Texting is an essential part of our everyday communication. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t own a mobile device that allows them to instantly communicate with a colleague, loved one, or friend in a matter of seconds. With this immediate accessibility to another person at our fingertips, it provides big opportunities for businesses to leverage engaging with their customers using SMS. 91% of consumers would opt-in for text messages from their favorite brands while 58% of consumers believe this is the most effective way for a brand to communicate with them. SMS marketing allows you to send marketing messages via text that your customers can opt-into via subscription and they can be used to promote a variety of content like discounts, surveys, remarketing, and personalized promotions.
If your business is looking to adopt SMS marketing into your strategy this year, then you want to help simplify the process of managing internal communications, customer data, and data organization with SMS integrations. SMS integrations connect businesses to popular apps which allow teams to leverage data from their existing platforms and integrate text messaging into the existing workflows. There are plenty of SMS integration tools on the market, but identifying the best choice for your business can be a bit of a head scratcher, so we narrowed down the list for you!
Integrations can provide several benefits to your SMS marketing strategy by connecting your business to your customers. SMS integrations can have a variety of features such as send bulk sms online, automation for better efficiency, visibility and tracking, and secure delivery, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Short links help to create clear, concise, and effective communication with your customers without cluttering up the character count or overselling the message. They allow you to tailor and brand your message seamlessly which can increase the chances of your link getting clicked. All of this is done with the help of our popular Bitly API which helps you maximize the full power of each link you create. Today we’re going to break down how Twilio, Salesforce, and our Bitly API integrations can help improve your SMS marketing strategies.
Twilio
Twilio is a communications platform which includes SMS text messaging among its communication tools. Its API features two methods of using SMS via their Programmable Messaging API which delivers SMS alerts, notifications, and reminders or providing customer care with the conversation API. Twilio manages the complexity of global carrier networks with industry-leading features like voice and pushing notifications that allow you to grow with your audience organically. They support high-volume global senders for international communications and their innovative platform is designed to scale with your business regardless of how quick your customer growth is.
By connecting Twilio to Bitly, SMS messages to your customers include unique links personalized for each customer. Airlines connect passengers to updated flight information in their mobile apps. Clothing retailers send branded, targeted sales promotions to preferred clients. Healthcare companies send login verification links for secure communications. And after sending a link in an SMS campaign, you can go to Bitly to see exactly how many people are clicking links and how they are engaging with your campaign.
After connecting Twilio to Bitly, you can broadcast text messages with personalized links to your customers. Each link can direct each customer to unique pages or screens on your site or in your mobile apps.
If you are interested in learning more about how to integrate Twilio with your Bitly account, visit our help center.
Salesforce (Mobile Studio/Mobile Connect)
Salesforce is a CRM platform with a large ecosystem of products and apps, so you might be using Salesforce Social Studio, Salesforce Pardot, or any one (or more) of the other Salesforce products. Salesforce jumped into the SMS market with their Mobile Studio which helps brands communicate with their customers on their mobile devices whether it’s a personalized messages, push notification, chat message or SMS message.
Mobile Studio can help improve your brand’s mobile experience through geolocation, which helps you to tailor content relevant to your customer’s location and interests. Salesforce also helps optimize your mobile marketing strategy with a “buy online, pick up in store” option which has been a crucial way to ease the hesitancy some customers may have about in store shopping in light of the pandemic.
The first step in integrating Bitly with a Salesforce product is understanding which products and features you are using, and if those products include a built-in connection to Bitly. Once you identify which versions or products you use, you can always build an integration using Bitly’s API and a Salesforce API. Creating your own API integration will give you the most control over shortening links and utilizing click metrics with your Salesforce data.
API integrations with Bitly are built by developers to do things like creating and sending short links in bulk or pulling in click metrics, so you will need someone with that technical knowledge and experience. With the right technical resources, any Salesforce product can be connected to Bitly.
If you are interested in learning more about how to integrate Salesforce with your Bitly account, visit our help center.
The Bitly API
Bity’s API enables our customers to do even more with their links. Using it, they can do anything they would be able to do in the Bitly platform whether it’s shorten a link, track metrics, or integrate with other apps. By using our API you can sync with your product or messaging framework for concrete stats we can reference, keep your branding front and center of every link you create with our customer back-halves, and experience an interconnected web experience that will make your day-to-day tasks much easier. While shortening links is Bitly’s most basic functionality, our customers create and distribute links at scale via integrated apps and SMS by utilizing the Bitly API.
If You Are Just Getting Started With SMS
SMS solutions have become more popular than ever because consumers are spending more time on their phones than ever before. Upgraded phones, accessible and reliable Wi-Fi, and superior E-commerce experiences have all contributed to how essential mobile phones have become to the everyday consumer and Bitly has been helping optimize that experience with short links. While there are best practices to remember as you are building and innovating your SMS campaigns, here are a few tips for any beginners just starting out:
- Always keep your industry keywords top of mind as to better engage with your customer
- Don’t forget to get permission from your customers before sending out any SMS messages as this is permission-based marketing
- Make sure you are responsive and have dedicated customer service and sales support ready to engage with customers
- Get creative and personalize your messaging with branding that is reflective of your business and products
There’s nothing better than seeing thousands of businesses building their brands through effective SMS marketing. While you can see more traditional methods for SMS use cases below, deep linking is a feature that Bitly offers to help create a seamless transition to mobile, drive app engagement, and encourage app installs. These typically fall into one of the 2 broader categories below focused on programmatically sending 1:1 communications with unique trackable links (i.e. with UTM parameters) to customers, patients, consumers, diners, guests, etc to provide either personalized information or a personalized experience.
- SMS Communications/Notifications – i.e. Password resets, shipping confirmation/tracking, customer Service, patient portal update/test results, receipt post purchase, touchless transactions – buy online/curbside pickup, 2FA
- SMS Promotional Campaigns – i.e Retail or Restaurant Loyalty programs; Discounts
Use Case Spotlights
Common SMS Requirements
When you’re reviewing and researching the types of SMS integrations that would be best suited for your business, there are a number of common requirements to consider with the majority of considerations listed below:
- Integrations – Twilio, SFDC Mobile Connect being the top 2; open source API creates more opportunities, but adds addl dev work)
- Security – data privacy and security are extremely critical; recently, customers are requesting more insight into our security practices creating an uptick in security review requests for SMS use cases
- Support – reliable, timely, and personalized (when relevant) support is key during both Onboarding and the period of the agreement; 24/7/365 support and SLAs are common requirements for high volume use cases
- Data – accessibility of large amounts of data in multiple formats
Bitly has been a touchstone for digital marketers, creators, and enterprise businesses looking to scale their companies with a trusted solution they can rely on. Our Bitly API integrates seamlessly with tools you already use so there is no disruption to your workflow or with any new technology added to your business. A few of the reasons businesses trust Bitly with their SMS links are:
- Scalability – Whether it’s 5k link/month or 30M, customers want the autonomy to scale with us.
- Reliability – with scale comes a business critical dependence on Bitly for key business units/initiatives; 99.9% (with the goal of 99.99%) is essential. It is also critical to ensure their links won’t be blocked by mobile providers
- Flexibility (API) – increase volume/rate levels easily and support large bursts (if needed); create links at scale within mins/secs; Parameter Passing in some recent use cases, as well
Our custom short links, deep links, and QR Codes, are just a few of the many ways we help you connect your customers to offline experiences that help grow your brand.
If you are interested in learning more about SMS marketing, contact a sales representative today.
