From “maybe later” to “buy now”: how SMS marketing speeds up time to purchase

6 min read

9 July 2024

I’ll start with the bad news.

Consumer attention spans are shorter than a TikTok video. Product and store loyalty is elusive. Standing out in a sea of ecommerce brands is tougher than ever.

The good news is there’s a channel that helps brands capture consumer attention and drastically speeds up their purchase consideration period—moving them from “maybe I’ll get this later” to “I’m buying this right now.” Messages on this channel deliver convenience, personalisation, and urgency, positioning brands to offer an unforgettable experience.

I’m talking about SMS.

It’s no secret that the SMS landscape is changing. So Klaviyo and Recharge teamed up to explore those changes in our 2024 global texting takeaways report. The specific findings that made me want to double underline, highlight, and share with ecommerce brands centre around how a well-timed, carefully crafted text accelerates time to purchase.

For example: 65% of consumers said they purchased something they had planned to buy “in the near future” or “in a few months” because of a text message.

That’s significant. The brands I work with at Recharge are always looking for ways to motivate consumers to act quickly, while still maintaining long-term relationships.

With that in mind, here’s why SMS marketing speeds up time to purchase—and how you can build a strategy that increases revenue and brand loyalty.

Texts tell consumers what they want (and need) to know in a snap

When consumers sign up to get texts from brands, 72% of them expect to receive a message at least once a week, according to the research. Of those, 45% expect to receive texts more than once a week.

An image showing the percentage of consumers who think brands should send SMS messages at least once per week and more than once per week.

It’s clear your customers want to hear from you, and to really speed up time to purchase, the information in these messages needs to make their lives easier.

For example, transactional texts about order statuses and shipment timelines give customers important information quickly and transparently. Back-in-stock notifications can urge them to snag that hot product they had their eyes on before it disappears again. A product swap notification gives them the option to quickly select a suggested alternative instead of just cancelling the order.

When customers see value in the text messages you send them, they’ll grow even more eager to hear from you, which is essential to speeding up time to purchase and building brand loyalty.

Brands that offer subscriptions especially benefit from SMS marketing, as the inherent convenience of recurring deliveries aligns perfectly with the time-saving priorities of today’s efficiency-focused consumers.

Where customers might have previously cancelled their subscriptions due to too much friction or complexity, SMS helps brands reduce churn. That might look like:

Giving customers a way to quickly manage subscriptions via text by offering options to skip, pause, or delay shipments
Enabling options such as product swaps via text

This flexibility and lack of friction are highly rewarding. Data from Recharge shows that customers who engage with their subscriptions, whether by skipping a month or swapping out products, increase their lifetime value (LTV) by 15-32% on average.

SMS not only makes it easier to manage subscriptions, but can also be a great channel to motivate customers to quickly sign up for subscriptions—and stay subscribed.

Capture attention with texts for discounts, exclusive trials, and more

With high inflation and recession worries, consumers are thinking about value when they shop. Our research shows that discounts are a powerful way to grab consumer attention and get them to subscribe to your SMS list.

Since SMS consistency outperforms other channels in customer engagement, leveraging this medium to deliver value through discounts via text is a surefire way of giving them the experience they want.

But discounts aren’t the only way to grab consumer attention and keep them engaged through SMS. Asking questions, getting quick responses via text, and receiving the chance to participate in unique product experiences can also capture consumer attention.

Experiment with different incentives and learn which ones your customers love most with analytics. Keep them informed about the benefits of subscribing to your messages, get them on your list, and deliver the value they want. Focusing on these areas will support brand affinity as well as SMS conversions.

The question is, how can you deliver value without shrinking your margin?

Consumers want personalisation—and SMS delivers

Brands know customers want to feel special. But the trick is to deliver personalised experiences with as little friction as possible.

For instance, asking consumers to download your app adds friction to the buying process. SMS removes this hurdle by enabling consumers to take action within the message itself.

Add personalised message copy to this mix, and you have a channel ideal for increasing engagement and speeding up purchases. Ditch those generic marketing messages and make your SMS subscribers feel special by sending birthday deals, product suggestions based on previous purchases, and access to exclusive offers.

One way of delivering this calibre of personalisation and value (without shrinking profits) is integrating loyalty and pricing with Recharge Rewards—part of Recharge’s larger Retain toolset, which allows brands to build loyalty throughout the subscriber lifecycle with automated incentives based on customer data.

Combining the power of Recharge and Klaviyo helps you create customer profiles based on transactional, behavioural, and engagement data—making it easy to send personalised SMS communication with birthday and buy-one-get-one (BOGO) deals, free shipping, bundled offers, customised rewards, loyalty-based discounts, and anything else you want to highlight, such as personalised product recommendations.

The bottom line is that SMS reduces buying friction, and this increases brand engagement. Increase the degree of personalisation in your messages, and your customers will be more likely to respond and buy your products faster, while sticking with you for the long haul.

Integrated SMS and email pack a powerful punch

SMS marketing is a great way to speed time to purchase for the reasons I’ve mentioned above.

But integrate it with email marketing and you’ll compound those benefits.

According to our survey, 35% of consumers find receiving messages via text and email helpful. But some always prefer one channel over the other. For others, engagement depends entirely on context.

An image showing global responses to the question "Is it helpful to receive both email and SMS?"

All of that means both channels are equally important in an omnichannel marketing strategy. When you do it right, pairing SMS with email empowers you to make smarter decisions around which channel you’re using for outreach, based on subscriber behaviour, channel engagement, and more.

And according to McKinsey, companies that deliver the right experience, with the right communication, at the right moment earn 40% more revenue than average players.

Would I sign up for 40% more revenue? Yes, please!

Curious about when to text your customers, regional differences in consumer preferences, and how often they want to hear from you?

Read Klaviyo and Recharge’s 2024 global texting takeaways report for these and many more insights.

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