How to EFFICIENTLY Run an SMS Marketing Campaign | Burger King’s Mistake

SMS marketing can be one of the easiest and most effective ways to reach and communicate with your customer base. By getting your customers to opt-in to your SMS marketing campaign, you allow your company or brand to send these people text messages offering special discounts, deals, and promotions. The beauty of these messages is that you can include virtually anything you want in these messages, granted they are compliant with FCC guidelines. The problem is that some companies launch an SMS marketing campaign without fully taking advantage of the medium so that it is encouraging customers to actually walk through your business doors.

National fast food chain Burger King recently launched an SMS marketing campaign primarily to raise awareness of any new products or food items they are offering. We have to give credit to Burger King for recognizing the power mobile marketing and SMS marketing have to offer, but they are missing out on several opportunities to capitialize on their campaign even further. Burger King wanted to promote any new food items that they were unveiling, so they would send a mass text message to everyone in their customer database with an image of the item they were promoting and some text encouraging them to try it out at the nearest location. The thing Burger King forgot to include was call-to-actions (CTAs) in their texts to actually get people to look for the nearest location and spur them into actual physical action. Burger King has done a good job of raising national awareness of their new items, but they are failing to customize their messages at the local level.

An example of one of the messages Burger King sent to its customers was one that promoted a new offer for a $2.99 small hot coffee and muffin sandwich. The offer was followed by the date the offer expired and where the offer was available. However, there was nothing in the message that drove customers to actually take action. There was no link to a store locator and there was no coupon that the customer could redeem at a participating location. Burger King could’ve easily included a link at the end of each of their messages to a store locator so that customers could actually be spurred to click on it and actually go to the nearest Burger King. This would’ve given Burger King a much better idea of how well their SMS campaign was working, itwould’ve given their customers a lot more help, and it would’ve made it much easier for them to actually take advantage of the offer and find the nearest participating location. Burger King could’ve also included actual coupons in their offers so customers actually had something to redeem. This would’ve made the offer seem more special to the customer which, in turn, makes them more likely to actually redeem the coupon and spend money at the business.

So, as you can see, SMS marketing offers a lot of benefits when it comes to increasing the exposure of your brand and driving customers through your doors, but you need to make sure you are taking FULL advantage of the medium! If you do what Burger King did, which was purely raise awareness without focusing on actually getting movement out of their customers, you will only be wasting money. Don’t be one of these companies! Make sure you are launching a fully effective and efficient SMS marketing campaign and you WILL see the results you want.