Free and paid SMS marketing: which solution should you choose for your mobile campaigns?

90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes of receipt. With a total read rate of 95%, SMS is a genuine communication tool that is both inexpensive and highly effective. SMS marketing, also known as " Push SMS ", enables any company to automatically send mass messages to customers and prospects at low cost.

Are you looking for a free solution for sending SMS marketing messages and giving your marketing campaigns a boost? Here we take a look at which SMS sending platforms will give you the best results.

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5 steps to a successful SMS marketing campaign

To ensure that your SMS marketing campaign is a success, here are the various steps and best practices to follow:

1. Define the aim of your SMS campaign

First of all, you need to determine the objective of your SMS campaign. Do you want to generate new leads? Boost your sales? Communicate about your new offer? Retain or recontact your customers?

Your initial objective will determine the content of your SMS and the actions you need to take to achieve your goal.

2. Import and segment your customer database

Once you have imported your contact data, mobile marketing allows you to segment your database according tovarious characteristics:

• location
• age, language
• language,
• buying habits
• etc.

This will enable you to target your audience more effectively and fine-tune your SMS marketing campaigns.

3. Personalise the content of your SMS messages

Segmenting your contact base will then enable you to tailor your message to the characteristics of your different targets. Between SMS media and text messages, you can add value according to the specific needs and expectations of your customers.

4. Send mass or individual SMS messages via the internet

Once your groups of contacts and your messages are ready, you can start sending mass SMS messages, to target as many contacts as you like, or individual SMS messages, to automate the sending to one person at a given time.

5. Analyse the performance of your campaign

Finally, analyse the performance of your SMS mailing using the various performance indicators:

• deliverability rate
• open rate
• conversion rate
• unsubscribe rate.

What free SMS marketing tools are there?

SMS marketing is a high-transformation sales channel, with a low investment and a high rate of return. So it's an e-commerce marketing solution that doesn't cost very much in the first place.

You'll be hard pressed to find a free or freemium SMS marketing tool. On the other hand, most SMS sending solutions for professionals offer a certain number of free SMS messages to test their services (sometimes up to 100 free SMS messages).

So you'll have no choice but to turn to a professional SMS platform, which will also offer you a host of features for managing your SMS marketing campaigns from start to finish.

Professional solutions for sending SMS messages

Tracking techniques are more limited in SMS marketing (compared with e-mailing), so it's essential to send your commercial SMS messages using an SMS platform that manages delivery receipts and unsubscriptions ("STOP" SMS).

Here are 6 of the best business SMS tools available on the market today.

AllMySMS

AllMySms is your ally for multi-channel marketing automation campaigns , whatever the volume of messages you send. The solution offers all the functionalities associated with SMS marketing: SMS, voice messages on answering machines, transactional SMS (notifications), mail-to-SMS, etc.

AllMySms is offered at a single price, regardless of the number of features added. Only the number of SMS messages counts. The tool also includes API connectors with Salesforce and Zapier, for example.

allmysms

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Streamline Communications with Bulk SMS Solutions

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Digitaleo

Digitaleo is an SMS marketing solution designed specifically for retailers and e-tailers. It offers over 500 templates for your marketing communications. Your contact database (or a database you can rent) is intuitively segmented for precise targeting.

Digitaleo also has an integrated marketing assistant for relaunching at key times (Christmas, Mother's and Father's Day, Valentine's Day, etc.). It only takes a few minutes to launch an effective SMS marketing campaign!

Digitaleo

+200 reviews

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Comprehensive Marketing Automation Solution

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iSendPro Telecom

Implement marketing and transactional strategies with this powerful platform. In addition to SMS marketing functionalities, powerful routing maximises the deliverability of your SMS messages.

iSend Pro Telecom includes high added-value tools for your SMS messages (at no extra cost): insertion of a link, scheduling of dispatches, publication on social networks, for example. The tool is 100% French; your data is hosted and secured in France.

iSend Pro Telecom

+200 reviews

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Advanced Bulk Messaging Solution for Businesses

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Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is more than a professional SMS solution: it is a complete digital marketing platform (creation of multi-channel campaigns, search engine marketing, emailing, etc.). It includes Mobile Studio, a complete service dedicated to SMS.

With Mobile Studio, you can create and send perfectly targeted messages in just a few clicks, using personalised templates. And thanks to analyses, you can send your SMS messages at the most opportune moment, to enhance the customer experience and the purchasing act.

Marketing Cloud

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Email Marketing Software

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SMS Sending

Published by Commify, SMS Envoi is ideal for managing your SMS marketing campaigns, whatever your business. This solution has the advantage of being feature-rich (bulk messages, content library, database rental, segmentation, etc.), intuitive and competitively priced.

What's more, you can use SMS Send either directly from the platform or via APIs that connect it to your tools.

Finally, take advantage of Commify's high-quality support, including a dedicated contact person.

Twilio Messaging

Twilio Messaging is a full-featured SMS marketing software package: text message sending , SMS templates and media messages, personalised sending, etc. You can also use an alphanumeric sender name, rather than a generic telephone number, for your promotional SMS messages.

You can communicate more effectively with your prospects thanks to the integrated webmail and instant messaging management modules. And to top it all off, the solution is quick to set up, thanks to the many help files and tutorials available online!

Twilio Messaging

+200 reviews

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Streamlined Messaging Solutions for Seamless Connectivity

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Comparative table

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Conclusion

SMS Marketing is an excellent option for any company wishing to move away from "traditional" Direct Marketing techniques (postal mailing), which are no longer really satisfactory. SMS mailing is an innovative and effective communication solution that is also very inexpensive. But it's important to prepare your SMS campaign well in advance to guarantee the success of your actions.

To do this, you can rely on professional bulk SMS sending software such as AllMySms, Digitaleo, iSendPro and Twilio Messaging, which will help you increase your effectiveness and boost your ROI (return on investment).