Retailers Ensure High Engagement Levels In Holiday Shoppers Through Short Code Messaging

Ideally, all retailers lookout for the holiday shoppers season as this offers them a prime opportunity to engage more with the consumers especially with the gift buyers. This in turn helps them in driving more sales and revenue.

They make the rampant use of print, email and online marketing as their promotional efforts. However, the level of engagement possible through mobile applications and discount coupons offered surpasses all other forms. According to market research by GPShopper, about half of the holiday shoppers took advantage of the mobile coupons last year.

Tips For retailers to Engage Holiday Shoppers

Therefore, it will be unwise for you as a retailer if you overlook this aspect and do not make the best use of SMS and MMS marketing. In fact, all digital marketers use shirt codes for this matter to make the most sale during the holidays and even statistics indicate that this form is the most useful and cost effective form of creating brand awareness and establishing a communication with the users today.

Breaking the code

Most of the digital marketers will often claim that they get the maximum benefits due to the incredible power of text messaging. It helps them to reach out to their potential customers in a much better and faster way and the results that they get are far higher than what they expected. However, these privileged marketers number to a meager 33% of all which raises the alarm bell and also the eyebrows of a few marketer.

Using and incorporating this medium in to the marketing efforts is a significant oversight. Considering multiple studies conducted on this subject it is found that the read rate of text message is 100 percent and it is even more effective to establish a connection, start a conversation and generate sales when short codes are used for this purpose.

Ideally, if you stick to the old school method of email marketing you will hardly get more than 21 percent open rate on an average as per the survey reports of Mail Chimp.

Facts on short codes

According to the marketing experts, the short code messaging is believed to be the ultimate in SMS or MMS text marketing format that can provide you with optimal results. The other features and facts of short code messaging are:

These type of messages are endorsed by AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint
They are also known as Common Short Codes.
All these codes range between five and six digits and
Can be highly effective when these are used for mobile marketing campaigns.

Apart from the business purpose, Common Short Codes are also used by several other purposes and by different entities. Available for over a decade, these code messages are best known form of effective and result driven mobile marketing and are used by different events and show organizers as well such as:

American Idol and America’s Got Talent for live audience voting and
By several charitable organizations such as the American Red Cross to collect donations for specific disaster relief.

Common short codes enable the consumers to opt-in so that they can receive the message and other useful information. Retailers and brands use short codes for the promotion of their brands as these are safe and more secure to use and at the same time keeps the consumers protected against any irksome spam.

In addition to the above features, use of short codes provides high delivery accuracy. This is due to that fact that there are fewer interventions and network restrictions as compared with other messaging options.

The good news about using short codes in messaging campaigns is that:

The consumers do not need to download any app
Get it on any type of mobile device
Use any other kind of technology
Have specific knowledge about reading itor
Know how to participate in SMS text marketing.

In shirt, common short codes provide a simple, easy, seamless and secure method to get engage with more and more customers. These are much easier to implement than implementing any other customer interaction solution or building a dedicated app.

Help to retailers

This type of short code messaging can benefit the retailers and brands in a few distinct ways especially during the holiday seasons to boost up their footfall and sales.

Mobile coupons:

These short codes act as checkout-ready mobile coupons and are much more effective in the holiday season as compared to the old school circulars, coupons, print ads with flyers, and newspaper ads.
These more tech-savvy troll online prevents the consumers from tearing out an ad or coupon for safekeeping prior to heading towards the mall. They do not have to search on the internet for online discount coupons saving their time and efforts.
Receiving a SMS text on the phone is much more convenient these ways and more significantly helps in establishing better communications down the road.

Black Friday offers:

Consumers expect to make huge savings on Black Friday but due to the online competitors, retailers cannot make the best use of it. Consequently, they experience a decline in their sales. Using the short codes they can SMS special pre-Black Friday offers and sales events to boost consumer interest and their sales margins.
With added offers of exclusive mobile promotions along with the sales events, retailers can add another layer to the engagement level of the consumers who subscribe via a short code for in-store shopping during these specific times. They can avoid long lines and you can lure them to your store and keep them away from your competitors.

Gift ideas:

Using short codes will help the retailers to drive more awareness among customers looking for extra savings. This will lead to a grown database of consumers so that engagement can be maintained even after the holiday season is over.
Retailers can also overcome the challenging aspects of holiday shopping which pertains to finding the right gift. Common short code scan provide gift ideas on a more generic description of age, sex or interests.

Lastly, common short codes can incentivize holiday shopping loyalty program subscriptions.