Text message marketing for small businesses
Text message marketing is a powerful, cost-effective way for small businesses to acquire and engage their customers.
No credit card required. Plans as low as $29/month.
Large and small businesses choose SimpleTexting for text message marketing
What is text message marketing?
Text message marketing is the practice of sending text messages to market your business. You might also know it as SMS marketing.
How can a text messaging service help your small business grow?
Text message marketing gives you all the tools you need to build and grow your small business, increase revenue, and exceed expectations.
Reach your customers faster
Empower your sales folks
Improve customer satisfaction
Send targeted promotions
Save time with SMS marketing automation
Recruit stronger candidates
“The learning curve is really low. I’ve looked at quite a few texting platforms so far, and SimpleTexting is my favorite.”
Valerie Blomberg
Account Manager at Russell Marketing
How should a small business use text message marketing?
SMS marketing lets small businesses like yours raise awareness about their products and services at a manageable scale. Here are some ways your small business can use text marketing:
Share promotions
Small businesses can benefit significantly from incorporating text message marketing into their promotional strategies. Whether it’s a flash sale, limited-time discount, or last-minute deal, text message marketing allows you to reach customers promptly.The independent retailer Broken Spoke grew its customer base by sharing these kinds of announcements right in its customers’ text notifications.
“As a family-run business, things are unpredictable. If all of a sudden there’s a sick kid and I can’t open up the store, I can post a sign on the door. But now I can also send a text. With that, we can encourage them to shop online that day, even throw out a sale as a bonus!”
Whitney Mayhew
Owner, Broken Spoke Boutique
Send alerts about time-sensitive information
Running a small business requires flexibility. Some situations demand fast communication with your customers, like order status updates or a sudden change in hours.Considering that 80.5% of consumers check their notifications in five minutes or less when they get a text, customers are sure to receive the updates well ahead of time.
“SimpleTexting is easy to use, easy to track results, and sends out alerts when we need them most to our clients.”
Alexandra S.
Outreach & Marketing Coordinator, via G2
Request customer reviews
99.9% of customers read reviews when shopping online, making them a must-have traffic driver for small businesses.Encourage your customers to leave a review by automatically following up with them through triggers and automated text marketing.
“We have been struggling to improve our Google Business reviews and texting was the answer. We receive the most Google reviews the day we send out texts. We’ve already increased our score by .4 stars in just a month.”
Joe R.
Marketing Coordinator, via G2
Build trusting relationships with your customers
Text message marketing is opt-in, meaning that your contacts want to see your messages. Embrace that by building customer trust through post-purchase follow-ups and regular announcements. Sending a thank-you message, for instance, not only expresses gratitude but also reassures customers that their transaction is valued.“When a potential client contacts us, we use SimpleTexting to send them an automatic SMS to let them know that we received their inquiry. It’s an additional touchpoint. So, if an email gets lost on either end, we do have SMS for communication and follow-up.”
Rachael G.
Small Business Owner, via G2
What to expect when you start text marketing
Running a small business is hard enough. Staying in touch with your customers doesn’t have to be.
Easy to get set up
No design skills (or hacks) necessary
Speeding up communication — every time you need it
Low maintenance for easy upkeep
Cost-effective for convenient scaling
Easy to use at any point
“This platform will work no matter what stage you are. It’s been awesome to see the analytics that SimpleTexting offers to give you an idea of which campaigns are more successful than others and to see how you can nurture your audience in a different way.”
Jackelyn Dacanay
Marketing Director
Your customers want you to text them
Eight of 10 people already get texts from businesses. And most people will sign up to get texts from more businesses this year. That means there’s still a lot of opportunity for your small business to use texting to keep in touch with your customers.
Consumers want to buy from small businesses
84% of consumers are eager to support small businesses. They know marketing is just one of the thousand things you do every day.
Authenticity is better than “picture perfect”
83% of consumers want businesses to provide more authentic experiences. Texting remains a simple way to have this type of genuine conversation with your customers.
People buy from people they know, like, and trust
61% of consumers say they’re more loyal to a brand that creates a sense of community. Text message marketing helps you add the human touch that will make your small business stand out.
You grow when you text your customers
Our studies reveal that businesses that text are 51% more likely to report digital marketing success than those that don’t. This underscores the impact that embracing text-based communication can have on overall marketing effectiveness.
Everyone reads their texts
80.5% of consumers check their text notifications within five minutes of receiving a text. So you can rest assured that people will see your message rather than lose it in a busy email inbox with thousands of unread emails and ads on top of them.
Your contacts want to help you
Text marketing makes people act on your requests. More reviews, purchases, show-ups for appointments — you name it. And people are actually looking forward to interacting with you. 61% of consumers want to be able to text a business back.
Texting will make your marketing more successful
90.09% of businesses that use text messaging report their marketing is successful, according to our research of 400 brands. By integrating texting, you open up direct lines of communication, fostering increased engagement and response rates.
10 examples of text marketing from small businesses
You can find all sorts of examples of text marketing out there. Here are some of our favorites from small businesses that use SimpleTexting.
What features should you look for in a text messaging service for your small business?
The best SMS marketing tools for small businesses save you time and grow your business at a scalable price. Look out for these features when shopping for a service:
Text-enable your existing number
Establish a more professional business presence by making your existing voice phone number text-enabled. Chances are your customers are trying to text your number already. SimpleTexting lets you add texting to a landline number or any number that doesn’t have mass texting.
Build a contact list quickly and easily
Making it as easy as possible to add new contacts for your and your customers frees up your schedule and encourages more people to join your list. Add numbers to your SimpleTexting list through a textable keyword, your established contact list, or a form on your website.
Save time with templates
Your big competitors don’t type out every text they send, and you don’t have to, either. Create a bank of automatic replies, answers to frequently asked questions, and templates for regular texts using SimpleTexting’s templates and duplicates.
Scale your pricing with your business
It can be tricky to tell how much you want to invest in text message marketing when you start out. SimpleTexting takes off the pressure with pricing based on the number of texts you send per month. Raise your plan tier as your texting needs increase with your business.
“We see an increase in foot traffic because of the text promotions we send.”
Jordan Glenn
Owner of Harmony Tea Bar
How does Simpletexting compare to other SMS apps for small businesses?
We know you’re researching multiple services because it’s the smartest thing to do for your business. So, what makes SimpleTexting stand out from the other tools you’re looking into?
We tested the top seven text messaging services for small businesses and found that SimpleTexting excels in these areas:
- Flexible pricing: All of our plans have rollover credits, unlimited keywords, self-service billing, and three user seats. Don’t sweat the small stuff — just pick a plan that offers the credits you need every month.
- Ease of use: SimpleTexting has a comprehensive and easy-to-navigate SMS marketing experience. We built everything with small businesses in mind so you can have the same texting power as your larger competitors.
Use with other apps: Connect SimpleTexting to your other marketing tools with our intuitive integrations. We support some of the most popular apps out there, like Mailchimp and HubSpot. And if we don’t have your tool on our list, you can connect to an automation app like Zapier or Integrately to integrate it yourself.
How to start text message marketing for your small business (step-by-step)
During sign-up, we will ask for your current business number to verify your identity.
If you’re not picky, we’ll assign you a number automatically. Learn more about the different number types available.
During the free trial, you’ll use a local number we’ll generate for you. Once you upgrade, you can choose the type of number you want by going to Settings in the left-hand menu and choosing Numbers.
Click Contacts in the left-hand menu, then choose the Add contacts button to enter contacts manually. Select the arrow on the right of the Add contacts button to add contacts from an existing app through an integration.
Click the + New list button to create an additional list of contacts. Lists let you segment contacts into different groups with unique goals.
Note: You can’t send messages to any contacts besides your own number during the free trial, but you can add them for use when you upgrade to a paid plan.
A good idea for a first keyword is one that customers can use to sign up for your list. Set it up in our Keywords menu and share your number and keyword through:
- Social media
- Physical marketing materials like product inserts
- Your website
- Web Sign-Up Images: Create an image sharing your sign-up keyword and number that you can add to your website or anywhere online where you can upload pictures.
- Web Sign-Up Forms: Build a form for customers to fill out to join your texting list. We’ll generate a code to paste into your website.
Here, you’ll name your campaign, enter the content of your message, and choose what list you want to send the message to. You can then decide if you want to send the message immediately, schedule it for the future, or send it on a recurring basis.
SMS for small business success stories
Explore SimpleTexting's case studies to learn how small businesses around the country use our SMS service to drive sales and connect with their audience.
How Toroe Eyewear Generated an Extra $7K in 30 Days with Our Mobile Sign-Up Widget
Using SimpleTexting’s Mobile Sign-Up Widget to advertise a 10% discount, Toroe Eyewear generated an extra $7,028 in store revenue in a month. That’s a 156x return on its text marketing channel.
Read their success story
Whisker Seeker Tackle Sees a 25% Conversion Rate From Its MegaDeals Text Promotions
Whisker Seeker Tackle spotted a glaring gap in the market and turned it into a thriving e-commerce and wholesale business. Learn how entrepreneur Matt Davis leverages SMS text marketing services to drive sales.
Read their success story
Aubrey’s Bead Closet Uses SMS to Drive a 400% Increase in Mobile Web Traffic
Aubrey’s Bead Closet has a loyal fanbase known as the “ABC family”. Learn more about how this e-commerce store uses SMS to communicate with its fans, launch new products, and drive mobile purchases.
Read their success storyHow small business SMS boosts customer engagement
Research shows text marketing for small businesses outperforms other channels, including email marketing. That’s why we built our platform to be both scalable, and easy-to-use.
Mass texting
Mass texting helps drive business when you need it the most by making it easy to engage customers with mobile coupons and other promotions. Keep your contacts happy with exclusive deals and see offer redemption rates dramatically increase!- Send a text to large groups of customers with one click
- Include photos, links, videos, etc. even when texting in bulk
- Segment your audience and send mass texts to different groups for added personalization
Text-to-join keywords
Make it easy for customers to subscribe as you work to grow your list and reach a larger audience.- Create a short, easy-to-remember keyword customers can text to your number
- Capture more numbers with a customizable widget on your website
- Place a web sign-up form on your highly trafficked pages
Two-way texting
Your Inbox is a space where you can chat freely with customers and hold real-time conversations.- Use our Click-to-Text button generator to instantly launch your customer’s messaging app
- Cut down on response time with templates aka canned replies
- Manage conversations with features like snooze, notes, and sort
Text marketing works for almost every industry
Frequently asked questions about small business text message marketing
What are the benefits of text marketing for small businesses?
What are the best practices for text marketing?
Is SMS marketing worth it?
Get started with small business text message marketing
Start a free trial of our text message marketing service for small business and experience the benefits of using SMS to bring in new customers.
No credit card. No obligations. No setup fee.