SMS marketing is the practice of sending marketing messages to customers by text message. SMS marketing makes it easy to communicate directly with customers and send out newsletters, time-sensitive offers, updates, alerts, special deals or announcements, etc. with just a few clicks. It is an effective way to build long-lasting connections with your customers. (You can check out our “SMS Marketing Strategy 101” article for more information).
Yes, it is easy, it is cheap, it is direct, and it is effective… It’s a no-brainer that you – as a marketer or a business owner – should invest in SMS marketing. But of course, you can’t just grab your phone and start sending messages. You need to use an SMS marketing platform. When it comes to SMS marketing platforms, there are lots of different options out there, but here are our 5 suggestions:
1- SimpleTexting: SimpleTexting is one of the most popular SMS marketing services today. If you want to run marketing campaigns quickly, it’s the best option – because the user interface is easy to learn, with everything accessible from the main screen.
With SimpleTexting you can:
- send messages and alerts to everyone on your contact list in bulk.
- easily segment your contact list in a bid to launch a better targeted text marketing campaign.
It also offers an SMS Template Generator, designed to inspire, and streamline text marketing campaigns. SimpleTexting supports 2-way messaging, autoresponders, link shortening, great analytics and multiple user access.
Price: Plans start at $29/month to send up to 500 SMS and receive unlimited messages
2- EZ Texting: EZTexting is a leading name in SMS marketing. With having some of the best onboarding and help docs, it is suitable for non-technical business owners. In every step it makes it very clear what to do.
The most impressive feature offered by EZ Texting is, its Shutterstock integration. EZ Texting users have access to more than 20 million high-resolution, royalty-free Shutterstock images. If you want to engage your recipients with more eye-catching marketing materials, you can add these fully customizable images to a predesigned MMS marketing campaign template.
EZ Texting supports 2-way communication and mass texting, importing contacts in seconds, QR code generator, link shortener, Pay-as-you-go pricing, and message/sign-up form templates. The customization aspect is also a plus, as it’s easy to make your recipients feel special by sending them personalized messages.
Price: Plans start from $25/month for 200 text messages, one textable number, and one signup keyword.
3- Infobip: Infobip is a web-based communication platform for companies of different sizes. It offers companies tools for customer support and engagement via various channels. And their solutions include SMS.
Features of Infobip SMS solution:
- With easy-to-use workflows you can automate messages and improve customer support.
- You can segment and target customers based on patterns and past behaviors to boost engagement.
- Open two-way communication with customers in more countries than any other provider.
- You can send SMS messages longer than 160 characters in any country and any language.
- You can send SMS messages at the perfect moment with scheduled messaging.
- Single unified API to integrate existing business workflows and build efficient SMS campaigns.
- You can send promotional SMS, SMS reminders, SMS notifications and transactional SMS via Infobip SMS solution.
4- BulkSMS: BulkSMS provides application-to-person (A2P) messaging services to all size of businesses, public benefit organizations and individuals. Using this platform, users can quickly deploy short and important SMS text messages.
This SMS platform provides several products for sending and receiving SMS messages. Once registered on the BulkSMS platform, a user has access to all of them.
With BulkSMS, you can:
- Send SMS from Web. You can access your online account from any web browser.
- Send SMS from desktop SMS software. You can manage your SMS communications from your desktop.
- Receive incoming messages directly from your customers.
- Send bulk SMS text messages using their IOS mobile APP.
- Get your own 5-digit short code.
- Send SMSes automatically from your application of choice using their API.
5- Twilio: Twilio includes powerful segmentation and automation, as well as APIs and integrations to connect SMS to any of your websites, applications, or workflows and these features makes it a complete text marketing software solution. It is great for any company looking for robust analytics to back its text message marketing.
Twilio is the most developer-friendly text messaging platform and mostly suitable for large enterprises and development teams due to its huge array of advanced features.
It offers various APIs, so companies can build SMS messaging, phone number redirection, and dozens of similar features into their own apps and services.
Twilio’s versatile SMS APIs let you create virtually any programmed text messaging you want while connecting it with your other business applications and websites. Herogi supports SMS sending functionality via multiple vendors and Twilio is one of them. You can easily integrate with Herogi and use your existing Twilio account to send SMS.
Twilio features include:
- Option to use Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Google Business messages.
- Communication workflow design tools.
- Programmable messaging API and conversations API allow you to send messages and engage in two-way conversations with customers.
- Short codes for sending mass texts and for collecting phone numbers.
- Customer data analysis tools.
- Also, they win the hearts of most developers by making their APIs and short codes available in several different coding languages.
Price: Text messages start at $0.0079/message sent and received, plus there’s an additional carrier fee of around $0.003/text on messages you send. Dedicated phone numbers start at $1.15/month.