But your marketing doesn’t have to.
It is not our official position that intelligent retargeting and look-alike modelling don’t have their places. There are certainly use cases where both provide immense marketing value to both retailers and brands. Our position is that a text message marketing strategy is just as potent. And with the ongoing privatization of data, infinitely more valuable to retailers.
Today, user privacy protections now in place by Apple and the upcoming changes from Google prevent digital retargeting as we once knew it. Facebook advertising isn’t going to offer retailers the same efficacy and reliability it once could. In terms of paid advertising, we expect to see this trend replicated across all social media marketer channels.
But the market’s loss of that consumer access doesn’t need to be your loss. In fact, by investing in direct marketing now, you’ll be way ahead of your competitors as Google’s new privacy restrictions become active. As Europe continues to roll out it’s GDPR initiatives, the same will apply for every other tech giant you may be relying on for consumer data.
The data shared about you across search engines will not be as readily available going forward as it’s been looking back. That said, the loss of traditional marketing channels across big tech’s reach doesn’t need to affect you as much as it may affect your competitors.
That’s because with SMS marketing, your audience, aka your loyal customers, belongs solely to you.
Building your direct marketing list typically doesn’t happen overnight. Although the Stemless integration on top of most retail point of sales systems can feel pretty quick. But the effort spent here in obtaining every phone number means that your audience is 100% yours. Your competitors cannot get access this valuable first-party data unless you give it to them.
3 Reasons to invest in organic marketing
- Building a sizeable customer list can be simply if you use automation
- Primary data is the most valuable type of data
- This proprietary data is yours alone, your competitors can’t access it without your permission.
Oftentimes, retailers and brands are under the impression that to grow their customer lists, they need to invest heavily in content marketing and facebook offers. These items certainly do help, but there are easier ways to build text message campaign lists directly from your POS (point of sale) system.
Stemless has invested in the tools it takes to run intelligent retail text message marketing campaigns with minimal effort. Our custom landing pages, loyalty programs, and text-to-join keywords mean you can always be working on building your list without lifting a finger.
Secondly, the thing about your consumer data is that it’s the best kind of consumer data – first party. You didn’t buy this from anywhere else, an algorithm didn’t extrapolate what it thinks your customers are like based on guesswork – this information is what your customers are telling you about themselves: who they are, where they live, what they like, and even what they don’t. It’s a marketer’s gold mine – and it’s 100% yours and exclusively yours (see first paragraph above).
This opens up a goldmine of personalized marketing opportunities. Because every client record has PII (personally identifiable information), you’re no longer beholden to faceless retargeting campaigns. You can focus on a digital marketing strategy with a rich customer experience.
Lastly, this bounty of first party, 100% owned-by-you data lets you do something that retargeting claims it does but can’t. Now you can personalize your messaging to each potential consumer in your audience.
Have you ever purchased a product or service online and then had that product follow you around for the next week? It is no consumer’s dream for a retailer to target them with the same item they just purchased. So much for retargeting’s claim of personalization across digital channels. How specific can an ad be if it didn’t even know your consumer already bought something?
Can text message marketing help you?
Simply collecting current and potential customer phone numbers and email addresses isn’t going to do much for your marketing initiatives. But pairing a text marketing strategy with integrations to provide real-time consumer data and a robust loyalty program to reward customers and you’ll be sending texts through text campaigns that will open up a world of possibility in terms of revenue generation and revenue growth.
The bottom line
It’s always tough when a strategy you’ve been working on stops because of forces outside of your control. But this challenge offers e-tailers and retailers new opportunities that are more fruitful and powerful. Ultimately, these opportunities will convert into much higher returns.
For more information, reach out us to see how we can help you effortlessly build your SMS list so that you can harvest the power of your own data.
