#79. Building a Powerful SMS Marketing List | Podcast

Vira: 0:16

Today we will be talking about three best or actually simplest way to build powerful SMS list.

Alissa: 0:46

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Email Einstein. I’m trying something new instead of the hello hello that I usually do. So let me know how you guys feel about it. Vira and Alissa here. As always, we are two email marketeers at an email marketing agency called Flowium. We are super passionate about email marketing and because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. We specialize in providing a premium full service e commerce email marketing experience for all of our clients. Our service is to tailored specifically for your business and is designed to help increase your online retail revenue. We deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. That’s what we’re all about here at Flowium. And today’s episode, I feel like this is like our first like real episode in the new year.

Vira: 1:33

Yes. Even though we are recording it like spoiler alert. It’s like December 23rd. Yeah, we are recording it’s like two days before Christmas and I’m like freaking out because like I have so many things to do before Christmas. I like literally slept for two hours tonight because I have this like grand project project in mind to finish my downstairs unit until the end of the year.

Alissa: 1:54

Well, I’m very gets so excited about Christmas too. Vira’s just.

Vira: 1:57

Yeah, I was like too excited. I was literally sleeping two hours tonight. So if I speak some like weird things today, don’t mind. That’s how I sound today. Yeah, but happy new year to to you people from the future.

Alissa: 2:09

Yeah.

Vira: 2:10

Because we’re still in 2021. You are in 2022. I hope 2022 treats you well. Cool. Yeah, the first real episode of the year and what a good way to start the podcast. Today we’ll be talking about the sms. Sms. You can love it, you can hate it, but you cannot ignore it. You guys, would you like to have a never ending pipeline of your best customers on speed dial? I know it sounds like an Advertisement from the 90s or better yet just like quit. Just have in your best customer just a quick text message away. Turns out that customers actually want that too. And according to Klaviyo, Americans are more likely to ignore text message from their friends and family and their grandma than text from their brands that they are that they care about. I know, right?

Alissa: 3:02

Dang grandma. Dang grandma.

Vira: 3:04

Sorry grandma. Actually I think I’m, I’m the same. If I see the good promotion from like the brand that I love that I follow and I don’t opt in into that many SMS services from different brands just to make top, top favorites. If I’m seeing like the promo from Lululemon, gosh, I’m going to open it over any of the messages from my friends. That’s going to be my number one priority. So yeah, apparently Americans are the same and SMS is becoming an increasingly essential part of effective multichannel marketing. And with the 98% open rate and 45% response rate, SMS is the channel not to be ignored in 2022, that’s for sure. And today we will be talking about three best or actually simplest way to build powerful SMS list.

Alissa: 3:51

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Vira: 4:14

So Alissa, start us off. I hear the word power and I think of that song by Kanye west literally called power. Anyways, powerful SMS list, let’s get right into it. This is a.

Alissa: 4:26

Yeah, this is a funny little topic for me given how I feel about. But here we go. So number one most powerful way or most number one way to build the most powerful SMS list. There we go. Opt in forms and multi step forms. Vira, I think your tiredness has rubbed off on me because now I’m all like oooh.

Vira: 4:45

I’m drinking, I’m drinking coffee. I’m going to be there soon. Wakey wake you Alissa.

Alissa: 4:50

So first thing that you need to understand about SMS when you start working with SMS is that collecting text message marketing consent is not optional. Like not at all. And this is actually really, really important because there are so many laws around sending SMS instead of email. Email. There are laws ob but the ones with SMS like it is no joke. So make sure that you’re super compliant and you’re actually consenting legitimate consent and not just having people sign up without actually having consent. So in order to comply with consumers rights laws regarding SMS marketing, you should only send text messages to customers who actually gave you permission to message them. You can’t just add phone numbers to your list. If you find them online or receive them from another company, you have to get direct consent from the customer. Otherwise you will be in violation of the the Telephone Consumer Protection act. Tcpa. That’s official, guys. Like if that act’s name doesn’t scare you enough, like Jiffy Lube actually learned it the hard way. So they weren’t scared enough of the name and it cost them$47 million.

Vira: 5:57

Isn’t it insane? Wow.

Alissa: 5:59

That was their penalty. Oh my gosh. Literally I just like got choked up. I can’t even think about that. So like, huh. So Jiffy Lube is obviously a brand of automotive oil change specialty shops. They had actually collect mobile numbers from invoices that customers had filled out. So listen, like, just because someone gave you their email does not mean that they are consenting to SMS if you happen to also get their number. So like, I’ve seen this actually a lot on a lot of Shopify kind of checkout pages with brands that I’ve been buying with is they’ll put in everything, da da da da. You put in your name, last name, shipping information, and then they put your phone number at the bottom and they say it’s optional, but there’s no consent underneath that says, hey, yes, I agree to receive text messages from you.

Vira: 6:44

Oh really? So you didn’t even like check out the box thing?

Alissa: 6:48

Yeah, yeah. So there, there is no box for a lot of people. But the thing is, is that I’ve noticed I’m just too lazy to flag it. A lot of these brands, even when I put my phone number in there, for whatever reason, they’re still texting me even though I never gave them consent to actually text message me. So that’s something that you really gotta think about when you are asking for people’s phone numbers. Because if you’re asking for phone numbers just to have the phone number, that’s kind of weird. But that’s on you. When you ask for the phone number, if you’re wanting to text them, you have to ask for the phone number and ask for consent as well. So by giving my phone number, I agree to receive SMS text messages that are in compliant with the tcpa. Da da da da. There’s like a whole jargon that you have to use. So don’t be like these other brands that I won’t, I won’t call them out, but don’t be like these brands that don’t know how to collect consent. You need to collect consent and one of the easiest ways to do that from your subscribers is through our favorite the good old on site pop up form like an exit intent pop up or a welcome slash homepage pop up. So similar to your emails, you can actually create a signup form that asks visitors on your site to put their phone number in. Or you can add a phone number in the input field to your existing signup forms if you want to kind of preemptively tell them like hey, here’s your phone number, can we get your consent to receive your text messages? However, unlike email opt in the form has to include, like I mentioned before, the blurb regarding compliance that’s going to be added to your form. And this again helps to ensure that site visits visitors are fully aware that they’re signing up to receive SMS messages when submitting your form. And then the other thing that you have to make sure is there’s a privacy policy and terms of service link area in that blurb that you have to include. So make sure that you include the links in there as well. There are really little little details that if you’re not careful with them and someone complains you could easily see$47 million leave your company’s bank account. So be careful. And the other cool thing about these opt in forms is you can also set up a multi step form which this is a new feature as of I was about to say this year we’re not in 2021 anymore people, it’s 2022. It’s a new feature as of last year where basically the idea here is you still set up your form. If you’re collecting email and phone number, what you would do is on the first page or on the first part first step of the form you would collect email, let the person submit and then on the next step you would ask them hey, also optionally you can also opt in for sms. Would you like to consent for that? And it gives people the option. The nice thing about this is usually email tends to have a much higher conversion rate than SMS consent for forms anyways. Not necessarily like the marketing like the emails or the SMS messages, but in terms of consent usually it’s very easy to get someone’s email. A little bit harder to get SMS if you put both on the same page. A lot of people assume that you’re making it a requirement to give email or and their phone number when you put it on different forms. You can still not lose the opportunity to receive the email address and then Also just add in that other option not to say that SMS does not convert ever SMS consent, but it’s just helpful to kind of separate the two so then that way consumers can actually give you the way that they prefer to hear from you. And if they’re on your website and they’re giving you their email, okay, cool, they want to hear from you. But again SMS is like a whole nother level of privacy, so that’s a big one. And then another idea that you can have if you already have like a huge list of subscribers and you’re like, hey, but I want to contact these people using sms. What you can do is you can actually target your SMS signup forms so you can create like a completely separate SMS signup form to only appear to that list or segment of people that have not given SMS consent yet. So that way you’re still targeting preexisting customers or preexisting subscribers in Klaviyo or in whatever email platform that you’re using. And then you’re also just adding to that list without actually having to acquire new customers and go through all of that. So that’s another option for you. But yeah, the opt in forms and multi step forms, that’s like our bread and butter when it comes to building the SMS list for our clients here internally. So definitely one of the best ways to build up that SMS list for you.

Vira: 10:51

Yeah. Geez.$47 million, huh?

Alissa: 10:55

That number just keeps ringing in my head.

Vira: 10:57

Insane. I think that case was like back in like 2011 or 2014 when SMS was still very new thing. But gosh,$47 million. And yes, you’re right Alissa, they are much stricter with like SMS than with email. There is like a similar act like consumer protection act for email users as well, but it’s not as strict as sms. At least it, I know that this act is only working in like states, Canada and Australia. Like I remember when I was like in Mexico, I bought myself this like SIM card, like a new number I’ve never used before and different brands started bombarding me with like different offers in Spanish. I couldn’t understand a thing. But yeah, I mean I appreciate the telephone consumer protection act honestly as a user and as a marketer as well. So. But yeah, consent is not optional you guys. Consent is not optional when it comes to SMS marketing for sure. Another good way to make your customers give you a consent is to actually capture the text messaging consent at checkout. So when your customers are seconds away from like placing that first or second or whatever order in your store, they are pretty much convinced and like fully committed to buying from you. And at that moment they are pretty much your most engaged customers. They are as engaged as they will be. Right? They are here, they’re ready to buy, they have their credit card in their hands. And the good news is click Levio Attentive and postscript and like other SMS platforms on the market, they can actually give you that opportunity to capture the text message content at checkout. And I’m only talking about the Shopify stores and Shopify Plus. I’m not sure about the other stores like WooCommerce and Stuff, but I know for sure that both Shopify and Shopify plus can now collect SMS content when someone is checking out on the website. In the past this feature was only available to Shopify plus but as of 2021 they basically like expanded it. So right now everyone can use this feature and the content and the checkout feature was, I mean it’s always been powerful. Just it was only available to that like Shopify plus users. Right? But right now you no longer need like a coder, you no longer need an extra coding to be done on your website. It’s very easy to collect those like opt ins. You don’t need to do anything. That like functionality is already built in. So when you ask for content to send marketing text messages at checkout, this is probably like one of the best, best ways to quickly grow your SMS list because your customer, they pretty much don’t need to do anything except for like putting that little check mark into the box. This opt in method has high, high conversion rates just because like literally all your customer needs to do is like put that little mark in the chat box. And this is like the highest level of commitment in the E commerce customer relationship. So yeah, the best part about this whole content and checkout thing that a, it’s easy to do and be like providing the phone number is a very like natural step for the customer because they are doing it anyways. They are providing their email, they are providing their phone number, their address. So they don’t need to do any like extra steps. We’re like eliminating that extra step which makes this opt in method more effective. And if you want you can even like personalize your checkout page opt in box in your Shopify like backend. But be careful there because you don’t want to provide the offer to someone who’s like almost purchased from. You want to make them rethink the original offer. Right? So you have to be careful with the offer. But you can give them some sort of like an incentive for them to come back to your store later like like Gap does with Gap Cash and stuff. So yeah, you can, you can easily customize, you can personalize your checkout page opt in box. Definitely, definitely do that. And also it’s like perfect place for promotional offers to entice your customers to come back in the future. But also your customers will love this opt in methods because it’s very easy for them to use and it’s probably like one of the easiest ways to turn your one time buyers into like the repeat buyers. Plus you basically give your customer an option so they can choose the channel of communication that they prefer and you will more likely to be able to like reach them because they now have two different options. They have email and they have sms. So that’s a really nice no brainer way to capture text message content. So definitely do that. And again whether you’re on, on Shopify and Shopify plus you can definitely do that. I’m pretty sure you can do it with Woocommerce as well. But it will probably require a bit more work done by you or your coders. But we love this method. We do it for all of our clients pretty much.

Alissa: 15:53

It’s the easiest. It’s just and it makes the most sense. Like the nice thing about SMS is just putting it in places where it’s like easily accessible for customers. And like you mentioned Vira, like it just makes it a no brainer where it’s like oh, I’m checking out and giving all my personal information anyway ways, why not, you know. So it definitely, it makes a lot of sense to include it in checkout. And actually for one of my clients what we did is we started with it check with that at checkout. Then we put the opt in forms in place because we were like okay, like how are we going to make this the most organic way possible? And checkout just made the most sense. So.

Vira: 16:26

It makes sense. Makes sense. These are your most engaged customers. Right. Anyway, so they are the easiest to convince.

Alissa: 16:32

Exactly, exactly. Awesome. Well that number two and we have final and third click to text forms. And this is actually something that I’m going to be putting in place for one of my clients as well. So it’s really, really helpful to kind of talk through and understand like the perks of it. So click to text forms. If you haven’t set that up yet, which I guess I’m speaking to myself, it’s one of those really simple things that has a Huge impact. So click to text is just what it sounds like. So in a platform like Klaviyo, for example, you can actually create a click to text form that allows mobile visitors to join your list by clicking on a button without having to manually input their phone number at all. So they just click. They’ll be automatically brought to their messages app with the opt in message that you configure in Klaviyo or whatever app you’re using, it’ll be pre populated in there and then all they have to do is press send. It’s so easy. And again, it’s one of those things where like sms, you want to give customers the opportunity to choose what channel marketing channel they hear from you from, but also you want to make each marketing channel super easily accessible. And that’s one of those things for SMS where like as soon as something starts to feel sketchy or feel off or feel like they’re doing too much work because it’s already a very private channel, people get put off by it. So click to text is a really great way to kind of set it all up. It comes across as more legit, more formalized, like it’s coming from a company that actually knows what they’re doing. So you literally just press the button, the messages app appears, your phone number appears that they’re texting, and then the message in there and then they send it and now they’re like they’re actually reaching out to you to consent, which is kind of nice too. It’s one thing when you’re like, please click here, please consent, please consent. But it’s another thing altogether.

Vira: 18:15

When it comes to different dynamic.

Alissa: 18:17

A customer shows up to your door and they’re like, hi, I’d like to consent for sms. That’s really nice. And then the other thing that you can do as well is you can also collect consent through a click to text email banner. This is actually something pretty new to me that I wasn’t, I wasn’t aware of before, before we started doing the research for this podcast. So this approach however, is actually designed to automatically open a text message, but it will not work with email app or in Microsoft Outlook, which is a bummer cause a lot of people use Gmail, not Outlook so much, but a lot of people use the Gmail app. So like I use the Gmail app for sure. But anyone can manually navigate to their text messaging app and text your number into subscribe. So it doesn’t change necessarily whether or not someone can or cannot opt in, in or give consent it just changes the dynamic and changes how stress is. Yeah, it just ends up being an extra step, which again, I mean it’s just one of those things that you want to consider. Like maybe it is for. Gosh, I don’t even know if this is possible to segment. Maybe it is. Vira, correct me if I’m wrong, but in terms of segmenting it out so that consumers who are opening primarily on a Gmail app, they don’t get the click to text banner, but then people who aren’t opening in Gmail get the click to text banner. I don’t think that’s actually possible.

Vira: 19:31

I don’t think it’s possible. I mean we can probably segment it based on their previous like opens, but we don’t know like from where they will open in the future. Right? Yeah, yeah. But I mean it’s not necessarily a big problem with Gmail app or Microsoft Outlook. It’s just like adds that like extra step. So it’s like less seamless. But you can still like manually navigate to your messenger and like manually subscribe. Right?

Alissa: 19:57

Yeah, yeah. Which again doesn’t prevent the process from happening, just removes the smoothness of the process.

Vira: 20:04

No, I love the click to text. I mean and, and just like you said, you just like feel that brand put a lot of work into their marketing and like you appreciate this like seamless experience.

Alissa: 20:16

Yeah, it just makes it all feel more legit. So I’m a big, big fan of click to text and that’s, that’s all she wrote. We have three ways to build a powerful SMS list. List. If you are in the process of setting up your SMS or wanting to build your list, make sure you that you take these three points into consideration of the opt in forms or the multi step forms, getting consent at checkout and then also the click to text forms. Those are going to be game changers for you as you make your SMS list a little more robust and really start to dive deep into your SMS marketing.

Vira: 20:46

Awesome. Well, thank you so much guys for listening to this. One of the first podcasts of 2022. Thank you for being with us three years in a row. I can officially say it because started our podcast in 2019 I think. Or was it 2020 then 2021 and 2022. Yeah, three years in a row. Yeah. So thank you so much for being with us. Thank you so much for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your E commerce friends, with your family or with people who would be interested to hear more about e commerce, email marketing and e commerce marketing in general. And if you leave us a review we will thank you with beautiful pair of Flowium socks. So just go to flowium.com/socks send the screenshot of your review and we will send you a really, really nice pair of socks.

Alissa: 21:36

I love it, love it, love those socks. Gotta love those socks. Make sure that you come back next week. We are gonna be talking about five steps to get out of the spam folder. Make sure that you come back and we’ll see you then. Thank you guys for listening.

Vira: 21:52

See you. Bye.