10 Reasons Why You Need SMS Marketing While Dropshipping

Finding the right marketing channel to start with can be overwhelming. You obviously want to invest in strategies that bring fast results, have great ROI, and enable you to break through the noise while building meaningful customer relationships. 

Well, in this article, Lisa Popovici, co-founder of Cartloop, will show you why SMS marketing is the smartest way to reach, engage, and retain customers in the most human way possible. 

Investing in an SMS strategy from the early stages of your business, as soon as you start getting traffic and sales, will make you stand out from the crowd, build trust with your first customers and drive a lot of revenue. 

Why Use SMS Marketing for Your Dropshipping Store?

With 98% open rates, 45% reply rates, and 6-8x times higher engagement rates than email marketing, SMS marketing has become an essential part of ecommerce.

For example, in a recent study performed by us, we found out the main reasons people abandon their carts and how insights from conversational SMS marketing can help stores improve in this area. In only 7 days, a General Dropshipping Store went from $0 to $4.5K just from recovered carts.

Excited? Let’s go through 10 reasons why investing in an SMS marketing strategy from the very beginning might be one of the best decisions you’ll ever make for your ecommerce business.

10 Reasons Why SMS Marketing Is Perfect While Dropshipping

Are you ready to figure out why SMS marketing is the new email marketing for dropshipping stores?

1. The Evergreen SMS

SMS is the most simple and effective way of communication. Think of how many times you have used texts to pass some quick information, or you've received texts from either your bank or different platforms for password confirmation. 

Despite Social Media’s popularity, SMS remains the most widely used data application in the world, with 81% of mobile subscribers making use of it. Moreover, 4.2 billion people use their phones to text, and a staggering 23 billion text messages are being sent and received every minute! (Source)

2. Top Revenue Channel

Email marketing is no longer the most effective channel. Why?

90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes, but it takes 90 minutes or more to respond to an email. That means campaigns reach a high-volume audience with little effort. 

Moreover, as per Retail Dive, SMS engagement rates are six to eight times higher than email marketing engagement rates.

With the mass adoption of omnichannel marketing, customers are constantly flooded with emails, ads, screens full of forgotten apps, and controlling social media where privacy is no longer their choice.

It’s become more difficult for brands to pick their audience interest and maintain their loyalty. Unlike emails or apps, people hardly ever leave a text message unread.

3. 98% Open Rates

This is a no brainer. Picture this: you are going about your business when you hear a beep from your phone.

It could be anything - a social media notification, a low battery warning, or an email - but you have to confirm. If it's any of the three, you are more likely to cluck in annoyance, lock your phone.

But what if it’s a text? Chances are, you’ll open it. Why? Because SMS have a 98% open rate, according to Mobile Marketing Watch.

Compared with email’s mere 20% open rate, it's a foregone conclusion that your message stands way better chances of reaching your audience if it’s in text form.

This high open rate is a result of several things; key of which is that texts, unlike emails, do not go through ad blockers or spam filters. They are guaranteed to be almost always opened, and their content read through as they are more personal. 

Brands using conversational SMS marketing platforms leverage dynamic phone number allocation based on customer location. This way, customers feel more confident in replying to messages coming from a local number, rather than a short 4-digit number that can seem unreliable.

4. 45% Response Rates

A superior open rate equates to even better conversion rates. Getting a customer to open your marketing message is only one part of the bargain. Getting them to follow through is much harder.

The average person’s concentration span is 8 seconds, shorter than a goldfish’s, but more than enough time to read a text. The cap of 160 characters for SMSs makes it the perfect medium for short, concise, attention-snapping messages.

Considering that emails have a meager conversion rate of 3.2%, it does not hold a candle to SMS’ near 45%.

5. Over 20x Return on Investment

According to Statista, 72.9% of all retail e-commerce is expected to be generated via mobile commerce by the year 2021.

Compared with some other methods of advertising, for example, a Facebook ad spot, sending texts is way cheaper. This comes in handy for recently launched dropshipping stores that may not have that much budget to spend on advertising.

Kiehl’s Skin Care Products had 73% of their opt-in customers make a purchase following a product campaign launched through SMS. 

Have I given you enough motives yet to use SMS marketing for your dropshipping store? Either way, I got more! 

6. Over 29% More Recovered Carts 

Understanding the core issues of why people abandon their carts is key to adjusting the overall shopping experience, recovering more carts, closing more sales, and building long-lasting customer relationships. 

In a recent case study done by the analytics team at Cartloop, we tried to understand what causes cart abandonment for a General Dropshipping Store and how to fix it.

We learned that the main reasons why people abandoned their carts could be easily fixed through real-time conversations and quick adjustments on-site. The store went from $0 to $4.5K in recovered abandoned carts in only 7 days.

They integrated Cartloop’s human touch in their buying experience by texting and engaging with customers in real-time, answering all of their questions, taking care of their needs while encouraging them to complete their purchase with a sweet discount:

If you're interested in learning how to recover more abandoned carts with SMS marketing, then I suggest reading my other article here:

Recover 10x More Abandoned Carts With SMS Than Email

7. Less Competition

SMS Marketing is growing at a fast pace. 

Still, many companies aren’t taking full advantage. The latest SMS marketing statistics show 64% of consumers think businesses aren’t contacting them via text messages as much as they should. (Source)

Also, only 14% of companies text with consumers. (Source) There’s a huge opportunity few brands are taking advantage of to reach people in a space that isn’t yet overly crowded.

However, with the rapid development of marketing methods, and the saturation of traditional media, more businesses will be turning to SMS marketing. According to Rebrandly, SMS marketing grew by 92% for B2Cs and 197% for B2Bs from 2015 to 2017. 

If you think about it, it makes total sense. Customers don’t need to wait in line for tickets, live agents to be online, or email replies.

Brands can reach and engage with them in a matter of seconds, without pushing for a reply at a certain time. They can do it at their own convenience, SMS acting more like a direct push notification that won’t get lost in the inbox like email.

No wonder mobile is becoming the primary sales channel for merchants. If you start now you’ll be on the cutting edge.

8. Lowest Unsubscribe Rates

In the same case study done by the analytics team at Cartloop, the General Dropshipping Store gained 8.358 new phone subscribers via checkout from which only 2 unsubscribed.

According to Retail Dive, to achieve the lowest unsubscribe rates sending up to two messages per week during peak seasons and no more than four messages per month during non-peak seasons is optimal.

This is another reason why SMS marketing is the next big way to reach your customers, retain them, and build long-lasting relationships in the most human way possible.

9. Millennials Love Texting

From the moment they wake up until they go to sleep, millennials are on their phones. According to a recent study, 75% of millennials prefer SMS messages for deliveries, promotions, and surveys. With a couple of wise texts, brands can become millennials' best friends. 

This year, their spending in the US only is projected to grow to $1.4 trillion. That’s 30% of total retail sales. Millennials having a major economic impact and being the nation’s largest living generation gives brands one of the strongest reasons to connect with consumers through SMS marketing like never before.

10. Boosts Your Other Platforms

Texts can be the perfect gateway opener to your entire marketing strategy. Due to its fluidity, SMS offers you a unique chance to direct traffic to your site or social media platforms.

A study done by the NHS found that traffic to their new app increased by 20% exclusively from links sent in text messages.

Even if you wanted to widen your email subscriber list for a specific campaign, you could easily text your customers, informing them to jump on promotional codes and other offers via email.

The use of branded links helps in easing your client’s fears of potential scams. Clicking a shortened link is not always a good idea as it can lead you to phishing sites, but the use of shortened branded links helps offset that. 

SMSs have also proved to be invaluable in redeeming coupons. Consumers redeem SMS-delivered coupons 10 times more than other types of coupons. (Source)

By offering customers discounts or offers that can be redeemed through special links, you make them feel valued and cared for.

Here is an example of how that would look like:

Final Thoughts

Texts are a revolutionary yet functional way of reaching your customers or generating leads at any stage of your business. With mobile use at an all-time high, they will be even more important as time goes by and businesses adapt.

Brands and online stores are picking up on SMS marketing fast since the data and results are all too clear. Superior open and click-through rates that ensure favorable returns are just too promising to be overlooked.

The question now is, will you follow them with your dropshipping or not?

If you are interested now in SMS marketing to reach your customers better and faster, then you can click here to learn more about Cartloop, or you can schedule a demo call here. The pricing of Cartloop currently starts at $0. You only pay when you profit.