SMS for B2B and B2C Businesses - Benefits, Examples & How To Choose Provider

SMS marketing is a powerful tool for B2B and B2C businesses to reach and engage with their customers in a timely, cost-effective, and personalised way. 

Just think about often you have your phone on yourself and how inundated you are with emails. It’s important to always consider the customer journey and meeting them where they are.

What I love about SMS is it’s low barrier - but it’s always important to NEVER spam prospects and always keep it short and sweet. Building and maintaining trust in today’s “high scam” world is very important.

Key Benefits of Using SMS:

1. High Open Rates: SMS messages have a 98% open rate, which is much higher than email (~20% open rate) or social media (~5-10% engagement rate). This means that the majority of people who receive an SMS message will open and read it, increasing the chances of them taking action.

1. Immediate Delivery and Response: SMS messages are delivered and read almost immediately, making it a great way to send time-sensitive information such as appointment reminders, special promotions, or updates on product availability.

1. Personalization: SMS messages can be personalized to include the recipient's name, location, or other relevant information, making them feel more relevant and increasing the chances of engagement.

1. Easy to track: SMS marketing campaigns can be easily tracked and measured, allowing businesses to track the success of their campaigns and make adjustments as needed. Provided you have chosen the right provider with the right integration!

1. Easy to opt-out: It's important to remember to follow the laws and regulations regarding SMS marketing, such as including an opt-out option and obtaining consent before sending messages.
   
   SMS marketing allows for easy opt-out options for recipients, which helps to maintain a positive relationship with customers and reduce the likelihood of unsubscribes or complaints.

B2B businesses can leverage SMS (short message service) in a variety of ways to help improve communication, overall customer satisfaction and ultimately, increase revenue.

Ways To Incorporate SMS In The Customer Journey

Sending appointment reminders: B2B businesses can use SMS to send appointment reminders to clients, reducing the likelihood of missed appointments and increasing client engagement.

Sending order confirmations: SMS can be used to send order confirmations to clients, providing them with real-time updates on the status of their orders and reducing the likelihood of errors.

Sending marketing messages: SMS can be used to send targeted marketing messages to clients, promoting new products or services and increasing sales.

Sending notifications: Businesses can use SMS to send notifications to clients about important events or updates, such as delivery status or service outages.

Conducting surveys: Businesses can use SMS to conduct surveys to get feedback from clients on products and services, and improve their customer service.

Invitation to events: Besides invitation to events via Linkedin and email, SMS is another a great way to invite your customers to events so that the invites don’t get lost in emails.

Onboarding: SMS can be a useful tool for certain parts of onboarding. For example, you could start with a greeting message, guide them to a product walkthrough and then follow up with a feature callout.

So how do you pick the right providers? 

Here’s What I Look For And Why I’ve Chosen To Be A MessageMedia Partner

1. Global coverage: Using international SMS means that you can contact people overseas – even when they don’t have internet access – and be sure that your message is being received. So ensuring your SMS provider has a global coverage is vital. MessageMedia offers a coverage of 187 countries.

1. Dedicated number: Don’t underestimate the trust factor that comes with having a dedicated number so that prospects/customers know they are not being spammed or scammed and know that they will get a response.

1. Support: When you’re stuck sending or receiving SMSs or simply have a question, you want to have as much support as possible and be confident that they are fast, responsive and easy to reach. You cannot be waiting days!
   With MessageMedia, they offer 24/7 support - so for me, I highly prioritise this benefit.

1. Integration: Don’t stop at just “an integration with XYZ platform” exists. Always go beyond it and check EXACTLY what it looks like. How easy is it to setup and maintain? What features do you get in the integration? Can you use it for automated SMS in your email flow? Can your sales or service team send SMSs back and forth with the prospects/customers?
   
   Being a HubSpot partner, choosing the right SMS provider to partner with is important. The reason I’ve chosen to be a MessageMedia besides the reasons above (especially support), is that MessageMedia have an in-depth native integration.  You don’t have to leave HubSpot. SMS can be added to any workflow. For e.g. Create a workflow to send an SMS to anyone that did not open the email. Other SMS providers merely sync contacts with HubSpot and you have to use their platform.

1. Reporting: There are still some SMS providers that aren’t transparent enough with the reporting and history log of incoming and outgoing SMSs. I like MessageMedia for the reporting we can get and then use to analyse for marketing and sales optimisations based on CTR, opt outs etc.

1. Price: Of course, price is an important factor however, I’d prefer a prioritise the above factors to ensure the customer experience is top notch.

Curious to see how it looks? Watch below!

If you are interested in MessageMedia, we encouraging going through MessageMedia partners like us as you will be able to get access to Senior Partner Success Managers and we will ensure the integration and use of workflows is optimal.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like to get a demo of the platform and integration.