SMS marketing is one of the newer and best ways to connect with your audience. Text message marketers often emphasize that the average open rate for SMS is 98%, as evidence of the power of SMS, a power that more and more companies are deciding to tap into.
In 2021, more than 40% of digital marketers and business owners texted their customers using a text messaging service. This year, 55% of companies use SMS marketing for their customers, which indicates a 27% yearly growth in SMS adoption.
Yes, SMS marketing is very effective, but first, you need a subscriber list to market to, and there is no better tool to assist in collecting more text marketing leads than an SMS pop up.
SMS Pop Ups FAQs
An SMS pop up is a lead capture modal that shows on your website with the goal of collecting phone numbers.
Any business that wants to communicate with their prospects and customers via text message. You need to collect their phone numbers first using a list growth strategy like an SMS pop up.
No–well, at least not successfully. Buying phone numbers is a bad idea because you’re buying cold leads that aren’t necessarily aware of your brand or interested in your product. And if they were, you probably annoyed them away. Not to mention communicating with people via text message who didn’t consent to receive your message is illegal.
Yes, the main principles of the GDPR apply to SMS pop ups.
In this post, you’ll learn how to make lead captures to collect SMS subscribers, the different types of SMS pop-ups commonly used, and how Justuno’s SMS marketing templates to design your SMS opt-ins to drive more leads can get you started in just a few minutes. But first, let’s begin with reviewing what SMS marketing is and the most important benefits of using SMS pop ups to get your started.
What Is SMS Marketing?
SMS marketing is a type of direct marketing that involves sending customers text messages with promotional offers, news, and updates. Because of its relative speed and favorable reception, it is a simple and practical method of communicating with customers.
Businesses employ SMS marketing to share promotions, reminders, time-sensitive information, targeted discounts, and order delivery updates. Using these SMS messaging campaigns makes it possible to advertise products while at the same time building customer relationships.
What Is An SMS Pop Up?
An SMS pop up is a lead capture specifically designed to collect phone numbers from website traffic for text message marketing campaigns. This can be done as a single field or as part of a two-step form where their email address is also collected.
Another example of an SMS pop-up is a tab/bubble, which opens up a larger form when clicked. This is great to use for the two-step process where some visitors might want to take a break and browse before committing to getting texts from you.
Justuno’s tabs can remember where a visitor left off, so if they opted in to email, closed the lead capture, and then used the tab to open it again–only the SMS opt-in screen would show! Our customer, BK Beauty, uses this strategy for their email and SMS list growth, and it led to double-digit conversions!
Benefits of Using SMS Pop Ups
Businesses use SMS marketing for several reasons, to raise brand awareness, enhance engagement, improve retention/satisfaction, and increase sales. However, in order to get started with SMS marketing, you need to build a database of SMS subscribers. Adding an SMS pop up to your website to collect opt-ins will help you unlock some of the following benefits:
SMS Pop Ups Help Grow Your SMS/Text Message List Faster
First and foremost, SMS popups help businesses grow their SMS lists. Depending on your focus, you can make this SMS opt-in the prominent lead capture touchpoint on your website, as a secondary choice to your email opt-in, or leverage it later on in the customer journey, like post-purchase, for a value-first approach.
Convert More Website Visitors Using SMS Pop Ups
Growing your text message list faster also means that your brand will be far more likely to actually convert website visitors into buying customers. Need to encourage shoppers to use discount coupons? SMS can help.
According to research, text message coupons are used up to ten times more frequently by consumers than traditional coupons.
By collecting a visitor’s phone number, brands can now nurture that person into becoming a customer rather than taking the chance that they visit a website once and never return. Using this 1:1 channel, brands have numerous opportunities to share exclusive offers, inform subscribers of events, drive sales, and increase lifetime value.
SMS Pop Ups Help Drive More Revenue
Although pop-ups are also used to grow email marketing lists, they can have increasingly bigger impacts on sales through SMS. This is due to the fact that emails frequently remain unopened in inboxes for hours or days, long after a promotion has ended, whereas 90% of text messages are viewed within only three minutes.
In addition, SMS click-through rates surpass those of email marketing. Email has a CTR of just 3.2% on average compared to 36% for SMS marketing. That’s an increase of more than ten times, making SMS marketing a significant source of revenue for e-commerce businesses.
Finally, mobile shopping is on the rise. Owners of smartphones are up to 50% more likely to make an immediate purchase while using their gadgets. During last year’s holiday season, a third of all online purchases came from smartphone users. Therefore, adding a pop-up to collect SMS opt-ins on your website could be the first step to increasing sales and boosting your revenue.
How to Design Your SMS Pop Up
Regardless of whether you are new to SMS marketing or your SMS opt-ins require an upgrade, keep these recommendations in mind while creating an SMS pop up.
1. Offer Something Of Value In Exchange For Visitors’ Phone Numbers
If you are promoting signing up for texts on your website, you should provide something valuable in exchange for signing up. The offer will, of course, vary depending on your business, profit margins, and target audience. But it should be something of high value to acknowledge the more personal level of access you’re requesting than other channel opt-ins like email.
Frequently used incentives for SMS pop-ups by e-commerce brands include higher discounts, exclusive deals, or product recommendation quizzes. Media companies may provide early access to event tickets, breaking news updates, or notifications whenever there is a new contest to enter, whereas nonprofit organizations may provide the most recent information on relevant topics, proposed legislation, or local events.
The key is to establish what value you’re offering in exchange for their phone number and clearly demonstrate why your visitors should care.
2. Write An Effective Call To Action
Before visitors close your SMS popup, get right to the point and explain the benefits of subscribing to text notifications. Be sure to keep your message brief and clear. Here are a few examples of compelling calls to action that you can use as inspiration:
- Become the first to learn about our newest flavor drops. Sign up now!
- Sign up for SMS alerts and 20% off your first order.
- Join us and get weekly updates on events near you
- Save an additional 15% by signing up for SMS alerts.
- Get early access to our annual sale, sign up for texts now
3. Establish Trust By Staying On-Brand
Giving out a mobile phone number is seen as more intimate to some users than joining an email list. For this reason, it is important to establish trust by keeping your SMS pop up design consistent with your website’s branding. Visitors may see a pop-up as spammy if it is badly designed, feels like an afterthought, or doesn’t fit your website, which will decrease their likelihood of signing up.
A fully customized pop-up that adheres to your branding, including images, fonts, and colors, is the best approach to driving more text marketing leads.
Justunon offers complete customization options along with a series of pre-built templates for SMS lead capture. Create the ultimate SMS opt-in experience for your customers with options like:
- Tap-to-text
- Two-step forms
- Gamification
- Tabs
4. Optimize Your Popup For Mobile Phone Traffic
If website visitors are choosing to receive communications on their smartphones or other mobile devices, it’s safe to presume that many of them are opting in when using their mobile devices. In order to convert your mobile site visitors, use responsive pop-ups or develop a targeted pop-up for mobile traffic.
In addition, make sure the SMS pop-up buttons and fields are the proper sizes and distanced from one another so that visitors can easily tap on and type the information out on mobile devices. Once you’ve created your SMS popup, test it on several mobile devices and browsers to make sure it appears as you planned.
Keep these design best practices in mind for mobile SMS pop ups:
- The phone number and/or email address field should be no larger than 280px long
- Fonts on close buttons, CTAs, or important actions should be at least 16 px
- Keep content within 320 x 460 px to accommodate smaller screens like iPhone 4 and 5
- Turn off close on dim click
- Consider using two close buttons, one in the top right corner (usually an X) and one underneath the CTA (usually text)
- Mobile CTAs should have a click height of 44 px (smallest ever should be 40px)
Pro Tip: Want to make your mobile UX 10/10? Check out our Mobile UX Checklist that covers best practices for pop-ups, SMS campaigns, & emails to help you collect more mobile subscribers and effectively convert them.
Another mobile-friendly SMS opt-in experience is using tap-to-text. Specifically available for mobile traffic on SMS pop ups simply tap the CTA once to open a pre-populated message in their texting app and a second to send it. That’s it—they’re now signed up for SMS and ready to get back to shopping.
5. Make Sure Your Pop-Ups Are Fully Compliant
Compliance is an important part of marketing in general, but it is absolutely critical when it comes to SMS marketing. It’s crucial to strictly adhere to the guidelines around subscription, opt-out, and other SMS-specific concerns.
For SMS pop ups these include:
- The SMS field is not required
- Separate screens for SMS collection vs. other channels
- Ability to dismiss the pop-up
- Compliance language & checkboxes
- And much more.
Check with your SMS provider regularly to confirm you’re adhering to the most recent regulations.
The newest change in SMS marketing compliance is that the phone number collection form must now be separate from the email collection form and have its own CTA. This means that in order to be compliant, your pop-up must be multi-step and not require the phone field in order to complete the opt-in flow if you wish to collect both SMS and email addresses.
Carriers may ban message sending for non-compliant brands, or worse; they may face fines starting at $500 and increasing as high as $1500 for each text message sent! Not to mention, if you violate your customers’ right to privacy, you will face not just legal consequences but also lose their trust and hurt your brand reputation.
Your SMS provider should be well-versed in these and more nuanced SMS compliance regulations.
If you’re looking to get started collecting SMS subscribers compliantly, then check out one of our pre-built templates for SMS lead capture in the Justuno platform.
Simply sign in if you’re a customer or start a free 14-day trial to gain access.
How To Target Traffic Coming From SMS Campaigns With Pop Ups
Pop ups aren’t just for collecting SMS opt-ins; they’re also for personalizing the website experience when clicking on your text messages. Using UTMs, you can target traffic coming from each SMS campaignn with personalized messaging like coupon codes, sales countdowns, VIP access, & more.
What To Keep In Mind About SMS Pop Ups
Using SMS pop ups, businesses and organizations can grow their subscriber lists and drive more text marketing conversions. SMS marketing lead captures offer your visitors a simple way to sign up for text messages enabling you to develop a relationship with them over time, driving value and revenue.
Don’t forget to assess the effectiveness of your campaigns using the analytics offered by the supplier of your SMS marketing software and use it to enhance future SMS campaign effectiveness.
With the help of Justuno’s array of conversion tools, you can build the ideal conversion journey that sends the appropriate message to the right customer at the right time. These tools include lead acquisition (including email and SMS pop ups), cart abandonment, exit offers, banners, and more.
Ready to get started with more effective SMS pop ups? Start a free 14-day trial of Justuno to see just how many more SMS opt-ins you could be collecting!
