In the first of a new regular column, Dean Hayward, Sales and Marketing Manager at NMBS, explores some of the challenges merchants face when running their business and reveals how NMBS’ Business Services can help.
Builders’ merchants have many different marketing channels through which to communicate to their customers. Email marketing and online banner ads now sit alongside direct mailings, leaflets and brochures as common ways to advertise new products, sales and promotional days. However, in the rush to embrace the digital world, another marketing channel is often forgotten.
SMS Text Messages are, in fact, a valuable way to advertise to customers. This is particularly so for builders’ merchants, whose customers are always on the move rather than spending their days sat behind a desk.
In fact, modern builders, plumbers and tradespeople often run their entire businesses on their phones, whether that’s ordering products, arranging customer visits, or searching for their nearest merchant branch. This makes text messages one of the quickest ways for a merchant to get information to their customers.
While tradespeople do also get emails on their phones, the sheer volume of emails people now receive mean many are often deleted unopened, with important business messages getting lost in the process.
Marketing emails have a typical open rate of around 24%, meaning three-quarters of all business emails are simply deleted without being read. Yet open rates for SMS text messages are an impressive 98% if the message is from a recognised sender, according to research carried out by research company Gartner.
Digital Marketing Magazine, meanwhile, has found that 75% of people would like to have offers sent to them via SMS, with mobile offers redeemed 10 times more often than printed ones. This shows why more builders’ merchants should consider making SMS text messages a central part of their wider marketing campaigns.
To help NMBS members take advantage of this valuable sales channel, our SMS Text Message Service allows them to communicate quickly and cost effectively with their customer base.
First launched in 2011, the SMS service is often used to raise awareness of trade days and breakfast mornings. Merchants can send out promotional messages to their entire customer database, or to certain groups within that data. For example, they could send details of a new branch opening to existing customers within a certain geographical area, or let their roofing customers know of a particular promotion or supplier breakfast morning that’s taking place.
Users can send messages to up to 5,000 customers at a time. The NMBS SMS Text Messaging service costs a flat fee of 3p per text, which is significantly less than many merchants currently pay. Some of our members have reported paying two or three times that for SMS marketing, before making the switch to our service.
Merchants simply create a spreadsheet of their customers’ mobile phone numbers, then upload it to the NMBS website ready for sending. After entering the text message they wish to send — anything up to 144 characters — merchants can either send the message out immediately, or schedule it to be sent out at a designated date or time if they want to coincide with a particular event as part of a wider marketing campaign.
Although the communication is sent out from NMBS, it will appear as if it has been sent directly from the merchant, with users are able to specify the sender’s name and mobile number.
Any NMBS member interested in finding out more about its SMS Text Message Service should contact Joshua Agar on 0116 261 4926, or email joshua.agar@nmbs.co.uk.
For more information on becoming an NMBS member, visit www.nmbs.co.uk.
