Your phone beeps and you wonder who’s messaging you, only to see a badly spelt sentence promising cheap plots of land or dream villas for only ₹18 “lak”, along with a freebie of 100 gm of gold and a readily available loan. Even as you wonder whether the Do Not Disturb registry has lost your name, comes another, from some telecom company purporting to supply a certain bank’s multi-currency forex card. As you delete the message, ruing that travel at the moment seems a faraway dream, comes another pesky one. The only ones that matter, at least to this correspondent, are SMS messages saying the technician has been despatched to solve the problem she had complained about. A casual enquiry reveals that most people tend to categories SMS marketing messages as “useless”.

Less is more

Speak to marketers who employ SMS marketing, and it would seem operating on a ‘less is more’ principle is what works. Croma makes sure its customers get a message only once in four weeks, and only after they have opted for them. Ritesh Ghosal, CMO of Infiniti Retail which runs the Croma chain of stores, says his firm does not do SMS marketing “in the classical sense” – of carpet-bombing customers with unsolicited messages. “Using paid databases and telemarketing doesn’t work, it can give brands using them a bad name,” he observes.

Vijay Jain, CEO and Director of diamond jewellery retailer Orra, says SMS is the most direct form of marketing and people tend to respond faster to it than any other mobile communication. Even if people mute other notifications, such as those from a messenger service or email, they usually leave the SMS alert on, he points out. Orra contacts its customers only 6-12 times a year through SMS. “It’s more tactical, for a Diwali promotion, a sale, and such,” says Jain.

When the spirit’s willing

A customer’s willingness to receive SMS marketing messages counts for a lot. The opt-in is an indicator of that. “People actually like to stay on top of the news,” says Ghosal, who explains that Croma sends out messages only after carefully segmenting who might appreciate suggestions about products and offers. For instance, a customer who bought a fridge three years ago might get a message about a more sophisticated one in case she is considering an upgrade or replacement, but not a customer who bought one just recently.

Marketers have to be mindful of TRAI rules on telemarketing. “We don’t send out so many that the customer gets hassled, and we reach out to the customer when she wants or it’s relevant,” says Jain of Orra. This retailer, for instance, has a very focused set of customers who buy at least one ‘spiritual pendant’ every year, so there is less resistance from them to receiving a message about these products. There is also the chance of instant gratification through a link in the SMS, which is an advancement in SMS marketing. The links lead to websites where customers can view and shop for products.

Aniketh Jain, co-founder, Solutions Infini, a communications firm that helps B2B firms talk to their end consumers, says the response to an SMS campaign is 8-12 per cent, as against an email campaign where it’s 4-5 per cent. The SMS industry is growing 20 per cent year on year, he says, with banks and startups using it to communicate, though its use as a marketing tool has seen a slight dip. However, it still has much potential among various sectors. One, for instance, is brands that deal with youth who readily provide phone numbers so that they can get news of offers.

“We believe that the market has a lot of potential since over past few years, there has been a consistent growth of market size. Moreover, with the advent of new startups every day and the ever-growing needs of enterprises to enhance direct interaction with customers, the market is all set to grow over the coming years. Communication taps almost all sectors today from education to ecommerce, so based on the current trends, we are sure to say that the market will continue to grow,” says Jain.

Ghosal of Infiniti Retail says they have been investing in SMS and email marketing as a science for the past one year, given that it has a huge amount of data – phone numbers, addresses – in its records. Initially, SMS was more a means of enabling customer service. SMS and email marketing has worked to their advantage both as an effective marketing medium and as a responsive one. “There’s a 12-15 per cent response every month. Croma doesn’t advertise much. Online retail does a large amount of advertising on TV, and our competitors such as Vivek’s, in print,” says Ghosal. More than half their business is driven by people who have already shopped there. Ghosal says the opt-out rate is just 3 per cent.

“Price it higher”

Solutions Infini’s Jain says the insurance and real estate industries do “massive SMS campaigns” and because of that the customer tends to ignore all messages. “SMS marketing should be priced higher so that this carpet bombing comes down,” he says. A message costs about 12 paise to send. Enterprises can reduce costs by learning which form of communication the customer prefers, he says. One way would be to use new-age marketing tools that capture data and reflect prevailing trends. There are tools that can capture the user’s browser, location, OS (operating system), wether he uses a smartphone or not and such. Based on this information firms can decide on their customer targeting strategy.

About 10-15 per cent of the response is directly measurable, says Orra’s Jain. His company measures the effectiveness of SMS marketing in terms of the number of click-throughs to the links in the message, visits to the store and any other form of communication, such as a call. They are now looking at measuring conversion as well.

Contrary to what one may imagine, SMS marketing can be a barrier against other forms of marketing, says Jain. Customers prefer some communication as a text message rather than as a call which eats into their time. For the marketer too, it takes less time, he explains, adding that, of course, it would have to be very finely targeted.

Read the original article here: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/catalyst/how-sms-marketing-can-strike-a-happy-medium/article8709959.ece