SMS marketing platforms are essential for small businesses to send and receive text messages to target audiences’ mobile phones and conduct successful SMS marketing campaigns. Discover the best SMS marketing platforms for beginners and get started on your mass texting journey today!
By Max Adler / Updated: Tuesday, January 02nd, 2024
With 95% of text messages read and responded to within 3 minutes of being received, and a 19% CTR compared to email marketing, which has just 4% CTR, it is essential that small businesses in America utilize the communication platform to reach their target audiences.
Businesses in any industry, whether that be retail, hospitality, medical, or even real estate, can benefit from the services that SMS marketing platforms provide. In fact, half of all messages sent to target audiences from businesses are reciprocated positively and responded to, with most consumers preferring text messaging as their main form of marketing communication.
The statistics truly speak for themselves, so if you’re a business wanting to take advantage of the power of the simple SMS message, discover which SMS marketing platform provider would best suit you and your business’s needs.
SMS Marketing Guide Statistics 2024
An SMS marketing platform (also known as mass text messaging platform) is a service that enables businesses to send large volumes of SMS messages to target audience’s mobile devices. Through an SMS gateway, SMS marketing platforms are able to take a message from an online channel (whether this be email, web application, or existing CRM software) direct the message to a mobile network, then to the end-user’s phone. This bulk SMS marketing process is all done in a matter of minutes, if not seconds, and has become one of the most popular forms of marketing communication in today’s society.
Businesses can use SMS marketing platforms to send promotional messages, appointment reminders, shipping alerts, booking confirmations, one-time passwords (OTP), and more SMS marketing campaigns. SMS marketing services also enable the ability to automate messages, which is particularly important for two-way communication when conducting strategies such as polls, reviews, and SMS competitions.
Text message providers allow businesses to send hundreds of thousands of SMS messages at any one time, however SMS marketing isn’t just for large enterprises. Small businesses (and SMEs) can harness the power of SMS marketing platforms to conduct marketing strategies that will build strong relationships with their customers and stakeholders.
There are a plethora of SMS marketing platforms available to USA businesses, all of which offer a wide range of features, apps, and SMS services. However, not all of these services are useful for small businesses. Many SMS marketing providers offer complicated software built to integrate with larger campaigns as a marketing push, whilst small businesses may want a more focused approach to build customer relationships through two-way communication. Furthermore, many text message platforms offer an SMS API built for developers to customize more complicated web-applications.
Thus, if you’re a small business wanting a simple, fuss-free, easy set-up SMS marketing platform, then be sure to look out for the following features.
When it comes to choosing the right SMS marketing platform for your business, sometimes it can be overwhelming with the multitude of options available. To help you break through the clutter, we’ve provided the top 5 best SMS marketing platforms for small businesses in 2024.
ClickSend is one of the most popular SMS marketing platforms for its simple web-based platform. With ClickSend’s easy-to-use tools, any marketer can send and receive text messages to their target audiences, staff members, or other stakeholders from any web-enabled device – whether this be a computer or tablet. ClickSend also has a mobile app (available on both iPhone and Android devices) for those businesses who wish to send text messages easily from their mobile phone.
Being a bulk text messaging web-based platform means that you don’t have to download additional complicated software and get locked into monthly contracts. Businesses can simply login to their online dashboard, pay for the SMS credits they require, type in the recipients’ numbers or upload a contact list, type in your message and click send – the name says it all. Small businesses can either use this to send one-off messages, or conduct an SMS campaign with two-way communication and SMS automation.
ClickSend prides themselves on their 100% uptime SLA guarantee, with the quickest delivery routes possible so that their clients do not have to worry about message delivery delays or failures.
The biggest advantage of ClickSend is that businesses starting on their SMS journey can start a free trial with 25 SMS credits without getting locked into a contract or providing credit card details. This enables small businesses to try out ClickSend’s SMS marketing platform to conduct a text campaign and decide whether it is right for you!
Learn more about ClickSend’s platform, read our ClickSend review, or visit their website.
View ClickSend Review >>Visit Website >>
EZ Texting is a reliable communication service offering SMS and MMS capabilities through a cloud-based software. Their SMS marketing platform is made for small businesses and beginners with flexible pricing plans, a free trial, and features that are easy to integrate so that businesses can have everything in one place.
The SMS platform is easy to set up as it is made for those who are not tech-savvy, and offers markets to conduct lead generation, send shortcodes, alerts and notifications, promote products and sales, offer on-going customer service, and send multimedia such as images and videos.
EZ Texting is known for their fast and reliable SMS and MMS delivery, as they will always choose the fastest routes for their clients. What’s great about EZ Texting is they don’t overcomplicate things. They provide support through tutorials and pop-ups throughout the whole set up process to assist you every step of the way, along with a help chat with on-going customer service support. They also offer ongoing calls for additional support and go that extra step to ensure businesses are utilizing their platform to its best ability.
Pricing for EZ Texting services start at $19/month for 200 SMS credits per month, or 2,400 credits annually. Unlike other providers, all inbound text messages are always free. As the SMS provider only offers monthly and annual pricing plans, EZ Texting provides a free trial period to allow small businesses to try out their platform features before committing.
Explore a full review of EZ Texting and their SMS marketing platform or visit their website to find out more.
EZ Texting Review >>Visit Website >>
BulkSMS is a popular SMS marketing platform for businesses of any size, but it is particularly useful for small businesses to get started with their text messaging strategies due to their range of SMS pricing packages.
Unlike other providers, BulkSMS offers a pay-as-you-go pricing structure, with a range of packages, starting at 200 SMS credits and going up to over 50,000 credits. The larger the SMS volume package, the cheaper the cost per SMS, so once businesses are happy with their services, they are able to buy bulk volumes for future use. The best part is, BulkSMS credits never expire. This is a great advantage as most SMS credits offered by other providers must be used within a year or two. Therefore, you can be assured that you can utilize the text messages when it best suits you and your business strategies.
If for any reason you’re unhappy with the SMS messaging features or services offered by BulkSMS, you can contact them directly and get a full refund on the SMS credits you did not use. Incoming messages (e.g. responses from your recipients) are always free, therefore you can truly conduct meaningful two-way communication without having to worry about it being a huge cost to your business.
Additionally, if you’re a non-profit organization such as a religious group, school, charity, or other NGO, you’re able to apply for a sponsorship with BulkSMS and receive discounted fees.
View the details of BulkSMS pricing and more with our BulkSMS review or visit their website.
Bulk SMS Review >>
If you’re a savvy small business who already uses other marketing tools to reach your customers such as email marketing, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Zapier, Slack, and other CRM platforms, then MessageBird is the SMS marketing platform for you. MessageBird is backed up by a global network of communication providers, offering a platform with omnichannel integration. This means that businesses can use MessageBird’s platform to conduct all their communications in one place.
What this means is that businesses can simply set up their MessageBird dashboard with their existing software, then integrate SMS messages into their strategies and campaigns. This is great to send through follow ups, message automations, and more through SMS messages. Not only will this improve CTR and conversions, but also help to remind users of important messages straight on their mobile phones – the place where it matters most.
Furthermore, one of the key features of MessageBird and their omnichannel widget. Small businesses can integrate this omnichannel widget onto their websites and once engaged with a live chat, the user can then choose which platform they would prefer to communicate with the business on. This has been shown to be highly beneficial as you are allowing your customer the freedom of choice, and also provides further insight in how you can best reach them in future.
As some features can be somewhat complex for first-time users, MessageBird has global head offices and support centers around the world, meaning that they have a high level of customer support that are available 24/7 to assist their customers. The SMS platform also has an online help center, which includes the best practice tips to get started, how to schedule SMS messages, how to conduct email to SMS and much more.
Explore our MessageBird review to learn more or visit their website for details on getting started.
MessageBird Review >>Visit Website >>
Another fuss-free SMS marketing platform built for beginners is MessageMedia. MessageMedia is known for being easy to set up, enabling businesses to start sending text messages within a matter of minutes. MessageMedia offers an online web portal with a simple dashboard, or can be integrated with existing systems.
What’s particularly great about MessageMedia is that they provide a variety of ready-made SMS templates for different types of industries to help beginners get started. These templates can be customized to suit your needs and even be personalized to each individual contact phone number. These SMS templates will not only save the time and resourcing for a business, but also help to build stronger relationships with audiences as responses can be automated.
SMS templates include:
With the tools provided by MessageMedia, small businesses can create a collection of SMS messages to suit different responses, use-cases and situations, so no matter how your customers interact, one of the pre-prepared templates can be used for auto-replies (also known as autoresponders). This is known as workflows and maintains consistency, and also ensures that you are not wasting their time and SMS credits with lengthy responses.
Furthermore, MessageMedia is also a popular mass texting messaging service for having a 14 day free trial and an extensive range of resources on their website including webinars, videos, tutorials, case studies, SMS guides, opt-in strategies, and an online support system to help beginners get started easily and with best practice,
MessageMedia Review >>Visit Website >>
Ultimately, SMS marketing has the highest open rates when compared to other marketing channels. Therefore, it is clear that in order to meet the demands of your customers and build long-term relationships, businesses must harness the power of text message marketing. Whether you’re a small eCommerce website wanting to send your customers promotional messages about upcoming sales, or you’re a local cafe wanting to send booking reminders, SMS marketing platforms offer a range of SMS marketing tools to suit your needs.
Mass text message providers offer a range of SMS marketing software including all-in-one marketing solutions, two-way messaging, marketing automation, customer segmentation, to send SMS text messages to existing and potential customers in real-time.
There are many other SMS marketing companies available to American businesses including Twilio, SMS Global, SlickText, Textedly, SimpleTexting, Textmagic, and more. To compare more top SMS providers, view our comparison guides and explore our website for more details.
Full SMS Provider Comparison Guide
Published by Simon Mannheimer