07776 103 785 john@makesportfun.com

Remember text messages? SMS? That old-school way of texting people before the i-message, Facebook and Whatsapp?

Don’t worry, most other people have forgotten all about them too! Did you know that 98% of all text messages are read and, although most people don’t like to admit it, 90% of those messages are read within 3 seconds of receiving!

It’s no secret that consumers and marketers today love email. But with an open rate of 98 percent, according to Mobile Marketing Watch, SMS messages can give email some serious competition.

They work for everyone (even without a smartphone)

SMS, or Short Message Service, utilizes the text messaging functionality of a mobile device and can reach anyone with a phone that has texting capabilities. SMS messages consist of 160 characters with standard messaging rates. Because we’re all so connected to our phones today, SMS makes reaching customers quick and easy.

Online Marketing

Make Sport Fun specializes in engaging people in different healthy and fun activities through online advertisement and social media. We’ve mentioned our 2-step-process many times in the past (if you want to read more about it – click here).

Here’s a quick summary of this process. Our approach to social media advertising is using Facebook Lead Ads. Facebook Lead Ads makes it easy for people to register.

The way Lead Ads works is that people just have to click sign up, and they’re shown a pop-up form on Facebook. The name and email address fields in the form are pre-populated, as Facebook already knows those details. Then all they have to do is click submit. That’s it!

But this is just step 1 of the 2-step process.

We have driven enquiries, but what do we do now?

Step 2 of the 2-step process is the most important one – Following up!

After someone registers for an activity – we have to make sure they get the right info as soon as possible.

In the past, we’ve normally used Email automation, and it worked pretty well.

The problem with sending emails is that people don’t check their emails that often, and open rates are often 30% or lower. If you called people that would work, but you and I don’t have time to call everyone.

Introducing SMS reminders

In 2017 we decided to test a different approach. Instead of using only confirmation emails we’ve introduced confirmation SMS messages.

The results were extraordinary.

SMS messages have proven to be a great success as sending SMS reminders simplifies communication. All relevant info gets delivered and read almost instantly. People generally can’t ignore their phones, which is often not the case with their emails.

Around 90% of people are replying and we’ve received a lot of positive feedback for our quick and on point instructions.

This has led to much higher conversion rates from sign up to people attending activities.

We are using BurstSMS, but there are a lot of online tools and software that can be used.

The future of SMS and text
messaging is customer engagement and conversion.

While there are certainly other methods of mass communication,
the text message is comfortable, versatile, and powerful. While some may
predict SMS to wane in popularity over the years, tech experts strongly believe
there’s a bright future ahead.

Want to sign up for our free online workshop – How to Engage Inactive People? Learn how Facebook Ads can allow you to engage inactive people from your target audience.