6 Best SMS Marketing Platforms for Businesses in 2024

Discover six of the best text message service your business can use to streamline lead conversions in 2024 and beyond.

If you’re tired of your marketing campaigns getting ignored by potential customers, it’s time to jump on text message marketing. While it seems old school with the rise of other communication channels, particularly social media, the numbers don’t lie. 90% of customers would rather text your business – they even prefer it over email.

Don’t worry, business texting isn’t as laborious as it might seem. There are excellent mass text messaging platforms that make it easy for small businesses to get results from SMS messaging. Here’s everything you need to know about SMS marketing tools.

Benefits of Using an SMS Marketing Platform

Small businesses already have to manage multiple marketing platforms, from all the different social media networks to email marketing and SEO. So why should you add text messaging to your marketing activities?

1. It enables quick and efficient communication.

Text messaging allows businesses to immediately reach their customer base on their mobile devices wherever they are and whatever they do. The marketing messages can be kept short and snappy. Then, all customers need to do is write a quick reply to the message if they want to start a conversation with your customer support team. It’s much more convenient than making a phone call and waiting on hold for ages.

2. Your marketing messages get seen.

Text messages have exceptionally high open rates – 98%! You don’t have to worry about customers logging into their email or relying on the social media algorithm to push your post out. The SMS message goes straight to your customer’s phone number, coming up as a notification on their cell phone, making it hard to ignore. If they like what they see, they can engage with it immediately.

3. It’s more personal.

Even with mass texting, text messaging provides a more personal customer experience, which means you’re more likely to get responses. Business text messaging isn’t quite as formal as email marketing, with all the professional graphics and layout. It feels more like a conversation, especially if you enable two-way texting with actual team members.

4. It meets customer demands.

Introducing SMS text messaging to your marketing strategy will be a popular choice with your customer base, seeing as 90% of customers would rather text your business. It sets off the interaction on the right foot as customers can reach out over their preferred communication channel. It encourages them to reach out instead of it seeming like a chore.

5. It’s a conversion tool.

While some customers are happy to browse your website and make a purchase, other customers prefer a more hands-on experience. Your business can provide customer support through text messaging to ensure new customers get their questions and queries answered. With two-way messaging, sales reps can help customers find the right products for them and even send them a purchase link, guiding them to conversion through SMS messaging.

6. It supports repeat business.

Text messaging can improve the customer experience post-purchase too. If you’re an e-commerce business, you can send delivery updates so customers aren’t left wondering what’s happened to their order. If you offer in-person services, you can send booking confirmations and appointment reminders to make sure customers don’t forget to turn up. If you don’t have 24/7 customer support available in your small business, you can set up an autoresponder during your out-of-hours periods.

These interactions improve the customer’s experience with your business and encourage them to become repeat buyers. You could even send an SMS marketing campaign reminding previous customers to book another appointment or sharing personalized suggestions for their next purchase.

7. It has customization opportunities.

Getting the right marketing message to the right people is essential to successful marketing. On social media, you can only put out content for a wide audience and hope the right people see it. By texting your customers, you can be more specific about who the messages are sent to by segmenting your contact list according to key characteristics like location and behaviors such as previous purchases. This will have a great impact on your conversion rate.

Essential Features That Every SMS Marketing Platform Should Have

But how do you decide which SMS software is right for you? When deciding what business texting software to use, there are some key features to put on your must-have list to make the investment worth it.

1. Contact Management

Text message marketing has the potential to massively boost your business. That means the software you implement needs to be scalable to keep up with the growing number of lead queries and customer contacts. An advanced CRM enables you to keep track of all your contacts, including where they are in the customer journey and the products and services they’re interested in, ensuring they receive the right marketing messages.

Ideally, you’ll have a way to view customer interactions across different platforms. This will allow you to see an individual contact’s history with the business on different communication channels so sales reps have all the context they need to support customers. To make the most of SMS marketing, your chosen platform should keep your customer data well-organized and easy to access and monitor.

2. Message Customization

Personalized marketing has risen in popularity for a reason – it increases the effectiveness of marketing messages. So having the ability to customize individual text messages with the customer’s name and relevant details like previous conversations or purchases increases the chance of getting a response and making a sale.

Make sure the platform can add a variety of customer information so you can get creative with your text message customization. Depending on the data you collect, you could send customers a birthday message and a discount code on their special day. If you’re an international business, note down customers’ locations and keep track of national holidays that could inspire a drip campaign. Even something as simple as sending an SMS message reminder to book a new appointment because it’s been too many months since the last one can improve business outcomes.

3. Automation and Scheduling

Individual and group texts don’t have to be sent manually. To easily run customized campaigns, your SMS marketing platform should have the capability for automation and scheduling. This will enable you to automate workflows like birthday, holiday, and appointment reminder messages.

It also makes the planning of marketing campaigns easier because texts that are due to go out in real-time, whether general marketing or time-limited drip campaigns, can be scheduled ahead of time. When adding a new communication channel to your business, you don’t want it to overwhelm your team. Make the use of text marketing as efficient as possible with automation and scheduling features.

4. Two-Way Messaging

While automating reminders and promotions over text does support business growth, you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity for two-way messaging. It’s an easy way for customers to talk to real team members and get their queries resolved. Many customers prefer talking to sales reps over chatbots, so you’ll create a better customer experience.

Plus, it’s a chance to have meaningful conversations with your customer base that builds the relationship and creates a sense of loyalty. It’s still much more efficient than phone calls because the sales team can hold more than one conversation simultaneously as they wait for text responses.

5. Analytics and Reporting

To ensure the success of your text marketing strategy, monitor your marketing campaigns to see their impact. Advanced analytics and reporting built into your text message marketing service make monitoring and subsequent optimization much easier. Metrics such as open rates, click rates, response rates, and conversion rates can be measured for each campaign to see what’s working and where you could improve.

For more detailed insights that will enable more accurate adjustments, use a platform with the capability to analyze data. You might find that different customer avatars respond best to different marketing campaigns, guiding the changes and customizations you make to improve your results.

6. Industry-Specific Features

Different industries have different needs when it comes to text messaging. What will help an auto business to grow isn’t going to be the same as what will help a healthcare business to grow. Keep that in mind when choosing your SMS software. Check for customer reviews and case studies from businesses within your industry to ensure it is suitable for the way you work with customers.

7. Integrations

Text marketing is just one tool you can use to attract, nurture, and convert leads. So you want your business texting to work in alignment with social media, email marketing, and SEO efforts alongside any other marketing campaigns you run. Choose a platform that integrates with the marketing software you’re already using.

Whether a lead has joined the sales funnel through an opt-in form on your website or through an email marketing campaign, you can keep following up and checking in with them through the most responsive and convenient communication channel – text messaging.

You’ll find that Podium ticks all these boxes as an all-in-one marketing and communications platform built for small businesses, including having success stories from a variety of different businesses. The text messaging tool is just one feature available as part of the platform. Podium also offers an omnichannel inbox for social media messaging, text messaging, webchat, and over 180 integrations with third-party software.

How to Choose an SMS Marketing Platform

Of course, every business has its own needs, priorities, and preferences that they are guided by when making a decision on what texting app to use. Ensure you make the right decision for your business by following these implementation steps.

1. Define your objectives.

When you know what you want to achieve by implementing text marketing, it’s easier to make a buying decision. Some businesses implement text marketing to convert more leads, while others focus on customer retention. You can get quite specific such as converting more website visitors or improving the average sales team response time. This will help you to narrow down which platform is the right fit for your business.

2. Evaluate features and functionality.

What will you use business texting for? This, in part, depends on the type of business you run and the industry you work in. For example, as a personal service and location-based business, hairdressers will mainly use text marketing for appointment reminders.

On the other hand, a SaaS business will utilize text marketing to update customers on their subscriptions, promote new features, and nurture leads from digital marketing campaigns. Understand the features that will make or break the results you gain from implementing text marketing so you can be sure the tool you choose provides the capability to achieve your intended objectives.

3. Assess your budget.

The pricing of text marketing services does vary quite a bit. So do the features available in different plans from different brands. Consider the size and maturity of your business alongside the features you need to achieve your objectives when setting your budget. A small startup that just wants to send basic appointment reminders can settle for a lower budget compared to a growing enterprise that is creating an omnichannel customer journey. Set yourself a viable budget for your text messaging service.

4. Check Delivery and Compliance

When you have a particular texting app in mind, check that it enables you to deliver the marketing campaigns you are aiming for. Make sure it works with your current systems and the implementation process will work for your team without too much disruption. A free trial or demo will allow you to assess whether you can make the text messaging service work for you. It’s also worth checking what onboarding support you receive to get yourself set up, such as a help desk.

Top SMS Marketing Platforms

There are a variety of service providers of text message marketing services. Each has a variety of features, capabilities, and plans, so you will be able to find that texting tool that works for your business.

1. Podium

As an all-in-one marketing and communication platform, Podium’s text messaging service is designed to create a smooth workflow. Set up is easy with the combination of in-built templates and tailored messaging. You can even automate repetitive tasks, so your team members can focus on text messages that need personal replies. The Podium platform includes tools for webchat, online review management, an omnichannel inbox, collecting payments, and a CRM for customer contacts. It also has over 180 integrations, so you can make it work for you.

2. Zendesk

Zendesk is a customer support tool that helps businesses to better manage their communication with customers, enhancing productivity with streamlined workflows. However, the business texting capability is only available in its top 3 plans, and it offers automation and bulk SMS texting of up to 250 simultaneous messages.

3. SimpleTexting 

If customization is important to you, check out SimpleTexting. This text messaging platform provides you with an account manager to support your onboarding and utilization of the service. You can also ask for custom in-house integrations, which the developers will deliver as part of your subscription. Whatever marketing tools you need to connect your messaging app to, they can make it happen.

4. EZ Texting 

If visual elements are an important part of your marketing strategy, you’ll be intrigued by EZ Texting. It has a native integration with Shutterstock that makes it easy to send high-quality images in multimedia marketing messages. The ease of use is consistent throughout, thanks to the Getting Started Kit and help docs.

5. Twilio 

The Twilio text messaging platform is known for its detailed analytics. The Marketing Insights dashboard gives lots of useful information about the results of SMS marketing campaigns. You can even filter and segment data according to different metrics to get into the nitty-gritty of the impact of each text message.

6. TextMagic

If you’re looking to dip your toe into text message marketing, TextMagic might be for you. It’s a pay-as-you-go service that still gives you access to key features such as bulk text messages, two-way messaging, campaign automation, and contact list segmentation.

Best Practices For SMS Marketing Platforms

Once you decide which SMS marketing software to use, be sure to follow these best practices.

1. Permission-Based Opt-In

Always get opt-ins before you start sending text messages to customers. You can only send transaction-related texts without an opt-in. You can get opt-ins via texting keyword campaigns, pop-ups, emails, and more.

2. Segmentation and Personalization

Segmentation has come up a few times in this guide, and for good reason. Segmenting your audience lets you target your audience, so they feel as if the message is more personal. You can segment your audience based on shopping behaviors, demographics, customer engagement with marketing campaigns, or other relevant factors.

3. Clear and Concise Messaging

Text messages should be short and sweet. SMS messages only have space for 160 characters, and MMS can fit 1,600 characters. Keep your message as short as you can while still getting your point across and adding personalization.

4. Timing and Frequency

Try to only send messages during standard business hours (9 am to 5 pm), so you don’t annoy your audience during their daily life. Also, avoid sending messages too frequently.

5. Provide Value and Relevance

Make sure that the messages you send are relevant and add value to your customers’ lives. Don’t overload them with messages about products they aren’t interested in; segmentation helps with this.

6. Track and Optimize

Always track your campaign and analyze the data, so you can optimize future campaigns. The best SMS marketing tools make this easy to do.

Kickstart Your SMS Campaigns with Podium

Podium is a comprehensive SMS marketing solution that offers everything a small business needs to grow through text marketing and more. The text messaging solution has advanced capabilities, including two-way messaging, automation, and advanced analytics reporting to monitor your success.

With the rest of the tools that are part of the Podium platform, businesses can deliver high-quality customer service. With the omnichannel inbox, leads can seamlessly transition between communication channels as their full interaction history is easily available. Part of the omnichannel inbox is the Podium webchat which encourages leads to have a conversation with the sales team at the critical point of making a purchase decision on the website.

When the text messaging conversation brings the lead to conversion, the sales reps can send them a purchase link due to the Podium payment tool. Asking for reviews through text to get the best chance of response is simple with the Podium review management solution. You can create even more functionality through the over 150 integrations Podium is compatible with.

One of our many happy customers, Vineyard City, utilized Podium to improve communication with their residents and enhance the community spirit. Over the past 12 months, they managed over 1700 conversations while maintaining a less than 20-minute response time. They particularly liked the two-way messaging capabilities to help residents feel at home in their community.

Give it a go and test the kind of impact Podium can have on your business through text marketing and beyond by claiming your 14-day free trial.

FAQs about SMS Marketing Platforms

Which industry is best for SMS marketing?

Any industry can benefit from SMS marketing, whether you sell a product or service.

Is SMS marketing legal?

Yes! SMS marketing is legal if you get opt-ins from customers and allow opt-outs. You must also follow other minor legal requirements.

Is it professional to text a client?

Yes, it’s preferable, as 63% of people would switch companies if they offered text messaging. What clients care about is that you are contacting them in a convenient, quick, and easy way, so it’s not a hassle to keep up with and respond to conversations with you. Professionals are busy people so don’t overthink it!

How do I text my clients?

You’ll quickly get overwhelmed if you rely on text messaging customers on your phone. Instead, invest in a text message marketing service. This will allow you to store customer contact details and other relevant information, as well as sort and segment your customer list. You can set up customized text campaigns on a large scale, scheduling messages ahead of time and automating messages to go out after a specific trigger. It’s also much easier to collect analytics and refine your text messaging approach when using specially designed software.

How often should you text your customers?

It’s worth experimenting to find the frequency that works for your customer base. You don’t want to leave it so long that customers go cold. But you don’t want to overdo it and stop customers from interacting with your business. Generally, once a week is a good frequency. For time-limited promotions, you can increase your frequency to make sure no one misses out.

How do you catch customers’s attention through text?

Text messages themselves are attention-grabbing because customers don’t have to check a particular app to see the marketing message. Instead, it shows up as a notification directly on their mobile phone. To encourage customers to open and respond to texts, personalize the message with their first name and any other relevant details. As a best practice, keep it snappy. For even better results, make it super easy to follow the call to action by adding a link or asking them to respond through text.