In terms of personalization potential and engagement, SMS marketing remains a largely underappreciated strategy among marketers.
But could artificial intelligence take SMS marketing to a new level?
There’s little doubt that SMS marketing is one of the most effective strategies to reach customers in terms of open rate.
While email marketing campaigns carry an average open rate of 20%, 98% of SMS messages are read by the recipient, making it an excellent way to get your message across effectively.
However, with such a comprehensive open rate, it’s essential that you make sure that your communications to leads and prospects strike the right chord every time.
After all, if your messages are being read more frequently, they’ll be more likely to face customer scrutiny each time you appear on their cellphone.
Global AI marketing revenue is expected to surpass $107.5 billion by 2028 and will help more business decision-makers to level up their lead acquisition as the technology continues to mature.
The emergence of artificial intelligence will have a significant impact on SMS marketing strategies for small businesses and large enterprises alike.
With this in mind, let’s explore five ways the future of AI SMS marketing can shape customer sentiment:
1. Powered-Up Personalization
Because SMS marketing means that your communications are being placed directly under the noses of your leads, a generalized message simply won’t cut it.
Thankfully, artificial intelligence paves the way for far more focused personalization by leaning on data analytics to segment and target audiences solely through the most relevant content.
Additionally, machine learning (ML) algorithms can anticipate behavior while assessing preferences for certain products and services for better targeting.
As a result, businesses can introduce more engaging content, offers, and campaigns overall, helping to boost conversion rates and support higher levels of brand loyalty.
By anticipating the needs of users, SMS marketing can also help to allow customers to feel more valued and build a closer connection to the brand, as a result, boosting retention rates.
2. Next-Level Optimization
The right SMS marketing tools can not only assist you in using customer data to shape your campaigns, but they can also help you to refine your techniques and make use of real-time optimization to ensure your customers receive every message positively.
One way this is achieved is through A/B testing, where artificial intelligence tools can automatically choose and apply what performs best for each customer segment based on their determined preferences and demographics.
This real-time testing environment ensures that all customers receive the message that will most likely trigger a positive action, not only helping to improve conversion rates but also minimizing the risk of a recipient unsubscribing from your messaging list as a result of an unengaging notification.
3. Always-On Integrations
Integrations with major shopping platforms can also help to streamline your SMS campaigns at scale.
For instance, Wix SMS marketing platforms like Omnisend can work alongside your online store to automatically send SMS notifications to customers for cart abandonment, bookings, and promotional campaigns.
These integrations can also maximize your sign-up potential through customizable pop-ups and forms, helping to level up your campaigns and grow your SMS leads.
4. Fine-Tuning Deliveries
One of the most important tasks that AI can assist with for your SMS marketing campaigns focuses on finding the ideal time to send your content to customers.
With as many as 81% of consumers checking their text messages within five minutes of receiving them, your marketing materials must be distributed at the best possible time to be opened.
Artificial intelligence can help by determining when each individual customer is most likely to engage with messages.
By using ML to analyze past interaction patterns, AI tools can automatically distribute SMS messages to customers at a time when they historically spend more time interacting with the business.
Different customers have varying work patterns, and some may like to interact with brands on their lunch breaks, while others could be more active in the evening.
By taking the guesswork out of when to reach customers, it’s easier for marketers to appeal directly to different customer segments.
5. Working with Chatbots
SMS marketing can also be enhanced with the use of chatbots, which can use short messaging services as a medium to interact with customers and resolve their issues.
The emergence of natural language processing (NLP) has been one of the biggest developments in artificial intelligence in recent years, and the technology helps to fluently understand and interpret customer questions, helping to improve their experience when communicating with the company.
By deploying NLP chatbots as part of your SMS marketing tools, you can automatically provide customers with accurate order status updates and quick responses to FAQs and troubleshoot common issues, all helping to improve brand loyalty and prevent cart abandonment without the need for human intervention.
Embracing AI SMS Marketing
The use of artificial intelligence to enhance your SMS marketing campaigns opens the door to far more focused engagement and greater levels of personalization, helping to retain your customers for longer.
With AI constantly working to understand the preferences of your customers, you can not only distribute targeted offers and promotions but also time your messages for the best chance of positive engagement.
The artificial intelligence boom is still only getting started, but by embracing the technology today, you can steal a march on your rivals and more effectively appeal to your different customer segments in a sustainable way.
