For many SMS campaigns, where you are trying to entice your audience to buy or download something on a landing page, there are two tiers of success. The first occurs within the text message app, and it’s pretty straightforward. Simply look at the number or percentage of people who clicked on your link. If the number reaches your goals, part one of your campaign was a success.
However, businesses aren’t looking for clicks on their messages. They want conversions on their landing pages. Success on the landing page is sales, downloaded assets, appointments made, or any number of different activities. Which means that true success of your SMS campaign very often relies on the quality of your landing page and the customer experience.
Here are four tips to ensure that your landing pages contribute to the success of your marketing campaign.
Speed First
Before you think about your headlines or landing page content, think about your webhost and web developer. Users have enough patience to wait 2 seconds for your page to load. Once you reach the four second mark, 25% of your traffic has already abandoned you.
You can increase speed with a faster host, or by reducing the number of HTTP requests your page needs to make. If you are targeting an international audience, talk to your webhost about content delivery networks (CDN), which use local servers to deliver content all around the world.
You can test your website speed using a number of online tools, including pingdom.
Mobile First World
In an SMS campaign, your web traffic is almost entirely coming through a mobile device. If you’re relying on a responsive web site that contains the same information as your desktop version, you’ve already lost much of your audience. Mobile visitors browse differently than those on desktops. A ringing phone, interesting text message, or notification that a treat is ready in Candy Crush could be all it takes to pull users off your site.
Messaging needs to be adapted for a mobile audience. Shorter text blocks and videos are the types of content pieces mobile users prefer. If you want to convert on mobile, you have to cater to your mobile audience.
Aligned Content
Businesses all over the world struggle with this one. If your message offers a lodge ski vacation in Colorado, don’t send your audience to your home page with a dozen different lodge ski vacations that you are offering.
Instead, create a dedicated landing page where your audience can quickly and easily find the information you promised. Your headline should mirror the offer in the SMS message, and the clickable assets should be limited to things like download a brochure or book your reservation.
Ditch the Form – Go with the Chatbot
Forms are hard to navigate on mobile. Even mobile-friendly forms require users to click in and out of fields. Often times users click next to go into the next field and they aren’t sure what information needs to be added into the new field.
Chatbots, on the other hand, use mobile-friendly tools like chat to retrieve the same information. A chatbot can ask for a name, contact information, and purpose for your visit. The chatbot can then direct users to download an asset, or direct them to the information they want.
SMS Campaigns are Part of a Bigger Program
At MessageWhiz we’ve always understood that your SMS marketing campaigns fit within a bigger marketing program. Talk to our SMS experts, and find out how SMS messages can deliver the marketing results that you need.
