Free and paid SMS marketing: which solution to choose for your mobile campaigns?
90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes of receipt. With a total read rate of 95%, SMS is a genuine communication tool that is both inexpensive and highly effective. SMS marketing, also known as " Push SMS ", enables any company to automatically send mass messages to customers and prospects at low cost.
Are you looking for a free solution to send SMS marketing messages and boost your marketing campaigns? Here's a look at which SMS sending platforms will give you the best results.
5 steps to a successful SMS marketing campaign
To make your SMS marketing campaign a success, here are the steps and best practices to follow:
1. Define the goal of your SMS campaign
First, you need to determine the objective of your SMS campaign. Do you want to generate new leads? Boost your sales? Communicate your new offer? Retain or recontact your customers?
Based on your initial objective, you'll define the content of your SMS and the actions to be taken to achieve your goal.
2. Import and segment your customer database
Once you've imported your contact data, mobile marketing lets you segment your database according tovarious characteristics:
- location
- age, language
- language,
- buying habits
- etc.
You'll be able to better target your audience and fine-tune your SMS marketing campaigns.
3. Personalize your SMS content
Segmenting your contact base will then enable you to tailor your message to the characteristics of your different targets. Between SMS media and text messages, you can add value according to your customers' specific needs and expectations.
4. Send mass or individual SMS messages via the Internet
Once your contact groups and messages are ready, you can start sending SMS messages either en masse, to target as many contacts as you like, or individually, to automate sending to a given person at a given time.
5. Analyze your campaign performance
Finally, analyze the performance of your SMS mailing using the various performance indicators:
- deliverability rate,
- open rate
- conversion rate,
- unsubscribe rate.
What free SMS marketing tools are there?
SMS marketing is a high-transformation channel, with a low investment and a high rate of return. As such, it's an e-commerce marketing solution that doesn't cost much up front.
You'll be hard-pressed to find a free, or freemium, SMS marketing tool. On the other hand, most SMS solutions for professionals offer a certain number of free SMS messages to test their services (sometimes up to 100 free SMS messages).
So you'll have no choice but to turn to a professional SMS platform, which will also offer you a host of features to manage your SMS marketing campaigns from start to finish.
Professional solutions for your SMS campaigns
As tracking techniques are more limited in SMS marketing (compared to e-mailing), it's essential to send your commercial SMS messages using an SMS platform that manages acknowledgements of receipt and unsubscriptions ("STOP" SMS).
Here are 6 of the best business SMS tools available on the market today.
AllMySMS
AllMySms is your ally for multi-channel marketing automation campaigns , whatever the volume. The solution offers all the functionalities associated with SMS marketing: SMS, voicemail messages on answering machines, transactional SMS (notifications), mail-to-SMS, etc.
AllMySms is offered at a single price, regardless of the number of features added. Only the number of SMS messages counts. The tool also integrates API connectors with Salesforce and Zapier, for example.
allmysms
Digitaleo
Digitaleo is an SMS marketing solution designed specifically for retailers and e-tailers. It offers over 500 templates for your marketing communications. Your contact base (or one you can rent) is intuitively segmented for precise targeting.
Digitaleo also features an integrated marketing assistant for relaunching on special occasions (Christmas, Mother's and Father's Day, Valentine's Day, etc.). It only takes a few minutes to launch an effective SMS marketing campaign!
Digitaleo
iSendPro Telecom
Implement marketing and transactional strategies with this powerful platform. In addition to SMS marketing functionalities, powerful routing maximizes the deliverability of your SMS messages.
iSend Pro Telecom includes value-added tools for your SMS messages (at no extra cost): link insertion, dispatch planning, publication on social networks, for example. The tool is 100% French; your data is hosted and secured in France.
iSend Pro Telecom
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is more than a professional SMS solution, it's a complete digital marketing platform (multi-channel campaign creation, search engine marketing, emailing, etc.). It includes Mobile Studio, a complete service dedicated to SMS.
With Mobile Studio, you can create and send perfectly targeted messages in just a few clicks, using customized templates. And thanks to analytics, send your SMS messages at the most opportune moment, to enhance the customer experience and the act of purchasing.
Marketing Cloud
SMS Sending
Published by Commify, SMS Envoi is ideal for managing your SMS marketing campaigns, whatever your business. This solution has the advantage of being feature-rich (bulk messages, content library, database rental, segmentation, etc.), intuitive and competitively priced.
What's more, you can use SMS Envoi either directly from the platform, or via APIs that connect it to your tools.
Last but not least, benefit from Commify's high quality support, including a dedicated contact person.
Twilio Messaging
Twilio Messaging is a full-featured SMS marketing software package: text messaging, SMS templates and media messages, personalized messages and more. You'll also benefit from an alphanumeric sender name, rather than a generic phone number, for your promotional SMS messages.
Communicate more effectively with your prospects thanks to integrated webmail and instant messaging modules. And to top it all off, the solution is quick to set up, thanks to the many help and tutorial sheets available online!
Twilio Messaging
Comparative summary table
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| allmysms | Digitaleo | iSend Pro Telecom | Marketing Cloud | Twilio Messaging |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| For companies with more than 1 employees | For companies with 2 to 5000 employees | For companies with 2 to 5000 employees | For companies with 2 to 250 employees | For all companies |
| See software | See software | See software | See software | See software |
| Learn more about allmysms | Learn more about Digitaleo | Learn more about iSend Pro Telecom | Learn more about Marketing Cloud | Learn more about Twilio Messaging |
Mailing management comparison |
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AllMySMS |
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Digitaleo |
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iSendPro |
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Twilio Messaging |
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Contact management comparison |
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AllMySMS |
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Digitaleo |
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iSendPro |
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Twilio Messaging |
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Advanced features comparison |
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AllMySMS |
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Digitaleo |
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iSendPro |
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Twilio Messaging |
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API comparison |
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AllMySMS |
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Digitaleo |
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iSendPro |
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Twilio Messaging |
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Support comparison |
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AllMySms |
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Digitaleo |
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iSendPro |
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Twilio Messaging |
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Price comparison |
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| Digitaleo |
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| Twilio Messaging |
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Comparison of the number of free SMS messages |
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AllMySms |
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Digitaleo |
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iSendPro |
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Twilio Messaging |
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Conclusion
SMS Marketing is an excellent option for any company wishing to move away from "traditional" Direct Marketing techniques (postal mailing), which are no longer really satisfactory. SMS mailing is not only an innovative and effective communication solution, it's also very inexpensive. But it's important to prepare your SMS campaign well in advance to guarantee the success of your actions.
To do this, you can rely on professional bulk SMS software such as AllMySms, Digitaleo, iSendPro and Twilio Messaging to help you boost your efficiency and ROI (return on investment).
Article translated from French