How SMS Mobile Marketing Is Taking Over Every Industry (and What It Means for You)

Is text message marketing the right fit for your business?

Your goal as a marketer is simple — you must generate new leads and revenue for your company. However, new marketing channels and tactics pop up, promising to generate immediate results for your business or organization. You have to decide which tactics are worth investing in right now and which tactics you should toss to the wind.

In recent years, business text messaging has become a popular marketing tool utilized by thousands of organizations across a variety of industries, including retail, hospitality, fitness, real estate, and many others. 

With more than two decades of experience serving customers across these industries, we’ve helped orient thousands of businesses towards text marketing success. We’ll show you some of the top text campaigns activated across multiple businesses and industries.

10 Best SMS Mobile Marketing Campaigns

We can help your business meet demanding marketing goals via text messaging. We’ve worked alongside industry-leading businesses and can share first-hand the results that these businesses and organizations have achieved.

1. Transportation and Logistics Industry - Fidelis Freight

Haley Lanigan is the Recruiting Manager for Fidelis Freight. She is responsible for contracting truck drivers for the company. 

In the past, she used LinkedIn, email marketing campaigns, and offline initiatives to find new drivers. These methods were time-consuming and produced poor results. She needed a better way to reach interested candidates and keep up with the high turnover rate.

The Results:

Haley used EZ Texting’s SMS mobile marketing software to send regular text updates to her subscribers. Her subscriber list was made up of drivers who had worked for them in the past and drivers who had expressed interest in working for them in the future. 

She sent them regular text updates of industry trends and weekly fluctuations in the company’s pay-per-mile rate. It turned out to be an excellent solution for her long-haul drivers, and Haley has had more recruits applying and joining the team than ever before.

Read the Complete Case Study: Click Here

2. Nonprofit Industry - Big Brother Big Sister

The Big Brother Big Sister Foundation is a mentorship program that gives kids facing adversity the same opportunities as their peers. Their program relies heavily on the ability to collect donations and sell them for cash to provide funds. 

Steven Beck, the Executive director, had attempted email campaigns to communicate with donors in the past, but it didn’t prove to be very effective.

EZ Texting helped Steve to streamline the donation process. Donors can now text “PICKUP” to BBBSF’s EZ Texting number when they have items to donate, and can schedule a pickup date and time. This saved their drivers and donors valuable time and resources. 

The Results:

BBBSF estimates saving $200k in 2019 with the implementation of EZ Texting. They also said that they spend less time coordinating donations, and their logistics operations are running smoother.

Read the Complete Case Study: Click Here

3. Retail Industry - Large Home Improvement Retailer

Robert Love is a Market Sales Manager for a large home improvement retailer. Their sales team works with customers who are interested in home improvement projects such as new roofing, flooring, or window installations. His team is responsible for managing leads and converting them to sales. 

It’s common for customers to reach out and get an estimate, then stop responding to emails or phone calls. Robert was determined to re-engage these cold leads and find a way to close the sale. He knew that he needed a strategy to reach out to these customers in a way that was personalized. 

The Results:

Through the implementation of SMS mobile marketing, Robert was able to send out time-limited promotional offers to spur customers to act now. 

Robert sent his first campaign to his ‘dead’ leads to engage with them. He received responses from over half of them and closed $97k in new business. In the span of only a month, he was able to increase his sales conversion rates by 6%.

Read the Complete Case Study: Click Here 

4. Financial Industry - Axia Home Loans

Patrick Lewis is a sales manager and mortgage planning specialist with Axia Home Loans. His primary source of leads are referrals, and he had been using segmented email lists to reach out to his clients. 

Over time, Patrick noticed a decline in the open rates for his emails. He discovered that people weren’t reading and sharing content through email like they used to anymore.

To keep up with the changing times, Patrick swapped from email communication to text messaging. 

The Results:

SMS messaging allowed him to build stronger connections with his clients and personalize his messages in a way that he couldn’t do before. His content is viewed more frequently, contacts are regularly responding to his content, and he’s receiving more referrals.

Read the Complete Case Study: Click Here

5. Religious Organizations - Saddleback Church

Saddleback is a large church located in Southern California. Their church offers a separate service for youth members, and parents would drop them off before attending the main service. 

The church staff needed a way to contact parents about their children as needed. In the past, parents had been given pagers they could buzz. However, the pagers were costly, unreliable, and hard to use.

The Results:

EZ Texting allowed them to ditch the pagers for SMS messages instead. They connected the EZ Texting SMS gateway to their membership database, and workers were able to pull up the cell phone numbers for parents and send them a text as needed.

They were also able to utilize SMS messaging for other needs, such as engaging with congregants during major services like Easter and Christmas.

Read the Complete Case Study: Click Here

6. Professional Services Industry - Enpowered Solutions

Enpowered Solutions is an energy consultancy that works with firms in the industrial sector. The cost of electricity fluctuates significantly, so it’s hard for their clients to predict. In the past, companies knew what time of day the prices would be highest, and they would adjust their energy usage accordingly.

Enpowered Solutions wanted to provide their clients with a better way to stay updated on peak demand hours and share energy pricing information.

They made use of EZ Texting’s mobile alerts to send real-time updates to facility managers and engineers. With the customer segmentation feature, they were able to send messages to multiple firms simultaneously and to groups of customers by location.

The Results:

Customers are excited about being able to receive real-time, mobile alerts from Enpowered. They enjoy having the information they need to allow them to adjust their energy usage and save money by being able to accurately forecast their costs.

Read the Complete Case Study: Click Here

7. Restaurant Industry - Domino's

Ryan Swanson is the area director for a Domino’s franchise in Charlotte, North Carolina. Mr. Swanson has a target audience of students who like pizza, are price-driven, and whose loyalty could be swayed. 

He conducted market research and organized a focus group to discover the best way to reach this group. Ultimately, Ryan determined that Facebook was the place to engage.

Mr. Swanson had the idea to promote his Facebook group at the University of North Carolina’s basketball games. For 30-60 seconds, he had an ad displayed with the URL of his Facebook group. The goal was to get the students to visit the group when they saw the URL on the big screen or other displays around the arena. 

There was one major problem with this approach - no one is going to take the time to write down or visit a web address in the middle of a basketball game. 

With the help of SMS marketing, Mr. Swanson was able to fix this problem and make his ad campaign a success.

1. Instead of just flashing a web address on the screen, he created an ad that offered a free pizza to anyone who texted the coupon code 49ER to 858585. 
2. When they followed the instructions, they received a response that said, “To get FREE pizza join our facebook group at UNCCDominos.com and once you join post a message (I GOT A TEXT) & you will get a FREE pizza code. Reply STOP 49ER 2 Optout.” 

This enabled Mr. Swanson to share his Facebook group in a way that was easy for students to take advantage of during a game.

The Results:

“The sales at the store when we send text messages, or [use them to] drive people to Facebook, are unprecedented.” — Mr. Swanson

EZ Texting made it possible for him to measure the effectiveness of his text marketing campaigns. He saw an average redemption rate between 20% and 25%. This single campaign reached approximately 500 students and generated 125 additional orders and only cost him $25 to run.

Read the Complete Case Study: Click Here

8. Real Estate Industry - SL Green Realty Corp.

Melissa Libner is the Director of Marketing for SL Green in Manhattan. The company manages office space rentals, and they rely on brokers to keep them rented out. 

Melissa needed an effective way to get their listings in front of brokers, and emails were frequently ignored and deleted the second they hit the broker’s inbox. She turned to SMS texting to see if she could get better results.

The Results:

EZ Texting gave her the ability to alert brokers about exclusive listings before they released them to the public. This created a sense of urgency for the brokers on her list and made them feel like they were part of an exclusive club. 

Additionally, brokers enjoyed the ability to respond to the text messages they received. EZ Texting’s 2-way communication feature meant that Melissa could respond and create a conversation that wasn’t possible with the eFlyers she used previously.

9. Education Industry - Viking Cooking School

Viking Range Corporation is a leading home appliance company that operates cooking schools in 16 locations across the US. They wanted to create a couponing program for their students, and they needed to make a segmented list with a group for members, instructors, and staff. 

Within minutes, they had created an account with EZ Texting and had everything set up and ready to send their first message.

To kickstart signups, they sent a newsletter out to their mailing list that encouraged subscribers to text VIKING to 858585 to join their new mobile messaging list. After only three months, they had built their list up to 300 members. 

Students receive coupons and updates on classes with seats still left to fill. Instructors are sent messages to update them on changes in class schedules, additions, cancellations, or other important information. They can even send out urgent news and announcements to staff.

The Results:

Each week the school looks at their schedule and identifies classes that have open spots. They quickly send off a message to their subscribers to give them a chance to grab a spot.

After one of their recent texts went out, they were able to fill eight of the available spots — resulting in an additional $632 in revenue and only costing them $15 and a few minutes of their time.

Read the Complete Case Study: Click Here

10. Utilities Industry - Choptank Electric

Choptank Electric is a non-profit energy cooperative. They purchase power from another company, and they needed a way to alert their members of pricing fluctuations and peak hours. With this idea in mind, Beat the Peak was born. 

Beat the Peak is a program that their members can opt-in for. This program encourages them to conserve their energy usage during peak times and sends subscribers real-time alerts to remind them about peak hours. Choptank implemented EZ Texting’s web widget to allow members to sign up for the service online. 

The Results:

In the first two weeks after they launched their program, they had 156 members subscribe to receive SMS alerts. The program is expected to reduce their overall peak usage so they can pass the savings on to their members.

How to Implement SMS In Your Company

SMS mobile marketing can do amazing things for your marketing efforts and help you achieve the goals that really matter to you and your business. Build your list, start a drip campaign, send out real-time alerts and reminders, and even create SMS polls with EZ Texting’s SMS mobile marketing software. 

It’s easy to get started sending text messages to your contacts.

1. Create a Free Trial Account in as little as 5 minutes.
2. Upload your contact list.
3. Craft your first message.
4. Hit send.
5. Monitor your results.

Still not sure if text messaging is the right fit for your industry or your customers? Get the latest statistics on cellphone usage by downloading our 2019 Mobile Usage Report and see if you think you texting will work for you.

Photo: Unsplash/Charles Forerunner