SMS drip campaigns are automated text messages sent to customers on a predetermined schedule. Drip campaigns enable businesses to predefine a sequence of messages they want to send. These texts can have specified time intervals between them. They will be automatically sent to individuals once they join the campaign. They can be used to drive engagement, increase conversions, and foster relationships with customers. SMS drip campaigns effectively communicate with your target audience without overloading them with too many messages at once.
Text drip campaigns are effective because they provide a way to engage with your customers personally. They allow businesses to target specific audiences and tailor their message to increase response rates. Several types of drip campaigns are used in SMS marketing, including welcome texts, retargeting campaigns, reminder messages, nurture campaigns, and promotional offers. This article will give us more information about drip marketing, its definitions, importance, types, and how it works.
What is an SMS Drip Campaign?
An SMS drip campaign is a sequence of automated messages sent to leads or customers to motivate a particular action. These messages are delivered according to a pre-set timetable that can be optimized for the best outcomes. Typically, the messages align with time-sensitive proposals or are triggered by specific user actions.
An example of using drip campaigns is when a business sends automated messages to new prospects who sign up through a form on the business’s website. Another useful application of automated drip sequences is sending appointment and event reminders to customers.
Zapier explains that irrigation methods inspire drip marketing. Like how a farmer or gardener nourishes their plants with a gradual feed over time, drip marketers use a similar approach to develop relationships with leads and customers through drip messages.
Although a “drip campaign” is typically associated with email outreach strategies, businesses increasingly use SMS to implement this marketing technique. Following the best practices listed below, you can enhance your outbound dialing efforts by using text message drip campaigns that effectively encourage your customers to convert.
How Does an SMS Drip Campaign Work?
An SMS drip campaign is a marketing strategy that sends pre-scheduled, automated text messages to subscribers over a specified period. An SMS drip campaign aims to nurture leads, engage with customers, and guide them through a predefined customer journey.
An SMS drip campaign involves multiple essential components. Businesses must divide their audience into groups based on demographics, interests, or past interactions. It helps send personalized messages and guarantees each subscriber gets appropriate content.
Then, businesses develop messages sent at scheduled times or activated by user interactions. These messages are designed to provide subscribers with useful information, promotions, updates, or notifications. The messages’ content is customized to match the campaign’s objectives, whether educating the audience, marketing products or services, or persuading specific actions.
Marketing automation tools or SMS service providers can help businesses manage and schedule SMS drip campaigns. Once set up, the campaign sends messages automatically according to a predefined schedule or triggered events. These tools often include personalization, message templates, and analytics that can improve the campaign’s effectiveness.
An SMS drip campaign aims to guide subscribers through a predetermined customer journey by delivering targeted messages encouraging specific actions. The campaign serves various purposes, like moving leads closer to making a purchase, upselling existing customers, offering valuable information, and re-engaging inactive subscribers. The ultimate goal is to build brand awareness, establish trust, and achieve desired actions with well-timed and strategic messages.
What is the Importance of SMS Drip Campaign?
Drip campaigns sent through SMS are essential components of modern marketing strategies. They allow businesses to systematically and automatically interact with and cultivate their audience over time. These campaigns provide various benefits and are used in diverse industries.
SMS drip campaigns use customized content to send targeted messages to specific groups of people. When used effectively, this approach can create a more personal connection with customers, encouraging them to take the desired action and leading to better conversions. It increases the likelihood of capturing attention and driving the desired outcome.
Text message drip campaigns allow businesses to send automated messages to subscribers at specific intervals or triggered by user actions. It provides subscribers timely and relevant information, guiding them through a predefined customer journey. The campaigns help businesses build a consistent brand experience, nurture leads, and drive customers toward conversion.
SMS drip campaigns enable businesses to maintain continuous communication with their subscribers, which helps in enhancing and maintaining relationships. By providing regular and valuable content, updates, offers, or reminders, businesses can ensure that their brand remains in the minds of their audience and encourage continued engagement. This recurrent interaction fosters trust and loyalty and helps establish a connection with the audience.
SMS drip campaigns can be beneficial for businesses in improving their conversion rates and generating revenue. These campaigns deliver targeted messages at the right time and in a strategic sequence. They can guide leads towards making a purchase, upsell to existing customers and re-engage with inactive subscribers.
What are the Types of SMS Drip Campaigns?
SMS drip campaigns come in various formats and fulfill different purposes. Depending on the goals of a business, they can use any automated text message sequence:
- Welcome Drip Campaigns – Send an automated welcome message to new customers or leads. These messages are typically sent when the user signs up and might include a coupon code or other promotional offer.
- Onboarding Campaigns – Also known as Education Drip Campaigns, these messages are designed to provide subscribers with helpful information about the business and its products and services.
- Sale Promotion Campaigns – Send automated messages to advertise special offers, discounts, or promotions.
- Event Reminder Campaigns – Send automated messages to remind subscribers about upcoming events or appointments.
- Loyalty Programs Campaigns – Send automated messages to reward loyal customers and incentivize them to purchase more products or services.
- Re-engagement Campaigns – Send automated messages to inactive subscribers to re-engage them.
What are the Benefits of SMS Drip Campaigns?
SMS drip campaigns provide many advantages to businesses, from increasing engagement and building brand awareness to promoting products and services. Here are some benefits of using SMS drip campaigns:
- Personalized and targeted communication – Businesses can use SMS drip campaigns to send customized messages to their audience based on criteria such as demographics, interests, or interactions. This targeted strategy improves message relevance and enhances the overall customer experience.
- Automated and consistent messaging – SMS drip campaigns allow businesses to send messages to subscribers based on set intervals or specific events. It maintains constant communication and eliminates the need to send messages, saving time and effort manually.
- Nurturing leads and guiding customers – SMS drip campaigns enable businesses to guide their audience through a predefined customer journey. Companies can nurture leads, provide valuable information, and drive customers toward specific actions or conversions by delivering messages over time.
- Enhanced customer engagement – SMS drip campaigns assist businesses in engaging with their audience consistently by providing timely and relevant messages. It helps to keep the brand top-of-mind and encourages customers to stay engaged, which boosts brand loyalty and customer retention.
- Scalability and Efficiency – Businesses can scale up their SMS drip campaigns quickly and efficiently. It allows them to reach larger audiences with minimal effort.
What are the Limitations of SMS Drip Campaigns?
Despite its benefits, SMS drip campaigns come with some limitations that businesses should be aware of before starting a campaign:
- Limited message length – The character limit for SMS messages is usually 160 characters per message, which can restrict how much information businesses can communicate. Thus, messaging must be clear and concise. However, it might only sometimes allow comprehensive content or intricate communication.
- Potential for message fatigue – Regularly sending messages to subscribers can lead to fatigue. Subscribers may lose interest or opt out of the campaign if they receive too many repetitive or irrelevant messages. To prevent fatigue, it is essential to balance message frequency and ensure that the messages are relevant and engaging.
- Opt-in and compliance requirements – Businesses must comply with regulations when sending SMS messages to maintain their reputation and avoid legal troubles. It involves obtaining consent from subscribers and providing opt-out options. Therefore, confirming that customers have opted in to receive messages before sending them is imperative.
- Timing challenges – Finding the best time to send messages in an SMS drip campaign can be tricky since subscribers may have different schedules and preferences. A balance must be achieved between sending messages conveniently and ensuring they are remembered and noticed.
- Unstable Network Coverage – The delivery of SMS messages depends on mobile network coverage. There may be delays or failures in message delivery in areas where the network coverage could be more robust or consistent. This reliance on network infrastructure can make it difficult to effectively reach the target audience, especially in remote or rural areas.
What are the Best Practices when Building an SMS Drip Campaign?
SMS drip campaigns are a feasible marketing strategy for businesses, but they must be planned and executed correctly to yield the desired results. Here are a few best practices to be followed when building an SMS drip campaign:
- Craft effective messages – Keep the content relevant and concise. Make sure that each message contains a value for the subscribers. It will ensure your messages stand out and engage your audience better.
- Ensure TCPA Compliance – Contact centers that utilize the SMS channel for outreach, like outbound dialing, must follow various state and federal laws. Failure to comply can result in severe consequences, such as costly fines or blocked messages. According to Eric J. Troutman of TCPA World, triggered text messages are currently the most secure communication method following the TCPA guidelines.
- Test your messages – Test different versions of each message before sending to ensure the texts are error-free and optimized for all devices. It helps increase engagement and improve customer experience.
- Increase Delivery Rates – Not everyone knows blocked calls affect contact rates and blocked text messages impact SMS delivery rates. To ensure successful campaigns, businesses must invest in third-party solutions that can help increase delivery rates.
- Segment Audiences – To improve the effectiveness of your text messaging drip campaigns, use specific details such as how leads discovered your product or services when they joined your list or the kind of content that motivated their subscription.
- Establish Clear Goals – Establish measurable, achievable, and realistic goals. Track the results of your campaign to determine if it is meeting its objectives and adjust accordingly.
- Analyze Results – Analyze the results of your SMS drip campaigns to understand what works best for your business. Use the insights you gain from analyzing your data to improve future campaigns and achieve better results.
How to Create an SMS Drip Campaign?
The steps in creating a text drip campaign vary according to your SMS marketing tools or platform. These are the basic steps to make a drip campaign using text messaging.
- Name Your Campaign – Creating a campaign name will help you keep track of and distinguish between the Drip Campaigns currently running on your platform. Please note that this campaign name or title will not be visible to the contacts who receive your messages.
- Connect With Your Segmented Audience – Send text messages to new contacts. You must connect a group or contact list to your campaign. It’s vital that the group is empty to start with so that only new contacts added will receive your messages according to the timeline you’ve set up. If you don’t have an appropriate group, you can create a new empty one.
- Draft and Review Your Content – Create the messages you want to send as part of your text drip campaign. Review them carefully before hitting the “send” button, and tweak them as needed if you’re targeting different audiences or sending multiple messages.
- Set Up Your Schedule – Set a schedule for when each message should be sent out. You can create a fixed schedule or send messages at specific intervals.
How Much Does It Take to Setup an SMS Drip Campaign?
The cost of setting up and running an SMS drip campaign depends on the service provider, marketing automation platform, and other factors. Generally speaking, the setup fee should cover everything from designing the template, creating and editing the messages, and scheduling. On average, setting up an SMS drip campaign can range from $0 to $20, depending on the features you need and your volume of messages.
How Effective Is an SMS Drip Campaign?
SMS drip campaigns are a powerful marketing tool that offers businesses several benefits, such as boosted customer engagement, increased brand awareness, and better customer loyalty. They can also help automate marketing processes and drive sales conversions. All these advantages make SMS drip campaigns an effective tool for businesses of all sizes.
Drip campaigns can be effective for businesses of any kind, regardless of what they are promoting. They offer a great way to keep your SMS list up-to-date and informed. Drip campaigns can improve your communication with your target audience, keeping them engaged and interested in your business.
Using Audience Segmentation Tools for Marketing Campaigns also helps ensure the effectiveness of your marketing drip campaigns.
What are Some Examples of SMS for SMS Drip Campaigns?
There are many use cases for SMS drip campaigns, and businesses widely use it for its effectiveness and convenience. Here are some examples of what your SMS drip campaigns could look like:
- Re-engagement campaign – Send a text reminder to customers when it’s time for their seasonal services. Offer them a small discount as an incentive to schedule their appointment.
Ex: Hello [CUSTOMER NAME], This is [COMPANY], and we have noticed that it’s time for your upcoming [SERVICE] appointment. Avail X% discount by signing up today using the link: [LINK].
- Limited Time Offer – Using this template, you can promote your business specials or discounts anytime. Add a link to your latest deals and encourage customers to save on their next service visit.
Ex: Dear [CUSTOMER NAME], this is [COMPANY]. We are contacting you about our ongoing specials this month, including a discount of X% on [PRODUCT/SERVICE]. Please click on [LINK] to learn how to avail yourself of these exciting offers.
- New Product Alert – Send a text when you launch a new product or service. This template works great for B2C businesses, as it can help create awareness and keep your customers updated on the latest releases.
Ex: Hi there! We just launched a new collection of products/services to serve you better. Visit our website now at [LINK] and avail the special offers on our latest releases.
- Welcome Campaign – If you want to start a relationship with your customers, this template will help create an excellent first impression. It can also work as an introduction message for new leads.
Ex: Hi there! Welcome to our family. We are glad to have you here and look forward to serving you better. Click on the link below to learn more about our company. [LINK]
Do you Need an SMS Platform for SMS Drip Campaigns?
Yes. SMS platforms with automated messaging capabilities are essential for creating and managing text drip campaigns. Automation allows you to create a series of messages that will be sent out at predetermined intervals. It also helps in tracking the progress of your campaign and analyzing results. SMS marketing platforms offer various features and services that make creating and managing campaigns easier for businesses. You can avail of packages for bulk SMS service, including Drip Campaign creation, automation, scheduler, analytics, and other features for a reasonable cost. Understanding What is SMS Application? What are the Best SMS Apps will give you a clearer view of the most suitable platforms for your needs.
Does SMS Drip Campaigns Work?
Yes. SMS drip campaigns are an effective marketing strategy that can be used to reach out to your customers regularly. They offer an excellent way for businesses to keep in touch with their target audience and re-engage them. SMS drip campaigns also allow you to track the progress of your campaigns, analyze results, and optimize strategies for better performance. In addition, automated text drip campaigns make managing your SMS marketing efforts easier and can help you save time and money. An SMS drip campaign can be a powerful business tool with the right approach.
Can SMS Drip Campaigns be Automated?
Yes. Automated drip campaigns make it easier for businesses to manage their SMS marketing efforts. With automated texting, you can set up triggers to send messages based on predetermined intervals or a fixed schedule. Automated drip campaigns can also help you track the progress of your campaigns and optimize strategies for better performance. Additionally, it saves time and money by automating many manual tasks related to sending out messages. With these features, automated SMS drip campaigns can be an effective business tool.
You can ensure that your campaigns are properly automated by understanding what is SMS marketing Automation and how it works for various industries.