By John Wright, CEO of TrueDialog. TrueDialog were finalists in the ‘Best Use of AI in Telecoms, Unified Communications / Conferencing‘ category at The 2024 A.I. Awards.

We’re living in a golden age of business communication.

While marketers in past decades had only a few channels available to connect with customers, they now have a vast array at their fingertips. Imagine what a marketer from 1980 or a sales rep from 2002 would’ve thought about the new digital landscape with options like video meetings, text messaging, social media, Google search, instant messaging, and chatbots, to name a few modern marketing channels.

Technological advances like AI and machine learning are doing more than simply increasing the number of channels available. They’re making it more effective to use them than ever before. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, automation tools now make it easier to manage ten channels than it was for businesses in the past to manage just a couple of channels.

For example, consider a sales rep in 1998 who worked at a company that relied on outbound calls. Day after day, she’d spend hours dialing numbers and desperately hoping for someone to pick up the phone. The work would be tedious, and, given its manual nature, she couldn’t multitask much.

Compare that scenario to a modern sales rep who can compose a single SMS message and then schedule it to be sent to thousands of individuals at the optimal time based on their geographical location and other factors. Within mere moments, she could set up the automation and move on to other important tasks.

Boosted by new tools like these, you can do much more than merely schedule your message sends. Multistep campaigns, omnichannel sequences, and sophisticated workflows can all be managed effortlessly with the right technology solution.

Communication Challenges Still Exist

Even golden ages have their limitations, and modern businesses still face obstacles when it comes to reaching the right people at the right time. This is especially true for legacy channels like phone calls and email. By the way, if you’re thinking that email isn’t old enough to be considered a legacy channel, it’s important to note that the first email was actually sent in the 1970s during the Nixon administration.

When it comes to phone calls, it’s harder than ever to find the best phone number because people might have a cellphone, deskline, and office number. Things only get trickier when you consider that many people change their jobs every few years. And many phones now have features that automatically silence calls from unknown numbers.

Speaking of unknown numbers, the rise of scams and other threats means people are getting more averse to taking calls from people they don’t know (hence the feature). Americans get billions of spam calls each year, which helps explain why the vast majority of cold calls go unanswered.

With emails, the issues often come down to the sheer volume of messages we receive. Hundreds of billions of emails are sent daily, meaning that users’ inboxes are overstuffed with messages. This helps explain why open rates are so low, and response rates are even lower.

Simply reaching a person’s inbox might be considered a win, given that email providers are tightening their filters and directing more messages straight to spam folders. Google and Yahoo have also tightened their rules for bulk email senders, meaning your ability to message at scale can be threatened if you don’t fulfill all the requirements.

SMS is an Innovative Solution for Modern Businesses

With features that transcend many of the challenges facing phone calls, emails, and other communication channels, text messaging has emerged as a leading sales/marketing channel for modern marketers. Let’s look at 10 reasons why SMS is so impactful for your marketing efforts:

1) Higher Open and Response Rates

Even the world’s best marketing messages are obsolete when unopened. Thankfully, text messages boast significantly higher open rates than emails, with most being read within minutes of receipt.

How does SMS enjoy this industry-leading performance when many other channels struggle to get results? There are lots of reasons, but it often comes down to preference. Most people have phones and keep them with them throughout the day, making it highly convenient to read and reply to text messages. You’ll always get better results by meeting your customers where they are rather than trying to convince them to engage with you on a less convenient channel.

2) Direct and Personal

Modern consumers want more than just generic transactions… they crave personal connections with businesses. Brands must understand their customers’ unique preferences and deliver a tailored experience. What happens if you don’t meet that expectation? Customers who don’t feel understood will simply take their business elsewhere.

While emails and social media messages often appear to be written for the masses, text messaging is more personal and direct. It allows marketers to engage with customers one-on-one, fostering a sense of intimacy and trust.

This personalization is an increasingly powerful factor in marketing campaigns. Businesses that use personalization often bring in 40% more revenue than those that don’t incorporate it. Needless to say, your efforts will always be rewarded.

3) Better Deliverability

Many marketing messages get blocked long before they even reach their destination because the spam filters used by email providers consume messages before recipients even know they exist. More recently, new bulk email rules from the big email providers like Google and Yahoo have sometimes shut down legitimate campaigns.

Like email providers, phone carriers also use spam filters to protect customers from unwanted messages. However, SMS texts consistently get higher deliverability rates than email, thanks to two distinct advantages. First, the protocols are simpler than email protocols, and the nature of a text message is direct-to-device. Second, most SMS senders are required to be registered with The Campaign Registry (TCR), ensuring that carriers recognize them as legitimate senders.

4) Immediate Delivery

Timeliness is crucial for effective marketing campaigns. Text messages are an ideal solution because they’re delivered almost instantaneously, allowing you to respond to events occurring in your customers’ lives. Examples of timely text messages include:

• Subscribing to your newsletter
• Requesting a demo of your product
• Completing a purchase
• Post-meeting feedback
• Registration for events like trade shows or sporting events
• Geographical alerts like extreme weather

With rapid delivery and quick responses, SMS gives you a real-time communication channel. The resulting timeliness and relevance make it ideal for light touch messages. Checking in with customers doesn’t feel intrusive when the message arrives at the right moment and in the most convenient way.

5) Higher Engagement Rates

Regardless of the communication channel and message content, user engagement is nearly always one of the critical goals. However, legacy channels like email and phone calls and newer channels like social media and instant messaging often deliver less-than-stellar engagement rates.

The concise nature of texts makes them quick to read and easy to respond to, leading to higher engagement rates. Text messages have an average open rate of 98%, but what happens next is just as important. Consider these stats:

• 19% click-through rate
• 90% of recipients respond within 30 minutes
• 51% of recipients report being more likely to make a purchase

You’ll be more likely to hit your marketing goals when your messages deliver these kinds of reactions. For this reason, SMS is a crucial part of modern marketing campaigns.

6) Opt-in Nature

One of the important factors driving the higher engagement of text messages is buy-in from recipients. Most text marketing requires explicit opt-in from recipients, ensuring the audience is more receptive to messages. Unsurprisingly, people respond much better to content they have previously requested than to a cold campaign delivered via email or phone.

Here are some tips to improve your opt-in results:

• Offer something relevant and of real value
• Be clear about what people are opting into
• Be clear about how people can opt out
• Make the opt-in process simple

Right out of the gate, the opt-in approach is helpful because it establishes a relationship with the recipient. They’ll know more about who you are and what you’re about. This connection can lead to higher-quality leads and better conversion rates.

7) Less Competition

While most businesses hit the phones and send emails regularly, SMS remains a relatively less saturated channel. SMS messages are not crowded out by many other unwanted messages, like our email inboxes.

A primary marketing objective is to stand out from the competition, which is easier within the more selective world of SMS. You’ll be better positioned to capture people’s attention and develop that engagement.

8) Mobile-First Approach

Smartphone ownership has skyrocketed in the past decade, and this monumental shift has changed how people interact with businesses and marketing content. Simply stand in line at the grocery store or ride a subway, and you’ll notice that most people are voraciously consuming content on their smartphones throughout the day.

As marketers, we need to meet people where they are. And it’s clear that modern consumers spend most of their time on their smartphones, not desktop computers. This helps explain why SMS, among the most mobile-friendly channels, aligns perfectly with the mobile-first trend.

Reaching people where they already are makes it easier for them to read your messages and respond. You’re asking less from them and delivering more for them.

9) Integration with Other Channels

No communication channel is an island. Effective marketing campaigns will always use an omnichannel approach, reinforcing and amplifying your message via different channels your audience prefers.

Text messaging can be easily integrated with other marketing channels, such as social media or email campaigns, creating a cohesive omnichannel marketing strategy.

For example, you could promote your latest product launch on social media, where the ease of sharing content can help boost the viral nature of your post. After people click on the link within the post to learn more, you could invite them to text you a number to receive a special discount on this new product. Once they’ve responded, you can tell them about all the great content you’ll be sharing in the future and invite them to opt into your SMS messages.

10) Cost Effective

If you’re serious about scaling your marketing efforts, each element must carry its weight and help you stick to your budget. Fortunately, SMS is one of the most cost-effective strategies, usually besting traditional marketing methods like direct mail or print advertising.

Not only are your costs lower from the onset, but the higher engagement rates and better conversion potential increase the value even further. On average, you’ll get a return of $71 for every dollar invested in your SMS marketing.

See What the Power of SMS Can Do for Your Business

Elevating SMS with AI-powered tools is taking this era of business communications to a whole new level. By leveraging text messaging as a primary marketing channel, businesses can overcome modern challenges such as tighter email regulations, call-blocking smartphone features, and the decline of cold calling. This shift allows marketers to adapt to changing consumer preferences and technological landscapes, ensuring their messages continue to reach and resonate with their target audience.

So, how will you use text messages for your next marketing campaign? By marrying this channel’s benefits with your brand’s unique strengths, you’ll be able to strengthen connections with your followers. And those connections are essential for driving conversions and developing loyalty.