When we talk about bulk messaging, generally, marketers go with bulk SMS messages, and the one who knows the various powerful features of WhatsApp leverages WhatsApp bulk messages.
Whatsapp and SMS messages are both powerful tools when applied for marketing purposes. But to meet the customer’s demand with technological development, Whatsapp stands out compared to SMS.
SMS is the most traditional form of marketing and is used by almost all marketers apart from other marketing procedures. SMS features are also advanced enough to meet the marketer’s needs for the time being.
Many such platforms have evolved, providing excellent tips and tricks to their clients to engage their target audience easily.
Whatsapp is the most used social media and messaging platform globally, and it’s also a powerful tool for marketing. Its features can be used for various business use cases, such as customer support, customer engagement, upselling, cross-selling, and much more.
The primary benefit of Whatsapp over SMS is its two-way communication and offers scope for the customers to ask queries and clear their doubts and enhance interaction directly.
This article focuses on both WhatsApp bulk messaging and bulk SMS messaging and when and how they are beneficial to businesses for marketing purposes.
Let’s understand them separately.
Bulk SMS Messages for Business
Bulk SMS messages permit businesses to communicate with customers, and you can even send promotional messages or take surveys. On average, the SMS open rate is also 94%; SMS marketing will make you relax because the probability of recipients reading it is high. There is no possibility of your message getting crowded by emails or waiting for the internet connection to receive your message on recipient mobiles. Moreover, applying a one-to-many strategy to your SMS marketing campaigns can assist you to save time, money, and effort while developing campaigns without compromising outcomes.
Brands generally use bulk SMS messages to send various types of content like promotions and deals, appointment reminders, shipping updates, surveys, feedback, product releases, emergency updates, OTP, and more!
Using bulk SMS will help you engage more with customers and improve customer loyalty. But remember that you must take consent from the customers before sending messages to your customers. And your recipients must be aware of what type of content they will receive by subscribing to your business.
Let’s discuss some more advantages of bulk SMS here
Sending bulk messages permits you to reach and engage many recipients at once. It can be well used to spread awareness of a limited-time offer, product release, company updates, etc. You can easily send messages to highly targeted lists (hundreds and thousands). You can even target generic people with a general message. For example: announcing discounts on sales.
You can even send targeted messages to your intended audience by specifying their first name. For example, the business wants to send a message to a list of its loyal female customers.
Bulk SMS messages are a great way to market your product and connect with your customers. But you must remember that the recipients don’t want to fill their inboxes with your service messages. So be careful of the frequency of sending only once or twice a week. Otherwise, your recipients may block you or consider your business spam. The other important advantage of bulk SMS messages is that they support an OTP facility, which WhatsApp doesn’t.
Some Bulk SMS Sending Practices:
Write Engaging Content:
As SMS text has limitations on a number of characters, you must focus on the purpose of writing while writing a message. Your message must be conveyed to the customer in the same way that it’s engaging to the customer and relevant to the customer. Choose words that fit the character’s length.
Say It Directly:
Don’t drag the message or try to take the long route to explain things, because you need to convey your message in a limited number of characters and also fulfil your purpose.
CTA/Links:
If you want to explain something more and are restricted by the character length, then using a call to action or adding short forms of URL links will help you. You can provide the information resource link, contact us page link, call us button, etc.
SMS also has some limitations.
Bulk SMS messages have some limitations on the number of characters they can send. Here are the details of sending Bulk SMS limitations.
Despite having so many advantages with SMS, it still can’t compete with Whatsapp’s features because there are so many features in Whatsapp that people generally love to use. For example, in SMS, you don’t have the facility to ‘read a status’ or ‘no rich media can be sent. Sending rich media is one of the most attractive features of WhatsApp that you can’t try with SMS.
Now let’s know the Whatsapp Bulk message service in detail-
What is WhatsApp Bulk Messaging Service?
WhatsApp bulk messaging might be a new concept for most marketers, but the features of WhatsApp have made it an excellent platform to achieve marketing goals in various ways. You can convert your WhatsApp business to a WhatsApp business API account, which comes with features such as.
1. Business Profile
2. Quick Replies
3. Automatic Greeting Message
4. Automatic Away Message
5. Contact Labels
6. Message Statistics
7. Catalogs
8. Interactive Business Message
9. List Messages and Reply Buttons
10. Facebook Shops Integration
11. WhatsApp Payments
12. WhatsApp Business Directory
These features provide the marketers with new opportunities to engage more with the customers. Like SMS, WhatsApp has gained popularity in the marketing market, and Whatsapp has made a smooth buying experience for your customers with its excellent features.
However, the service of WhatsApp is different from SMS in bulk. With its 2 billion active users and widely being used, WhatsApp has opened wider opportunities for marketers to reach, engage, and attract their audience. All you require here is a WhatsApp business API account and knowledge of various features and how you can use it in a customized way for your business. WhatsApp broadcast is one more feature of WhatsApp to send bulk messages.
With time, WhatsApp improves various features that increase multiple opportunities for marketers. But, as marketers are unaware of the different power sources and lack experience in practising WhatsApp marketing, they still use SMS.
WhatsApp has some limitations for sending messages, such as no promotional messages requiring message approval from WhatsApp before being sent to customers.
Advantages of WhatsApp bulk messages
WhatsApp bulk messaging has so many advantages in one or another way. The businesses using WhatsApp bulk messages are gaining and meeting their marketing goals.
WhatsApp is free to download, and almost all mobile users have it installed. So you might not need to worry about not delivering your message to your customer. All you need is a proper plan, and to follow tips and tricks to deliver messages to the customers.
To hit your WhatsApp bulk messages, you need to send messages that portray your message clearly, concisely and comprehensively.
Here are some of the practices you can do.
- Sending video messages to your customers through WhatsApp bulk messages.
- An informative PDF file that explains all your business can be sent to your customers through WhatsApp bulk messages.
- You can share so much information about your business through WhatsApp bulk messages instead of written form, using images and GIFs.
- Whatsapp permits you to send messages with an unlimited number of characters, which is restricted in bulk SMS messages.
Limitations of WhatsApp bulk messages
It’s surprising to know that WhatsApp doesn’t allow you to send promotional messages. However, you can find some ways to promote your products or services in one or other ways instead of promoting them directly.
You need an active internet connection for WhatsApp messages.
WhatsApp needs an active internet connection on your customer’s mobile phone to receive messages from your business. There is no need to worry about that as almost all have an active internet connection. And there are no chances of your message being unreceived. Sooner or later, it will reach your customer.
Customers can block businesses if they don’t want to receive messages. Use these three tips before sending your message to avoid being blocked by your customers.
- Don’t use a new number- It must be at least 3-6 months old, and your customers are well aware of your number. It will help you identify and not consider spam or any marketers.
- Choose a maximum of 45 receivers at a time- Don’t try to send messages to the entire customer list simultaneously. Sending in equal segments will not consider you a marketer who wants to promote their products or services.
- Your message must not be promotional- Choose the writing style that conveys your message to your customers and make them reply to your message simultaneously. It should not look like a promotional message on WhatsApp.
You can’t underestimate the power of WhatsApp bulk messages for your business. As on WhatsApp, you have billions of active users, and the list of your targeted audience is also covered in that.
If you make your customers reply to your message, the chances of being banned by WhatsApp will be less. You can easily promote your product or services without writing them in a promotional tone. Being smart while writing WhatsApp bulk messages will help you convey your message to your customer and make them reply to your message.
Carefully practising the above tips will help you to avoid being blocked by your customer and meet the needs of your loyal customers who need your products or services.
You can see how Whatsapp bulk messages overtake bulk SMS messages to communicate and interact with your customers, grab their attention, and engage with them for a long time.
Final Thoughts
The services of Whatsapp and bulk SMS messages both have their advantages and limitations for communicating and interacting with the intended audience.
Though Whatsapp also can be used for OTP use cases, SMS still works better as it doesn’t need the internet. But Whatsapp overtakes SMS in most of the use cases.
Since Whatsapp doesn’t grab the attention of the marketers as it’s in its beginning stage, people generally prefer to go with SMS. One of the other reasons is that the cost of Whatsapp is a little high compared to SMS. However, the marketers who are already using WhatsApp’s bulk messaging features in marketing are gaining a good ROI compared to SMS. Definitely, in the future, WhatsApp bulk messaging will overtake bulk SMS messaging because of its excellent features. And we assume marketers will move from bulk SMS messaging to Whatsapp bulk messaging to meet the customer demands.
The thing to consider here is you must analyze which service features will fulfill your business purpose. Moreover, you need to focus on some tips and tricks in practicing on both platforms to make it successful for your intended audience every time.
Hope you have got a clear idea about SMS and WhatsApp bulk messaging service. You can contact our Smatbot team for further assistance on how you can utilize both for your business. We are glad to assist you round the clock.