Digital Marketing

Here's how international SMS marketing can help grow your business

International SMS marketing

While trying to grow your business, you want to appeal to as many potential customers as possible. You have created an excellent product that you feel could assist and appeal to many people. You’ve already sold to your immediate family and the surrounding community, you’ve reached out to the larger networks in your home city and country. You’ve set up all the systems needed to manufacture and ship large quantities of goods. Now’s the time to think big. Now’s the time to think worldwide. To reach customers all around the world, you need to find effective ways to communicate with them. To do that, you need international SMS marketing as part of your strategy. And our SMS Platform can help you along every step of your new global marketing journey. Let’s discuss how and why an international SMS marketing campaign can help you to turn these potential customers into loyal, returning customers.

Why is international SMS marketing so effective?

You might be concerned about the cost of sending SMS messages around the world. That must be massively expensive, right? That’s where you’d be incorrect. SMS marketing campaigns are one of the most cost-effective communication methods to reach customers. They offer an excellent return on investment.

SMS messages are opened a huge 98 percent of the time, within minutes of being sent. This means that, whatever message you send to your customers, they’ll see it almost immediately. Importantly, SMS messages can be received by anyone with a mobile phone and irrespective of whether they have an internet connection. In other words, just about every person in the world is a potential customer.

Country-specific regulations and attitudes

Every country has specific laws and regulations surrounding international SMS marketing campaigns. It’s important that before you start planning your international SMS marketing strategy, you ensure you understand the regulations in the countries which you plan to target.

Each country also has its own attitudes toward SMS marketing messages. In India, for example, there is a large amount of marketing messaging. Customers there might be less likely to subscribe to your lists or, should they subscribe, be less likely to take action after reading your messages.

Audience segmentation

When sending messages to customers around the world, it’s recommended that you segment your audience according to the country they live in. This is important because a campaign that would appeal to members of your audience in one country might not receive any traction in another. Consider, for instance, a campaign celebrating Thanksgiving in the US. Those in another country might not understand or even appreciate the significance of the campaign. Another consideration is that of time zones. Your well-intentioned lunchtime message – well, for your East Coast US audience – could really backfire when it wakes up your entire Australian customer base.

Language and culture

Just as you’ll need to consider your audience members’ location and timezone, you’ll also need to think about the language that they’d prefer to receive your message in. Speaking to your customers in their preferred language can be an excellent show of respect. In addition, it might be incredibly disrespectful to use certain words or phrases in some countries. Of course, translation blunders can also be incredibly embarrassing and damaging to your business so be sure that you can support customers who reply to your messages. Consider these mistakes that some of the biggest brands in the world made:

  • Chicken enthusiasts in China might have felt a tad nervous when KFC’s well-known catchphrase was translated as “Eat your fingers off”.

  • Also in China, Coca-Cola was initially translated as “Bite the wax tadpole”.

If you’re interested in reading more about how to create international SMS marketing messages that will turn prospective customers into those who’ll be loyal to your business, read our recent article on the topic. It discusses top tips to improve your SMS marketing conversion rate. And of course, we all know you want to do that.

Explore other articles

Step into the future of business messaging.

SMS and two-way channels, automation, call center integration, payments - do it all with Clickatell's Chat Commerce platform.

New