SMS Marketing Halloween Promotions & How to Get Spooktacular Results
This year, nurture more conversations that boost your sales with these frighteningly effective SMS marketing campaigns!
The National Retail Federation estimates American consumers will spend 8.8 billion dollars on Halloween in 2019. With figures like that, it’s no wonder that businesses large and small are looking to capitalize on Halloween enthusiasm.
At EZ Texting, we focus on helping companies leverage SMS marketing to reach large groups of subscribers and significantly impact their bottom line.
SMS Marketing Halloween Promotions
Ready to implement your own witched Halloween promotions? Follow our guide for tips on creating engaging SMS marketing content this October.
1. Drive Traffic with a Promotion
Do you have a special that will rake in sales? Let your subscribers know with a text message. According to Velocify, texting in sales can lead to more than 100% conversion gains. Texting is a great way to send coupons, tell customers about sales, and share special seasonal offers.
2. Promote Engagement with a Holiday Greeting
Let your customers know you’re thinking of them, even if your business has nothing special for Halloween. Use SMS marketing to wish them a spooky Halloween. For example, you could say, “Have a wicked Halloween!” or “Wishing you a howling good time!” EZ Texting offers free Halloween Greetings to download and send via MMS.
3. Coordinate Events with a Notification
If you’ve got a Halloween event in the works, texting is the perfect way to coordinate staff and attendees. With a 98% open rate (compared to just 17% for email), it’s the most effective way to ensure your message gets received – and that people show up! You can send SMS marketing texts reminding them about your store’s haunted house, your trick-or-treat promotion, or your special Halloween costume contest.
Ensure you’re not missing out on one of the most significant revenue opportunities of the year. Scare up some customers by using text messaging in your Halloween campaign!
4. Invite Feedback with Spooky Surveys and Polls
Want to know the way to your customers’ hearts? Sometimes, it’s as simple as asking.
Send surveys or polls via text this Halloween to get a pulse on how your audience feels about your brand, their wants or needs, and so on. The survey or poll doesn’t necessarily need to be Halloween-related, but it can be a festive way to boost engagement around the holiday.
Here are some ideas for inspiration:
- Take a poll of your company’s most boo-tiful fall decor.
- Ask contacts to participate in a customer service survey, and you’ll give them a special Halloween website discount on their next purchase.
- Ask your audience to submit their favorite name for your new seasonal coffee drink; the best answer is free coffee.
5. Offer Value with a Customer Loyalty Program
A loyalty program is one of the best ways to boost traffic and increase sales. What’s more, you’ll help to create long-time customers.
Not all loyalty programs are alike. Some involve tiered loyalty statuses (the more customers spend, the more rewards they receive), while some are structured more like punch cards, where every purchase, no matter the amount, gets you closer to a reward. The one thing that all loyalty programs do have in common is that they’re a cost-effective way to rake in consistent revenue.
This Halloween, send SMS texts to your contacts showcasing your new customer loyalty program. If your business already has one, send personalized rewards updates to your customers.
6. Grow Your Audience Through Opt-Ins
For any Halloween promotion, your text marketing strategy should involve attracting more contacts. A surefire way to do that is using customer growth tools like SMS keywords, QR codes, and website sign-up forms.
Using one or, even better, all three during your Halloween marketing campaign will help to grow your SMS audience. All they need to do is send a keyword to your dedicated number, scan a QR code, or type in their info on a web sign-up form. After consenting to opt-in to your text messages, voila! They’re a new contact with massive potential for becoming a lifelong customer.
7. Promote Your Social Media Contest
There’s no better way to drum up customer engagement around Halloween than with a good ol’ fashioned social media contest.
Give your audience fun ways to connect with your brand by hosting a contest for pumpkin carving, best costume, perfect pet costume, most haunted house decorations, and so forth. Followers can submit their photos, including your unique hashtag in the caption, to win. Not only will this boost engagement, but it will also drive more people to your website through social media tags and general interest.
Ensure the contest prize is valuable enough to followers and clearly stated to ensure people participate. After all, they don’t want tricks, just treats.
8. Create a Text-to-Win Contest
Want to create a Halloween contest but don’t have time to oversee a complex social media contest with photos and hashtags? Consider hosting a text-to-win Halloween contest instead.
To put this easy SMS marketing idea into motion, simply choose a high-valued prize, tell your followers to text a specific keyword to your shortcode, and then randomly select one of the followers as the winner!
This approach will excite your followers about your contest and help you gain new subscribers to your text program.
9. Encourage In-Person Sales
If you have a brick-and-mortar location, Halloween is the perfect time to encourage customers to visit your storefront. This is where you can use SMS marketing to offer incentives to increase foot traffic. For example, you could treat each customer to a bag of candy or give a special discount to anyone who visits your store in costume for the week leading up to Halloween.
Send this information to your subscribers at the beginning of October, and be sure to send them a few text reminders so they remember the benefits of shopping at your store around Halloween.
10. Drive Traffic to Your Website
Yes, a big part of SMS marketing involves encouraging sales, but that’s not all it can do. Sending SMS marketing texts can also help boost engagement, increase brand awareness, educate your audience, and enhance brand loyalty.
We recommend creating texts encouraging your subscribers to visit your website to achieve this. The only catch is that you should have a quality website that adds value to your visitors.
For example, if you own a bakery, you might have a blog that showcases your favorite recipes. In this scenario, you could create a collection of Halloween-inspired desserts and then add a link in a text, driving your customers to your blog. Or, if you oversee a home renovation brand, you might post a series of blogs on how to decorate your home for Halloween and include links to those articles in your SMS texts.
Take Advantage of SMS Marketing Tools
An SMS marketing platform like EZ Texting provides many tools to enhance your Halloween marketing strategies.
For instance, with features like the AI compose and text automation option, you can save yourself time and energy when crafting your spooky messages. AI Compose can generate unique and exciting Hallowen-centric messages that help capture your audience’s attention. At the same time, text automation lets you set conditions for the texting platform to automatically send out specific messages at specific times.
MMS messaging is another texting option for crafting your Halloween-themed texts. MMS texts let you send videos, photos, audio, GIFs, and emojis to enhance your messages further. For example, you could include a GIF of a dancing pumpkin or a short clip from your favorite “Hocus Pocus” scene to help boost engagement.
Halloween may be scary, but staying connected to your audience this Spooktacular season using SMS marketing with EZ Texting doesn't have to be. Start a free trial today and see how 98% open rates can help your business stay connected to those who matter the most today.
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