Find the best SMS Marketing Software

Are you looking to level up your marketing strategy by directly connecting with your customers using mobile devices? Using SMS marketing software for your startup or rapidly growing small business can help you boost open rates of your marketing campaigns by providing personalized and engaging messages that are optimized for mobile devices.

SMS marketing software, or text message marketing software, sends promotional messages, mobile text alerts, and updates via text messages. You can include images, videos, and other graphic elements to capture the attention of your audience. This process allows you to reach your target audience in real time and on the go, leading to higher engagement and conversions. 

This guide provides information you need to choose the right SMS marketing software for your business.

What is SMS marketing software?

SMS (short message service) marketing software lets businesses reach their customers through mobile text messaging. The tool helps users create and manage mobile SMS messages campaigns, track customer responses, and analyze the effectiveness of different marketing strategies. In addition, the tool personalizes SMS messaging content based on individual preferences or previous interactions with the business.

Sales and marketing managers can use SMS marketing software to automate scheduling, segmenting, and sending bulk messages at specific times or intervals. The software also targets relevant audiences, and measures performance metrics across multiple channels such as third party chat applications and social media.

What are some common features of SMS marketing software?

• Mass texting: Automate marketing campaigns by sending out bulk SMS to large audiences using personalized templates for each recipient. 

• Contact management: Organize customer contact information, such as email and phone numbers, in one place, allowing users to add new contacts and manage existing ones. 

• Mobile keywords: Track and store user-submitted keywords to customize the SMS messaging for the recipients.  

• MMS: Send multimedia messages, such as videos, images, and other dynamic content that are tailored according to the preferences of each customer segment. 

• Scheduled messaging: Set schedules for sending out notifications, reminders, or alerts at predefined intervals while ensuring peak engagement with customers.

What are the benefits of using SMS marketing software?

• Boost open rates: Text-based marketing tools let you send SMS messages that are personalized and targeted, increasing the likelihood to be opened by the recipients. Further, with the ability to reach large audiences, SMS software helps increase conversions from potential leads into paying customers.

• Enhance customer engagement: Using an SMS marketing platform, you can track SMS performance in real-time to make changes accordingly and maximize customer engagement. The text marketing software provides detailed analytics to gain valuable insights into how the text message campaigns perform. You can use the insights to optimize the effectiveness of the text marketing strategies for improved customer experience and higher engagement.

• Elevate brand recognition: You can add your company’s logo, background color, images, font style, and other graphic elements to your SMS marketing campaigns to match the brand voice. This ensures effective communication with potential and loyal customers while reinforcing the company's identity and branding objectives on a large scale.

• Foster customer loyalty: Using an SMS marketing campaign platform, you can send personalized messages to the customers' inboxes. This ensures that your messages reach the customers on time, providing useful information and driving a positive feedback loop between the customers and the business. Additionally, you can use an SMS marketing tool to track individual responses from each contact, using them to evaluate customer engagement over time.

• Improve customer support: You can allow customers to receive updates, notifications, and other important messages directly on their phones. The text message marketing platform can also be used as a communications platform to connect with customers in real time, such as responding promptly when they have queries or complaints about products/services. This helps improve customer satisfaction since companies can address their problems quickly and efficiently.

What are the potential issues with SMS marketing software?

• Poor deliverability: Poor deliverability can lead to messages going undelivered or being sent late. This impacts the effectiveness and success of campaigns, resulting in lost opportunities to engage with customers. In addition, poor deliverability may result in increased costs due to unnecessary message retries in the case of a bulk SMS campaign.

• Spam messages: Spam filters may block messages sent through the platform, causing them to not reach their intended recipients. This could lead to decreased engagement and trust from customers, as well as lost revenue due to missed opportunities for promotions or sales. Spam filters also need constant monitoring and updating for effective message delivery. 

• Unclear unsubscribe feature: Poorly configured unsubscribe features can lead to customers feeling frustrated or ignored when they try to opt out, creating an unfavorable impression and decreasing customer loyalty. Failing to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act by not providing clear instructions on how customers can unsubscribe may result in fines for your business. It is essential that any SMS marketing automation platform provides users easy access and understanding of its unsubscribing feature.

• Lack of compatibility: Without proper compatibility, the software may not work properly with certain devices or operating systems, resulting in a poor user experience and limited reach to customers. Additionally, incompatibility can lead to data loss or errors when syncing information across different platforms; impacting the accuracy of data captured from the campaigns.

How much does SMS marketing software cost?

Most SMS marketing software products are priced on a “per month” basis, and their entry-level pricing plan ranges from $19 to $99+* per month. An enterprise product that’s priced higher may include additional features such as IVR support, video calls, call tracking, and website builder.

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offerings found on vendor websites as of March 14, 2023. 

Key considerations when purchasing SMS marketing software

• Assess the coverage of the software across different carriers and countries. When purchasing SMS marketing software, it is important to assess its coverage across different carriers and countries. This will help ensure that your messages are delivered successfully regardless of geographic location or the recipient's carrier network.

• Evaluate the integration capabilities with other software platforms. Integration allows you to connect your SMS marketing platform with other marketing automation software, such as email marketing or customer relationship management (CRM). This can be beneficial to automate processes, such as combining customer data from multiple sources or integrating a messaging campaign into the overall digital marketing strategies.

• Check the ability to track and measure campaign results. By tracking customer responses, you can gain valuable insights into what works for your campaigns and optimize the marketing message accordingly. Additionally, measuring results allows you to understand the effectiveness of each SMS campaign in achieving its goals so that future digital marketing strategies are adjusted to achieve greater results.

Sources

Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from Software Advice’s SMS marketing software directory, sorted by the number of reviews. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in Software Advice’s directory that offer them. 

Disclaimer This SMS marketing software buyers guide was authored by Software Advice’s content team. We develop our guides using the author’s expertise, insights from 2M+ unique user reviews, and our proprietary data science algorithms to identify trends in user sentiment, preferences, and priorities. Some text was generated with assistance from AI tools.