What Is the Best App for Shopify Text Marketing?

What Is SMS Marketing & How Does It Work?

Text Marketing Defined

SMS marketing — also known as text marketing — is a form of advertising that utilizes text messages for ad campaigns. Put simply, it’s the practice of sending text messages to current or prospective customers who have explicitly agreed to receive this type of message from your business or organization.

SMS Text Feels & Goals

According to the Pew Research Center, 97% of adults in the U.S. own a cell phone. With this in mind, it’s not hard to understand how SMS marketing boasts an unrivaled 98% open rate. But, how do customers feel about receiving these messages? Well, the 2022 Consumer Texting Behavior Report conducted by EZ Texting measured consumer attitudes, behaviors, and preferences with respect to text messaging. Consumers, 64% to be precise, feel curious when they receive a new text message, followed by happy (27%) and excited (23%). These statistics display the powerful reach that text marketing can have, including increased engagement opportunities.

SMS marketing typically aims to achieve one of three distinct goals, which are:

• Selling: Through the use of promotional messages, businesses can encourage their audience to make a purchase.
• Educating: Businesses often utilize the SMS marketing channel to educate their audience about specific products or services.
• Promoting brand loyalty: SMS marketing allows businesses to create a more personalized connection with customers, which encourages brand loyalty.

Consent & Opting In

One key distinction about SMS marketing that’s important for business owners to be aware of is its legal requirements. Customers who receive SMS messages from your business must opt in, explicitly consenting to receive text messages from the specific sender. For this reason, it’s essential to have systems in place that make it easier for customers and prospective customers to subscribe to receive SMS messages from your business.

How SMS Marketing Can Help Your Shopify Store

Adding SMS marketing to your marketing toolbox can help your Shopify store in several ways. Understanding the benefits of SMS marketing for small businesses — and the positive impact that it can have on your Shopify business — can make it easier to take the leap and try the practice out for yourself. Let’s run through a couple of the main advantages SMS marketing can bring to your Shopify business.

Increasing Engagement

On your journey as a Shopify store owner, you’ve likely dabbled in a variety of approaches to increase customer engagement. One that you’ve most likely tried is marketing your Shopify store in one form or another, likely through email or social media channels. If you would like to boost your engagement, SMS is an effective channel to add to your existing marketing strategy. If you have not had any success through your current marketing approach, SMS can not only breathe new life into your campaigns, it can complement the other channels in a way that bolsters your engagement across the board.

SMS marketing campaigns can strongly encourage your customers and prospective customers to engage with your Shopify store. As SMS Comparison notes, 95% of all text messages are read and responded to within three minutes. Since this is the case, you as a Shopify business owner can potentially interact with 95% of the customers who have agreed to receive SMS communications from your store at any time. As such, you’ll have an increased chance of customer engagement with your Shopify store.

Providing Unparalleled Convenience

Unlike other marketing channels, SMS has the unique ability to communicate quickly and directly to the device that most people are actively engaged with, providing a speed and ease other channels do not achieve. This unique ability to reach customers quickly, often in real time, makes this form of marketing perfect for communicating crucial last-minute updates, notifications, and promotions. This ability to reach customers quickly and easily provides the level of convenience that most modern consumers crave. It also builds a connection between the brand and the customer, one that consumers come to rely upon, appreciate, and feel loyalty toward.

Creating a More Personalized Connection

As a Shopify business owner, you know the importance of creating and maintaining a connection with your customers. The more personalized this connection is, the more likely customers are to be loyal to your brand. It’s important for you, as a business owner, to explore different avenues to achieve a deeper, more powerful connection with your customers.

SMS marketing is a potent way to encourage your customers to engage with your business and experience a deeper sense of connection. SMS marketing is a marketing channel that allows you to personalize communications with your customers and give them the impression that your business is interested in fostering a meaningful relationship with them.

Being able to communicate with your customers no matter where they are is one of the most enticing benefits associated with SMS marketing. Texting is a more personal form of communication that people often associate with those they care about or which are especially important to their lives, and that includes brands. For this reason, text marketing communications often feel more like communication with a friend than a marketing campaign.

Creating a strong connection between your customers and your Shopify store is an important part of building your brand. The more loyal customers you have, the more recurring sales you’ll have as customers make repeat purchases based on not only the product or service being offered, but the overall customer experience.

Why Does SMS Work So Well with Shopify?

Shopify has a feature that allows Shopify store owners to ask each customer for text message marketing consent automatically upon check out. This Shopify feature automates the process of gaining consent from your customers, giving you more time to focus on other aspects of your business. This text consent feature brings the dual value of convenience and compliance Remember, gaining this consent is not just about being courteous, it’s the law.

Though SMS marketing requires the extra step of receiving consent from customers, SMS marketing campaigns can be more effective for this very reason. Rather than pouring resources into broader marketing campaigns that aim to reach a wide variety of people (who may or may not be interested in your products), SMS marketing campaigns are all about focusing your efforts directly toward existing customers and qualified leads, or those who are likely to purchase products from your Shopify store.

Top 4 SMS Apps for Shopify Text Marketing Success

When it comes to Shopify and text marketing, you’ve probably discovered there is a variety of SMS apps on the market. While some are integrated directly into Shopify, others utilize intermediary software such as Zapier to achieve the same results. Each SMS provider boasts unique features and knowing which SMS app is dependent on your specific business type and goals. To identify which SMS app best aligns with your Shopify store’s needs, here is an overview of the top four contenders.

EZ Texting

Boasting an impressive client lineup with successful organizations such as Ikea, Goodwill, and Crunch Fitness utilizing their services, EZ Texting is one of the premiere SMS marketing providers and pioneers. Their motto “send smarter,” speaks to the brand’s ethos of converting customers by using simple, yet effective strategies to connect with their target audience.

EZ Texting offers several SMS-related services such as SMS marketing services, SMS HR and employee operations services, and SMS customer support services. In addition, EZ Texting offers Two-Way SMS messaging which allows you to communicate directly with your customers. Though not directly integrated into the Shopify store, EZ Texting utilizes Zapier software to function in tandem with Shopify. The result is a fantastic experience across both the SMS app and Shopify.

Pros:

• No-risk free trial allows you to test the service for free without a commitment
• Two-Way Texting allows real-time interaction with your customers>/li>
• Optimized for both reminder and drip campaigns

FirePush

FirePush is a marketing automation platform that includes three distinct marketing channel services. These include SMS marketing, email marketing, and web push. What makes FirePush distinct is its focus on making it as easy as possible for you to navigate and maintain all three marketing channels on one user-friendly platform.

In addition, FirePush puts a focus on its Shopify integration, creating a platform that makes it easy to automate marketing efforts for your Shopify store. FirePush also offers you the ability to create and utilize a sender ID, saving precious characters in your limited-character count messages.

Pros:

• Three different marketing channels on one platform
• Easy-to-use platform
• Quick set-up for Shopify integration

Postscript

Postscript is an SMS marketing service that advertises itself as the, “SMS marketing platform built for Shopify brands.” Postscript emphasizes its ability to not only help you craft an SMS marketing campaign, but also grow your SMS subscriber base.

In addition to its emphasis on growing your SMS subscriber base, Postscript offers some unique features. One such feature is QR codes that can be placed on your product’s packaging, allowing customers to opt-in to receive SMS marketing messages directly from your store. Another is that they allow for narrow segmentation of your customers base for more precise targeting.

Pros:

• Emphasis on growing your subscriber list
• QR code creation for packaging
• Allows narrow segmentation of customer base

SMSBump

SMSBump is a text marketing service that focuses on Shopify store integrations. The company offers a range of SMS marketing services, such as automated texts for customers who leave items in their shopping carts and SMS marketing planners.

In addition to its automation features, SMSBump also allows you to craft settings around when texts are sent, allowing you to optimize for the best time of day across different time zones. For those who enjoy adding a little more spice to their marketing campaigns, SMSBump features GIPHY and Pexels integrations, which allow you to add videos to your SMS marketing campaigns.

Pros:

• Offers many automation features
• Can be optimized across time zones
• Allows video integration into SMS messages

Grow Your Shopify Store with SMS Marketing

SMS marketing is a potent marketing channel to help you connect with your customers and grow your Shopify store. Through the utilization of this marketing channel, you can craft a relationship with your customers that keeps them loyal to your brand.

If you’re serious about growing your Shopify store, watch our video tour for more information, and then sign up for our free trial to experience it for yourself.