There are plenty of marketing avenues to choose all of which promise to increase your repeat business. The majority of them however have extremely low return rates. Emails remain unopened and unread or worse, are reported as spam. Facebook and Twitter posts are ignored or have very low return rates. Online advertising is expensive and wastes a lot of clicks.

Text Message Marketing, on the other hand, is entirely unique because it reaches your customer or potential customer 100% of the time and is opened and read almost immediately.

Here are some tips on how to use text message marketing effectively.

1. Market To Your Existing Customers

Text message marketing can be used very effectively to generate repeat business with existing customers, when used correctly. By getting your current customers to opt-in or text in to receive messages from you in the form of special offers, coupons and updates you will be able to maintain your business relationship to the customer and generate more repeat business. You can also establish trust by sending out surveys to your existing customer base. You will create customer loyalty and gain customer insights which might provide actionable data to further strengthen your core business.

2. Give Something In Return

Coupons are not very exciting. The average return rate of coupons on coupons is less than 10%. Mobile coupon redemption is generally better and has a much higher read rate than anything else. Sending a generic coupon just isn’t very exciting to people as an incitement to opt-in to your program. The best way to encourage your customers to participate is to offer a free gift. When you give something in return you establish a much stronger bond and participation level with your customer.

3. Go Viral and Spread The Word

Getting your existing customer to tell their friends about you is the best way to successfully generate more sales and acquire more participants in your text message marketing program. Word of mouth advertising is the best advertising.

The best way to do this is to provide an incentive for your customer to share to their friends. The eTEXTco marketing system makes it easy for your customers to share coupons and marketing messages with their friends. You can also have contests to get customers to share your info and acquire new customer sign-ups.