns increase conversions and frequently persuade customers to buy with tempting incentives.
Review Solicitation Campaigns
Online reviews may make or break a business. According to research, 66% of buyers read internet reviews before making a purchase or visiting a brand. With this in mind, obtaining direct feedback is beneficial to your brand. You can employ a targeted drip campaign to learn more about their experiences.
Renewal Campaigns
Certain businesses offer subscription-based services. Use a drip campaign to encourage customers to renew prior to the deadline. This can help your cash flows and drive customer retention.
Reminder SMS Campaigns
Another common automated SMS drip campaign is for reminders. This has the potential to benefit a wide range of sectors and applications. For instance, you could remind attendees of an event, travelers of an upcoming flight, or guests of a hotel reservation.
How to Plan an Effective SMS Drip Campaign
Follow these best practices to build effective SMS drip campaigns.
Understand Your Audience
Knowing your target audience is the first critical step. Understanding your audience's characteristics, requirements, interests, and behavior allows you to adjust messaging properly. You must be able to communicate how your product or service meets their needs and what information will add value to their experience.
Build and Segment Your Subscriber List
Building and segmenting your contacts is another important aspect of running efficient SMS drip campaigns. Here are some pointers on how to do this efficiently.
- Acquire phone numbers lawfully. You cannot just purchase a list of phone numbers to text people or use numbers you have on record. For SMS compliance, you must acquire your contacts' explicit authorization before texting them. This consent is known as an SMS opt-in and is mandated by law, regardless of geography.
- Segment your subscriber base. Once you've created your texting list, sort and group contacts according to key criteria. For example, you may categorize contacts based on demographics, purchase history, stage in the purchase journey, and so on. Businesses benefit greatly from segmentation to personalize their SMS messaging.
Strategies for gathering opt-ins and creating a list of subscribers:
- Create a specific landing page to gather opt-in data
- Advertise SMS subscriptions on social media
- Include a signup checkbox on the checkout page
- Provide a signup incentive or discount
- Confirm that your subscribers have voluntarily given their contact details and consented to receive your communications.
Define Your Goals
The next step is to clearly establish your objectives. This gives navigational direction to your SMS drip campaigns. What are the goals of your SMS drip campaign? This could involve increasing revenue, promoting a new product, or simply enhancing engagement.
Plan Your Campaign
To plan a drip campaign, follow these steps:
- Pick a drip campaign type. Choose a drip campaign type that aligns with your goal. For instance, if you want to boost renewals, start an SMS drip campaign with a special rate for customers nearing their renewal date.
- Refine your messaging. Fine-tune your messaging to include the necessary content in your SMS flow to guide contacts toward your goal. Usually, the best place to begin is with your eventual goal. Starting with the expected outcome from the campaign's recipients, work backward to determine the particular content that will urge your target audience to execute the desired action.
- Visualize your customer’s journey. Another key planning step is to visualize the flow of your messaging. This involves determining the cadence of your messages in each sequence. Knowing which material is critical for each message will help you determine the flow of your messages across all touch points.
- Get your timing right. Businesses must also plan out when each communication will be triggered. The appropriate date will fluctuate depending on the use case. However, organizations should consider whether triggers are time-based or event-based. Businesses should also establish the ideal amount of time gap between consecutive messages.
- Write your messages. When you write your content, all of your planning pays off. Make sure your SMS messages are precise and succinct.
How to Set Up and Send Bulk SMS and Drip Campaigns in Salesforce
After a longer planning process, it's time to get going. Automated bulk SMS messaging can be a very effective marketing strategy. You can develop successful campaigns that connect with your audience and automatically increase sales by following the methods listed below.
Choose a Bulk SMS Automation Tool
For a mass SMS campaign to be effective, selecting the appropriate automation technology is essential. Search for an automated texting service provider that provides high message deliverability, competitive pricing for bulk SMS marketing, user-friendly interfaces, and other innovative features. GirikSMS, a 100% native Salesforce SMS app, allows for contact management, message scheduling, lead distribution automation, third-party integrations, and powerful AI messaging.
Create Your Campaign and Set Triggers
Use the drip campaign functionality to construct a sequence of SMS messages that are distributed to a large number of recipients at a predefined period. You can specify how many minutes, days, or hours pass between two consecutive messages, and add as many texts as you need. Set up your messaging, triggers, and timing in accordance with your campaign objectives.
Import and Assign Contacts
Start by importing your contacts into your bulk SMS tool once the campaign has been created. By segmenting your audiences using Campaigns or Bucket, you can assign them to a particular campaign. By doing this, you can encourage your subscribers to act by sending them messages that are relevant and targeted.
Personalize at Scale
The best SMS solutions enable large-scale text personalization. Leverage your CRM data to make each text resonate with the recipient. GirikSMS, for example, allows businesses to use merge fields to automatically pull in key personal information, and inbuilt AI tools to create an engaging message or send multiple variations of the same message.
Test Before You Send
Before sending bulk SMS messages to real recipients, test your messages thoroughly, look for any errors, make sure the links are functioning properly, and confirm that your messages are precise and concise. You can test by texting yourself or a select few of your coworkers.
Launch
After you've set up your drip SMS sequence, once again go over your messages, timing, and flows. After a thorough analysis and review, you can launch your campaign. Plan the communications for when your subscribers are most likely to be engaged. This will either send the first message to your contacts or ensure that they receive messages when they do a specific activity.
Offer Value From the First Message
The lifetime value of your customers will be significantly impacted by your initial text message to them. Make the switch from simply saying "Hello" to giving your subscribers something of value. Clearly state the benefits they will receive, such as special access to material, price breaks, or important information. Make sure your message clearly states the benefits of continuing to receive your SMS messages. When it is in line with your objectives, create a sense of urgency to motivate quick action.
Bulk SMS Best Practices
- Make sure you SMS people who have opted in.
- Keep your SMS brief and direct.
- Make sure you get the timing of your SMS right.
- Make the message unique and valuable.
- Add a strong call to action.
- Avoid overwhelming subscribers with texts.
- Make it easy to choose not to receive SMS.
- Remember to comply with SMS message regulations.
- Deliver the appropriate message when it's needed.
How to Monitor and Optimize Your SMS Campaigns
Tracking your campaign performance allows you to measure results and identify areas for improvement. Let's talk about how to effectively measure and optimize.
Track KPIs. Make sure you're collecting metrics to help you understand your campaign performance. Some of the key SMS metrics to measure are:
- Open rate
- Response rate
- Deliverability rate
- Click-through rate
- Conversion rate
- Unsubscribe rate
Try to determine which kind of SMS campaigns are effective and which are not by analyzing these KPIs. With a greater understanding of what often works with audiences, you can develop more effective drip campaigns. KPI tracking will allow you to separate the best from the rest. This will benefit you in the future because you can apply what you've learned to create and fine-tune drip campaigns.
- A/B test. One of the most effective strategies to improve timing and frequency is to test with multiple different cadences and compare results. Throughout the campaign, also test different calls to action (CTAs), experiment with different content designs, and test different messaging tones.
- Analyze feedback and data. Merely tracking data is not enough. It must also be analyzed to identify trends. Keep track of how a campaign performs over time and pay heed to any direct responses from your audience.
- Optimize. It is recommended that message content, timing, and frequency be refined based on performance data and feedback. Optimizing can help you achieve your goals and maximize your return on investment.
Conclusion: Drive Engagement and Outcomes with GirikSMS
Salesforce SMS drip campaigns are a simple way to send automated, scheduled texts to your contacts. These messages are sent out based on particular time delays or activities, making them an effective tool for modern day marketers. Salesforce SMS drip campaigns allow you to stay engaged with your audience in the background allowing your marketing teams to focus on more strategic and creative tasks. Drip campaigns are becoming a significant aspect of many organizations' marketing strategy, allowing them to reach large audiences successfully.
However, delivering value, giving a personalized experience, and upholding a consistent brand style are all necessary for SMS campaigns to be successful. GirikSMS, a 100% native Salesforce messaging app, offers bulk texting, two-way messaging, drip campaigns, MMS messaging, personalization, and real-time AI-assisted responses to help you increase sales, reduce churn, and remain top of mind.
Run drip and bulk SMS campaigns inside Salesforce
Try GirikSMS free from the Salesforce AppExchange.
