Competition within the fashion sector remains ferocious. Many fashion retailers are struggling to cope with reduced income mainly caused by lower high street footfall. This has resulted in more fashion retail store closures than any other high street industry vertical in the period of January – June 2019 (source).
But there is cause for optimism for fashion retailers who are willing to adapt to new ways of encouraging more customers to visit both their online and high street stores. A modern, engaging, mobile-focused customer communication strategy can help. But before we get to that…
What’s wrong with the way that fashion retailers are currently advertising?
Radio advertising is effective when it comes to brand awareness compared to other mediums as consumers can’t switch their ears off (source). The problem with radio advertising is that most people will struggle to recall the details of an ad after the event, as we’ll be busy doing something else. For example, 74% of us are driving when we listen to the radio. According to radiocentre.org, the recall rate for standard advertising breaks is between 15-26% (depending on the length of the advert – the longer, the better).
Television advertising is regarded by many to be in decline, with 2019 seeing global TV ad sales collapse at a rate not since since the global recession of 2008 (source). 84% of us now fast forward through the adverts when we’re watching at home (source). And again, there’s no way to refer back to the critical details once the event has passed.
And finally, there’s print advertising which is also in decline. In the UK £1.65 billion was spent on print in 2017. This figure reduced to £1.46 billion in 2018 and has continued to fall in 2019 (source). This can be largely attributed to the environmental impact of print, and also the difficulty in tracking the effectiveness of campaigns.
With the above in mind, let’s now take a look at what we can do with a mobile-focused alternative.
Introducing SMS Landing Pages and why they work so well for fashion retailers
In short, SMS Landing Pages are web pages specially designed to be viewed on a mobile device. Customers access them by selecting a URL that they will have received via an SMS text message.
The difference between these web pages and any other? SMS Landing Pages can be personalised for every recipient. You can use any data you have to suggest items of clothing you think they’ll like, and complementary items to go with it. You’re also able to reference the customer’s address (“you’re five minutes away from…”) so that you can entice your audience to visit their local store.
In addition, interactive call to action buttons can be included which can link to any other web location, add an event (E.g. sale or product launch) to the recipient’s calendar, or even launch Google Maps and direct customers to your store.
Do SMS Landing Pages work? Have a look at our customer stories to see some examples – including retailers who’ve seen sales increase by 30% directly attributable to their SMS Landing Page campaign.
Also interestingly, mobile accounts for 65.4% of traffic to online fashion retailers and 57.1% of sales, much higher than the overall retail average. (Source)
How can fashion retailers use SMS Landing Pages?
The ways in which fashion retailers can use SMS Landing Pages are expansive, but here are a couple of the best examples that we’ve seen so far:
Sending marketing and promotional content
If you have a sale or new product launch on the horizon, SMS Landing Pages are a great way to shout about it to your customers. You’ll be tapping into the 77% of smartphone shoppers who are more likely to purchase from companies who make it easy for them to purchase via their mobile, and the 60% of consumers who click on mobile ads at least weekly (source).
You can even include a barcode/QR code for a scannable in-store discount or add a sale to the customer’s calendar.
Rich order confirmations and delivery updates
Customers can easily keep track of their orders and expected deliveries (by linking to additional monitoring platforms)with a visually rich SMS Landing Page update.
Why not include a discount code to entice the customer into additional purchases, or provide links to have a conversation with a customer service agent?
With the data about the value of mobile marketing freely available, why aren’t more retailers taking advantage?
Google identified three challenges: a perception that it would have small business impact (33% of respondents); lack of time (26%), and the difficulty of building a business case (25%) (source).
We would argue that, with traditional advertising failing, retailers need to explore the potential of mobile marketing – and Esendex’s Messaging Studio makes it easy to create and send your messages.
To find out how you could start building your very own SMS Landing Page today with a free trial of our message builder (Messaging Studio) contact our team today on 0345 356 5758 or visit [email protected] for more information.
