How to automate SMS marketing: Subscription form. Cases

Mass text messaging today is just an ordinary thing for us. However, not every marketing specialist takes the full advantage of the current tool. Most of them are focused on the promotional side – how to sell the product or service with the help of discounts and special offers. Nevertheless, texting can be of higher value when you use all available options offered by web-services. Text messages can be also used as:

• Notifications regarding products delivery, booking confirmation, payment or online registration, etc.
• Reminders for the meetings, excursions, beauty salon visit, seasonal sales, or other events.

SMS marketing begins with the sign-up form. Take an opportunity to point out the results you expect from texting, and learn about special aspects you should pay attention to while creating a subscription form. Let’s take a closer look at the best SMS case studies – notice the elements that occur in SMS sign-up form.

Standard single-field subscription form

Basic form design includes a phone number input field and nothing more. This sign-up form type is the most popular among marketing specialists and is used for promo campaigns. This form works great when you don’t need individual approach, database segmentation, and message targeting.

An example of a subscription form with a phone input field in the Atomic SMS form constructor

Lifetouch Portrait Studios Case Study

Issue: Increase the number of leads and SMS subscribers. Solution: Company believed that discount was the best motivation for a consumer. They offered them 5% discount for photo studio services in return for the registration in Lifetouch Portrait Studios SMS program. Sign-up form was placed on the company website. It contained the text about registration benefits and the phone number input field. The plan worked out. Chosen mobile marketing strategy increased the number of registered customers by 163%. Resume: The buyers will be more active if you create an incentive for them.

Notifications. SMS sign-up form with a phone number and delivery date fields

You can gain the customers' goodwill by asking them day and time they want to get a text message from you. Just add the opportunity to select the delivery time when filling up the SMS sign-up form.

An example of a subscription form with the date field (Atomic SMS constructor).

British Red Cross Case Study

Issue: Remind the participant about the event he/she registered to and reduce the number of people who didn’t come. Solution: British Red Cross started mobile marketing to remind people about the event they had bought a ticket to. It’s quite expensive to organize a big event, and the absence of the major participants, who had booked a seat beforehand, costed much money for a company. Text messages solved the problem. They were sent automatically depending on the set time before the event. Such the strategy helped to increase the event’s attendance among the invited by 50%. Resume: Make sure your client won’t forget about the meeting or other important events – remind him ahead of time to prepare.

SMS subscription segmentation tool: Checkbox, Option select, Dropdown list

Each of these elements implies a subscriber to choose one or several parameters.

An example of SMS sign-up form that includes selection elements (checkbox, option select, dropdown list)

Here is how it looks in practice:

An example of GDPR compliant SMS subscription form

Case Study: Many-field SMS subscription form by Tide

Tide company marketing experts showed how to use each selection element and segment subscribers into groups for future target texting campaigns.

An example of SMS sign-up form that was placed on the Tide website

Issue: Tide decided to advertise new and effective laundry detergent with the help of SMS marketing. Solution: Tide gave an opportunity to win one year supply of detergent for those customers who would register to their SMS campaign. After signing up each subscriber got laundry tips, stain removing solution and special offers depending on the parameters they had chosen when filling up the subscription form. This was really a successful SMS campaign because Tide got more than 48 000 new subscribers. Resume: Correct subscribers segmentation and targeted SMS can improve the efficiency of mobile marketing.

Case Study: Kiehl’s way of subscribers segmentation

Issue: Use geolocation features, customer location and list segmentation for sending promo SMS. Solution: American cosmetics brand Kiehl’s used store advertising, social media and email marketing to promote its «Kiehl’s Alerts» program. There were two ways for registration – by filling up the sign-up web-form or by sending SMS to the short number 25787.

Kiehl’s SMS subscription form that was placed on the website

After the subscription, a new client was asked to share his location to continue participating in SMS program. The main concept was the following: when a customer appeared within the radius of one of Kiehl’s stores, he got a text message with a special offer according to his interests and checkbox items he chose (up to 3 SMS per month). After the six months, the results showed that 73% of subscribers had bought one or more Kiehl’s product. Resume: By means of a correctly designed sign-up form one will be able to segment subscribers into groups of interest. In combination with an ideally developed marketing strategy, this can bring a measurable positive result in future.

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SMS subscription form is the first thing your client familiarize himself with it and examine before becoming a subscriber. That’s why the main goal is to make this form simple, customer-understandable but effective and full-featured, with the opportunity to collect all the information you need for target SMS campaigns.