About 80% of Peace Out Skincare’s customers are shopping via mobile phone and online, said Erin Murray, vice president of brand and consumer marketing, who did not give exact figures. The brand’s SMS strategy is part of the plan to meet those shoppers there. Instead of hard sales, Peace Out Skincare is using the channel to offer early access to product launches, refill orders and cart recovery as well as reminding consumers of items in their online shopping cart, and nudging them to purchase. Peace Out also uses SMS marketing to roll out digital content that will direct traffic back to the brand website.

It makes for an opportunity for the brand to learn about shoppers and what they’re buying to inform overall marketing strategy, and create targeted marketing messages, Murray said, noting that the brand is pushing to diversify its ad spend away from traditional channels.

“We’ve been putting more paid efforts behind [diversification] versus putting all of our eggs in the paid social route because we know, as a consumer, you’re being fed a paid social ad on Instagram every two seconds. So how do we get more creative with our dollars?” Murray said.

SMS marketing is gaining popularity as brands look to move away from total reliance on Facebook and Instagram ads, and gain access to more first-party user data, said Duane Brown, founder of Take Some Risk, noting that SMS can be a complementary channel to email.

There’s also the fact that text message-based communication is an integral part of peoples’ everyday lives, according to Jamie Sutton, general manager at the e-commerce marketing automation platform Onmisend.

“Because they are opt-in channels, consumers actively look for and respond to messages,” Sutton said via email. “While social media is still a great marketing channel, promotions on these channels are not requested by users. This makes email and SMS appealing for both e-commerce brands and consumers.”

As shoppers slowly come out of the Covid-19 pandemic, they’ll be taking their mobile devices with them. Per Sutton, SMS marketing could prove to be “a major marketing tool to reach consumers where they are, rather than waiting on them to check their [email] inboxes.”

However, brands will need to be careful not to spam shoppers on their personal devices, warns Jason Marks, chief creative officer at Laundry Service agency.

“SMS is alive and thriving within the behavior set of our audiences, and generates an astronomical response rate,” Marks said in an email. “The problem is that brands are reluctant to give up their …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron