Doubtlessly you’ve heard the old proverb about what every problem look likes to a man who has a hammer. While a mallet-wielding do-gooder might, at worst, bruise a few thumbs, the situation becomes decidedly more serious when dealing with an SMS marketing plan. Now understand that we believe in the power of text-based marketing. We eat, drink, and breathe such promotion, yet we’d be the first to conclude that not every business needs an SMS plan. Indeed, investing in inappropriate marketing can have all sorts of dire downsides. Squandered budgets. Diminished sales. A tarnished brand. However, many companies can realize great gains through text promotion, particularly those that …

Have a high percentage of online interactions coming from mobile devices. It’s no secret that mobile online usage has become more popular than desktop or laptop usage. As far back as 2014, cells and tablets accounted for 55% of Internet usage with personal computers landing at 45%, and last year saw mobile-only web surfers surpass desktop-only users for the first time (11.3% versus 10.6%). This isn’t arcane information that most managers won’t be able to access either. Any number of simple analytics suites will tell you whether or not your customers prefer mobile to desktop. And if it’s the latter, a carefully crafted SMS marketing campaign could drive traffic to your site.

Need instant feedback. There’s a reason why Gmail, Steam, and various pharmacies use SMS campaigns to communicate with customers. In the case of the first two companies, two-factor authorization keeps accounts secure, decreasing customer-service and loss-claim expenses, while the latter leads to greater operational efficiency. But whatever the niceties of your particular business, an SMS plan can keep you connected. Remember, nine out of 10 people read a text message within three minutes of receiving it.

Hold special events or promotions. People like savings, and people like sales, and SMS marketing can make all of these easier to implement. How? Well, consider that over half a billion consumers use mobile coupons, coupons that are available instantly and can draw budget-minded shoppers with the bing of a smartphone. Promotions. Plugs for popular products. Impromptu in-store parties. The possibilities SMS marketing offers you are endless, especially if you’re already employing these types of outreaches to customers.

Face competitors who use SMS marketing. Our final point is as uninspiring as it is obvious—but that doesn’t make it unimportant. Simply put, SMS marketing usually works and usually works well. So if your competitors have decided to slot it into their marketing mix, take a good, long look at your own business before deciding that you don’t need a plan.

As we said before, SMS marketing isn’t for everyone. However, plenty of companies have reaped rich rewards by seeing how the simple text message can mesh with their existing business. Go on! See if SMS can help you succeed.

Josh Vallera

I am the founder and owner of UltraSMSScript. With over 14 years experience in multiple facets of enterprise level software development, my software engineering background led me to start my own business in the SMS marketing field. Realizing that there are nearly 5 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, I knew there was enormous opportunity for businesses to start utilizing SMS in their overall marketing strategy.

While there are many SMS marketing *services* out there, I wanted to build something where my clients could install SMS software on their own servers for whatever domain name they wanted and not have to rely on expensive markup to send permission-based SMS. My goal was to provide a self-hosted platform, at a 1 time cost, linked directly to the SMS gateways and provide wholesale pricing from the start!