A businessperson uses an affordable text marketing service on his smartphone with one hand and his laptop with the other.

Affordable Text Marketing for Any Company or Organization

Many companies perceive text marketing as being too expensive, but when you look at the potential ROI, you’ll find that text marketing can be extremely cost-effective. Here are some tips for finding affordable text marketing services to help you maximize your ROI.

How Affordable Is Text Marketing?

Text marketing used to be brushed aside as a fad or risky upstart, but it’s now dominating the digital marketing field. Customers overwhelmingly prefer text messaging over any other form of communication, and businesses are taking note. If you don’t want to be left behind, you need to consider adding SMS (text) marketing to your digital marketing strategy.

The price of most text marketing services will depend on how many total messages you send per month. Most providers offer tiered text marketing plans with a fixed number of messages you can send each month, and usually, the price per message decreases when you choose a high-volume plan.

For example, NorthText offers three tiered text marketing plans. Each plan includes the same great SMS marketing features and support—the only difference is the number of text messages you can send each month.

NorthText SMS Marketing software
NorthText Plan Name Basic Small Business Enterprise
Monthly Price $29 $99 $199
Monthly SMS Limit 1,000 4,000 10,000
Price Per Message $0.029 $0.024 $0.019

As you move up to each tier, you get a discount on how much you’re spending per text message. This allows your text marketing solution to scale up with your business while rewarding you for improving your marketing outreach and engagement.

Are you a small business just starting a new text message campaign without many subscribers? You may benefit from a custom fixed-price text marketing plan that allows you to send as many messages as you want to a limited number of subscribers.

The important thing to look out for as you shop for a text marketing plan is hidden fees and upcharges. Some providers charge extra for SMS keywords, for example, which can limit your ability to run an effective opt-in text marketing campaign.

At NorthText, we never surprise you with upcharges or hidden fees. All of our text marketing plans include unlimited SMS keywords.

A line and bar chart showing an upward trend of marketing statistics

Key Text Marketing Statistics

95% of text messages are read within 3 minutes, and the average response time is 90 seconds.

75% of consumers enjoy receiving special offers and discount codes via text message.

Text messages have a higher click-through rate (CTR) than Facebook and Google Adwords combined.

What’s Included in Your Text Marketing Plan?

Price isn’t the only factor to consider when you’re shopping for a text marketing plan. You want a feature-rich platform that gives you all the tools you need to craft an engaging and effective SMS marketing campaign.

Audience Segmentation

The most effective marketing campaigns are targeted to specific customer groups or demographics. You want your text marketing platform to allow for unlimited subscriber groups and to provide tools to help collect demographic information and automatically segment users.

Autoresponders

An autoresponder lets you automatically send text messages in response to certain triggers, such as an SMS keyword being texted to your phone number or a customer abandoning their shopping cart. Your text marketing provider should allow you to create customized autoresponders that fit your unique requirements and brand messaging.

Two-Way Communication

A text marketing campaign should provide your customers with a way to initiate a conversation with your organization. Your SMS marketing platform should allow for incoming text messages and empower two-way communication through the use of autoresponders and gateway integrations.

Multimedia Messaging (MMS)

One way to elevate your text marketing campaign is to add images and videos. With MMS, you can attach flyers, screenshots, photos, and video content to your text messages to grab your customers’ attention and make a lasting impression.

An entrepreneur celebrates after seeing how high her text marketing ROI is.

Cost-Effective SMS Marketing

Text marketing is very cost-effective because you don’t need to purchase anything else to get started. With a great text marketing platform, all the tools you need are already included. Plus, SMS marketing perfectly complements other mediums like email and social media, helping you round out your marketing strategy.

The relatively low cost of SMS marketing compared to the value of text message campaigns means your business could see a dramatic increase in your marketing ROI.

How to Create Text Marketing Campaigns That Maximize ROI

Hopefully, by now you’re convinced of how affordable text marketing can be and how adding it to your marketing strategy can increase your ROI. However, if you’ve never run a text marketing campaign before, you may need some help getting started. Here are some tips for creating the most cost-effective text marketing campaigns that maximize ROI.

An entrepreneur uses his smartphone and laptop to design a text marketing campaign

Grow Your Subscriber List

You could have the most powerful and effective messaging in the world, but if you don’t have any subscribers to send it to, it’s all for nothing. That’s why the first step of your text marketing strategy will be finding new subscribers. SMS marketing is permission-based, which means you’re legally required to get written consent from a customer before you can subscribe them to your campaign. This is typically done using an “opt-in”— your customer texts a pre-selected keyword to your phone number after reading and agreeing to your SMS marketing terms and conditions.

This may sound like a hassle, but it’s actually very easy because users are familiar with the process. Here are some suggestions for how and where to opt-in new subscribers.

Social Media – Tweet your CTA (call to action) and opt-in keyword to encourage your social media followers to join your mobile campaign.

Web Checkout – Add a checkbox to your e-commerce checkout page inviting customers to subscribe to your SMS marketing campaign.

Email Invite – Your email subscribers have already expressed interest in hearing from you, so invite them to join your text message list as well.

In-Store Checkout – When you ask customers to join your loyalty program at the register, include an option to subscribe to your text campaigns.

Target Your Audience

Tailoring your messages for your audience and targeting specific customers at the right stage of the sales funnel is crucial for an effective text marketing campaign. With the right SMS marketing platform, you can use data-driven audience segmentation to better understand your customers and give them a personalized experience. Here are some examples of segments you could create for your targeted text marketing campaigns.

Purchasing Behavior – Customers who keep coming back might appreciate an invitation to your loyalty or VIP program.

Engagement – Customers who routinely interact with your social media posts might enjoy more one-on-one interaction with a brand representative over SMS.

Age – Are certain products more popular with your younger customers? Tailor your product recommendation text messages to target that age group.

Your text marketing platform should help you collect the data you need to segment your audiences, for example, by providing SMS survey tools, or by integrating with your e-commerce or CRM software.

NorthText provides the industry’s best text message survey tools. Not only can you develop customized surveys with a variety of question types and track responses in our intuitive platform, but you can keep your surveys entirely within SMS. You don’t need to link to any third-party websites or apps, making it safer and more convenient for your customers to engage with your surveys.

A creative marketing team plans a text marketing campaign strategy

Get Creative

Text message marketing gives you a direct channel to communicate with your audience on a device they are already using. However, if you don’t use it wisely, you could risk annoying your customers with irrelevant or spammy content. You should make sure your SMS marketing campaign provides some value to your subscribers and accurately represents your brand image. Get creative, and use the expertise you have in your field and the in-depth knowledge you have of your customers to craft unique text marketing messages.

Tips and Tricks – Send a short, weekly message containing a helpful tip or interesting fact relating to your industry.

SMS-Only Discounts – Reward text subscribers with exclusive discount codes and pop-up sales.

Tailored Recommendations – Use your customer’s purchase history to make text recommendations for other products.

Customer Feedback – Automatically text customers after they make a purchase to ask for feedback on the experience.

Affordable and effective SMS marketing is closer than you think. When choosing a platform for your marketing campaign, keep your standards high and your dreams big.

Opt-in Text Services: Getting Started

NorthText provides affordable text marketing plans to fit any budget, along with all the features and support you need to maximize your ROI. Call or text us anytime at (312) 869-9070 or contact us online to get started.

Trusted by marketing professionals everywhere

Trusted by marketing professionals everywhere

Easy to use, fast results, great customer service.