SMS in Australia: it’s time to start texting your customers

People aren’t just using text messaging in their personal lives.

They’re also using it to connect with their favorite brands, which is why many businesses across the world have started to double down on SMS as a channel to build relationships with their audience. 

It’s true: 68% of businesses used SMS messaging in some form in 2020. Globally, it’s predicted that businesses will spend about $67 billion AUD on SMS marketing by 2025. 

Why are ecommerce brands investing so heavily in SMS?

Because it’s effective.    

Promotional text messages have an average click-through-rate (CTR) of 36%—that’s 8 times email’s average CTR of 4.5%. Receiving a text is such a personal means of communication, people tend to only opt into messages from brands they love and are highly engaged with.

Currently, only 43% of Australian consumers are texting with brands. This means there’s plenty of room for growth and an opportunity for you to build deeper connections with your audience. 

Keep reading to learn:

• How SMS marketing can help grow your brand
• How to create a text message marketing strategy that’ll resonate with your Australian audience
• Key Australian compliance regulations for text message marketing
• How much SMS marketing costs in Australia

SMS marketing can help deepen your customer relationships

Whether you’ve just launched your online store or your brand’s already a household name and you’re looking to test out a new way to communicate with your audience, you can use SMS to help build relationships with your most engaged customers.

Thanks to how quickly and often people around the world check their phone, texting is a reliable way to share important updates, time-sensitive offers, notifications about limited inventory, and new products.  

If you’re in the business of replenishable products, like food, beverages, and consumer packaged goods (CPGs), messages that are highly valuable to your repeat customers and already drive sales via email marketing will become doubly effective when you send them via text because of the channel’s personal, informal, and accessible nature.

And don’t just take it from me. Cheeky Chickadee, a family clothing brand based in Australia, used Klaviyo’s SMS platform to announce their new summer collection and saw a conversion rate of 20% in just one text message campaign. 

How to build a text strategy for your global audience

The way you’ll differentiate your texts will depend on your business, your goals, and your customers. But without a doubt, you can use SMS to complement your email marketing tactics and create unique experiences for your customers.  

Here are some ways you can use texts to communicate with your subscribers:

• New product promotions: Offer your customers early access to new product launches.
• Exclusive sales: Announce your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions or your inventory clearance sales in a text to make sure your customers don’t miss great deals on their most-watched or wishlist items.
• Back-in-stock notifications: Instantly let your customers know when their favorite product is available again.
• Special events: If you’re hosting a webinar or attending a trade show in person, texting is a good way to drive attendance. You can even use location-based segmentation to find people in your time zone who may want to attend.
• Post-purchase follow-ups: Communicate shipping or order updates instantly with texts to keep customers up to date. Using SMS for engagement throughout the buying process can actually inspire your customers to make more purchases, which helps to boost your customer lifetime value (CLV).
• VIP/loyalty program: Text your high-value customers to let them know they’ve reached VIP status. You can also use this channel to offer them exclusive deals or access to limited-availability products.

What SMS compliance looks like in Australia

Compliance is important, so having a way to help ensure you’re following data privacy regulations is critical. 

According to the Spam Act 2003 and the Spam Regulations 2021, which govern the sending of marketing text messages in Australia, you can only send texts to customers who’ve given you their consent. 

You also have to clearly identify yourself as the sender and provide your customers with an option to unsubscribe. That’s why SMS platforms, like Klaviyo, have compliance measures built in by default—so you don’t have to stress after you hit the “Send” button.

Text message marketing compliance (beyond the strict legalities) is also about making sure your customers don’t feel spammed and that their SMS experience is a positive one. 

By using Customer-First Data™ to segment your audience based on their own interests and behaviors, you’ll create meaningful text messages they’ll love. Plus, you don’t have to rely on third-party channels to collect information your customers haven’t offered you directly.

Not only is SMS marketing legal in Australia, it also gives you more control over your customers’ experience, so you can take your marketing from compliant to compelling.

How much does text message marketing cost in Australia?

The price of SMS marketing typically depends on the number of people who have subscribed to your list and how many messages you want to send.

You’ll find that, per message, text can be more expensive than email. But because SMS lists are made up of your most engaged subscribers, they can deliver higher returns on investment (ROIs) than email—the average ROI of SMS marketing is 25X, according to Klaviyo data. 

Plus, your SMS list is also likely to be smaller than your email list due to the more personal nature of this channel.

With Klaviyo SMS, you’ll only pay for the messages and contacts your business needs. Only customers who opt into your text messages count toward your plan, so how much you pay is based on the number of messages you send to these subscribers. 

Text message marketing is still significantly less expensive (with a higher ROI) than what you tend to see with paid channels like Facebook or Google, where a 5X ROI is often a positive outcome. 

What’s more, targeting on third-party channels is getting increasingly limited due to changes with data privacy, which means if there was ever a time to invest in the channels that you directly own, it’s now. 

Start texting your customers in Australia

Your customers are ready to get text notifications from you. By combining SMS with your email marketing program, you can elevate your messaging and create unique experiences your subscribers will love.