Going to a public place and passively people watching used to be a fun pastime. In the not-so-distant past you might have seen a group of teenage girls giggling while checking out a cute boy from their class or two business professionals walking by, talking to each other about a big client. Today you would still see those same individuals out and about, but instead of looking at their companions, chances are they’d be looking at their smartphones.
With the number of smartphone users estimated to be 224.3 million in the United States, the opportunity for associations and nonprofits to get their messages out to their members on their mobile devices is soaring. Millennials are leading the charge in changing the communication landscape with a Simmons National Consumer Study (NCS) citing that 91% of them are text messaging during a typical week. Seeing the usage of messaging ever increasing, it begs the question, is your organization engaging your members in the way they engage with each other?
SMS Marketing
SMS stands for “Short Message Service” and refers to the text messages that are sent to a phone. Unlike other forms of messaging such as emails or through social media, SMS marketing does not need to be accepted, “liked,” or use a specific app to be received. According to Jamie Tolentino from thenextweb.com, “SMS is the most effective way to reach users, with a 90 percent read rate in minutes.” Users are able to receive messages quickly thus making it ideal for sending concise, time-sensitive content that can be particularly important for organizations who send out a call-to-action or who need to alert their members to an important new regulation. A recent business.com article has stated that “Mobile users respond to call-to-actions in text messages more than any other marketing channel.”
Implementing SMS Strategies
SMS marketing tops that of email and social media marketing with its high engagement rates, but unless your organization has the technological infrastructure to utilize the strategy, the opportunity to capitalize on this engagement is wasted. Many legacy association management solutions (AMS) have difficulty keeping up with the robust marketing platforms that offer the SMS marketing service.
Instead use a true AMS that is designed to be flexible and can integrate easily with bulk broadcast SMS services like Twilio, MessageNet and BulkSMS. Altai’s AMS, built within the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform, seamlessly integrates with these services through our many marketing partners like ClickDimensions and Higher Logic. By integrating the marketing tool to the AMS, organizations can not only ensure that their messages are being successfully transmitted, but they’ll be able to track and measure their members’ engagement as well as interact with their members quicker and in a more meaningful manner.
To learn more about how to implement an SMS strategy in your organization, contact sales@altaisystems.com.
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