They say a picture's worth a thousand words — and when that picture is delivered to customers via Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), it may also be worth thousands of dollars of sales.
But what is MMS marketing? Let's explore its meaning, benefits, and effective strategies for leveraging MMS messages to enhance your business's image, engage more customers, and bolster your bottom line.
MMS messages are like normal text messages but with a visual flair. They can include a wide variety of media, including pictures, audio, and video, in the following formats:
MMS messages, unlike their SMS counterparts, are always sent as singular messages. Since media files can't be split up across multiple texts, their file size caps max out at two megabytes (MB) for all pictures and 600 kilobytes (KB) for all video and audio attachments. They can also include up to 1,600 written characters.
These extended capabilities have caught the attention of marketing teams across different industries, and MMS has become commonplace in many digital marketing strategies. But why?
Humans can process visual content 60,000 times faster than text. Marketers have realized this long ago and have used rich media as part of their campaigns since the early days of modern marketing. And this is what makes MMS marketing so effective: Rich media content sent directly to the consumers' phones — the perfect recipe for success.
The fundamental difference between MMS and SMS marketing lies in the type of content they can carry. SMS is limited to text-only, usually capped at 160 characters. While MMS, besides text, allows for multimedia too. MMS and SMS marketing both serve to raise awareness and interest in your brand, yet they function somewhat differently and are better suited for varying purposes.
Since SMS is text-only, it's better leveraged for quick messages like promotions, reminders, or updates. MMS, on the other hand, comes with more creative leeway so it is better used to make a stronger visual impact, like:
When it comes to deciding whether to use SMS or MMS for marketing purposes, just ask yourself one simple question: Would my customers rather read this or see/hear it? Chances are, your intuition will guide you to the right choice.
While consumers love pictures and videos, going overboard with the MMS messages may deal an undesired blow to your bottom line. In general, mobile carriers can charge up to six times more to send an MMS than SMS. With the right texting platform, like Text-Em-All, it may only cost about twice as much to send an MMS versus an SMS.
Read more: SMS vs Email Marketing: What Is Best for Your Business?
MMS marketing offers unique advantages that go beyond traditional SMS, giving businesses an edge in capturing attention and driving customer action. By leveraging multimedia content, MMS messages can significantly boost engagement, create more dynamic experiences, and enhance your brand's presence in ways that simple text alone can't achieve.
There are no official statistics, but reports from brands show that MMS messages receive 300% more engagement than SMS. That's three times as many customers clicking through on the links you include, purchasing, or taking other actions that boost your revenue and reputation.
Images, videos, audio clips, and GIFs make engaging with messages more interesting, compelling, and fun. When done correctly, your base will even promote, critique, and recreate them. Think of how many forwarded text chains you receive versus how many viral video trends you see recreated and shared on social media.
The multimedia nature of MMS opens up a broad spectrum of creative possibilities for marketers. Visual and audio elements can be used for compelling storytelling and immersive experiences, ultimately driving engagement rates, leading to better campaign performance.
With SMS messages, the most brand personalization you can convey is your name and possibly a snappy tagline. With MMS, you can design messages that align closely with your brand identity, using specific colors, fonts, and media elements. Thus elevating brand awareness and recognition.
MMS marketing is highly effective at engaging customers and compelling them to take action— but it still has specific use cases where it’s most appropriate. To make the most out of MMS marketing for your business, use it for:
When you’ve got a hot new item rolling out, your customers would much rather see it first-hand than read about it. When marketing a new product or showcase of goods, be sure to include high-quality photos or videos alongside detailed descriptions of the products. Tack on information about release dates, availability, and prices as well to really get the buzz going before the big drop.
Text-to-win contests have their time and place, but MMS can help you run much more engaging, fun-filled competitions. You could start a video contest, for instance, where users send in short clips showing off their collection of your goods. To get the ball rolling on such programs, send out example videos and urge your fans to send their own responses for use in your marketing materials.
The Fourth of July is red, white, and blue, the winter holidays are green and red, and Valentine's Day is all about pink. Of course, with SMS your recipients won’t get to see your holiday spirit. MMS lets you create custom assets — such as digital posters, announcement videos, and more — for different occasions to make your campaigns more festive and memorable.
Only about 30% of people prefer learning by reading, while the other 70% enjoy watching videos, listening to lectures, and using other interactive forms of learning. MMS lets you dive deeper into educational topics with explanatory pictures, hands-on video lessons, narration, and more. If you’re creating a tutorial or other informative guide, skip the twenty-page novella and send out a quick video or image-based lesson instead.
You’re convinced about the efficacy of MMS marketing and know when to use it in your campaigns. The next hurdle, however, is how exactly to use it to bolster your brand awareness and image. To leverage MMS marketing to its full potential, keep these best practices in mind:
81% of people prefer companies that personalize their marketing efforts, and 70% believe it's an important part of the brand-consumer relationship. Obviously, you can’t reshoot each video or edit each picture to contain client specifics — but including their name, title, and other relevant information within the textual portion of the message will work just as well.
Like SMS, MMS messages should be sent out when recipients are most likely to look at their phones and you shouldn’t send too many too close together. The best time to send marketing messages is during business hours.
The users will open their MMS messages on a mobile device. So be sure any pictures, videos, and audio files are compatible with most cell phones. Likewise, media files should be resized to properly fit within average screens.
Creating a consistent and identifiable brand image takes significant time and effort. So don’t hinder your work by making any messages off-brand. Be sure to leverage the same tone of voice in your writing, color palette in your assets, and logo in your images in each and every MMS.
Read more: 8 Expert SMS Marketing Tips
Creating MMS marketing campaigns can be time-consuming, difficult, and costly, but if you do it with Text-Em-All, we'll guide you through the process and make sure it's as seamless as possible.
Text-Em-All’s easy-to-use messaging platform makes it simple to run far-reaching, salient MMS or SMS campaigns. From a single screen, you can select all the contacts you want to receive a message, add your media file, and send it out in seconds — all without having to painstakingly select individual recipients or attach files to every message.
Sign up for free to start sending out the pictures, videos, and audio files your customers are waiting for.