How SMS marketing continues to evolve via AI

As e-commerce businesses are growing at an impressive rate, SMS marketers look for the most innovative ways of customer acquisition at a reduced cost.

By Tushar Agarwal

SMS is exceeding different forms of marketing communication including social media messages and emails. It is mainly because consumers are moving to mobile purchases with online shoppers in India expected to reach 220 million by 2025, as per the recent statistics. To tap into the opportunity to interact and connect with consumers, brands are leveraging the potential of Short Message Service (SMS).

Being one of the fastest ways to interact, consumers engage with SMSs much faster than any other channel as it takes 90 seconds to answer a text than 90 minutes or more to respond to an email. In the present digitally-driven world, SMS marketing has proven efficiency in reaching out to customers for new product launches, seasonal sales and offers, etc.

New-age SMS marketing

Over the years, SMS marketing has undergone tremendous evolution due to the widespread adoption of technological advancement. Latest technologies such as Artificial Intelligence has come into play to transform the way retailers interact with their customers. In simple terms, AI helps the brand offer the right products to the right customers at the right time. This increases return on investment, enhances customer experience and improves the efficiency of resources.

With the inclusion of AI, marketers can up the game of SMS marketing strategy in the most innovative way. They can leverage the abilities of AI to analyse customer data and create promotional texts for a more personalised customer experience. Further, with accuracy in the forecast of individual customer behaviour, brands are able to generate more profits for their business.
AI facilitates insights on consumer behaviour

AI with Machine Learning successfully spots consumer behaviour and provide marketers with insights on consumer preferences and their purchase habits. Unlike traditional methods, AI is constantly improving and anticipating consumer trends based on data. This empowers brands to prioritise relevant content in drafting text messages to attract the right consumer, improve the customer journey and increase sales. This also works as predictive analysis that focuses on the segmentation of content and products for consumers based on their behaviour. This ultimately turns SMS marketing into a tool to individualize interactions with customers.

Enables smart communication

Communication is ever-evolving. However, the key to achieving success is practising smart communication with the latest technology tools. For instance – integration of chatbots and virtual numbers to engage people in human-like conversations. This automates messaging services by sending an appropriate and pre-decided response to the user. More and more digitally-driven and forward moving companies are integrating AI-powered chatbots to create an impeccable SMS marketing strategy. According to a report – since 2019, the usage of chatbots as a brand communication channel increased by almost 92 percent and 24 percent of buyers used chatbots to communicate with businesses in 2020.

Optimises cost and other resources

Automation in SMS marketing plays a crucial role in bringing down operational costs. It reduces the requirement of manpower which means less dependency on human resources – low salary expenditure. Traditionally, brands relied on marketing staff to respond to customers. However, the conventional concept came with certain limitations and resulted in late responses. With the inclusion of AI-based chatbots or virtual assistants, brands can be available on duty 24/7 without any break. This not only enhances the brand’s communication with the customer but also reduces unnecessary costs whilst increasing revenue.

Seamless integration

Traditionally, reaching out to thousands of customers was not easy. It required a huge amount of money, time and effort to deliver the relevant marketing message. However, the convenience of AI integration can help brands in crafting bulk marketing strategies with reduced time and cost. Furthermore, it handles the response and solves problems of customers in the minimum time by gathering regular feedback and information on customers’ questions. As a result, marketers can automate the response accordingly.

As e-commerce businesses are growing at an impressive rate, SMS marketers look for the most innovative ways of customer acquisition at a reduced cost. Backed by AI, SMS marketing strategy is continuing to evolve and personalised consumer experience will become the key to messaging in 2021.

The author is the managing director of KYI Solutions. Views expressed are personal.

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook