Eva McKnight is the Content Team Lead at Formstack and facilitates lead-generating resources for the company, including webinars and research reports. To learn more about Eva, visit Formstack’s website.
When launching an SMS marketing campaign, it’s important to have every step of the user experience perfect before rolling it out. Your text promotion needs to be witty, and your landing page needs to be flawless.
But what about that online form that’ll grab the leads when you press play on your mass SMS execution?
A lot of marketers overlook their lead gen form when rolling out new initiatives, but it can ultimately make or break your efforts. If you’re driving traffic to a lackluster web form, all of your mobile visitors will leave your page without engaging with your brand.
To maximise your SMS text marketing campaign’s success, follow these quick tips to optimise your lead forms for mobile devices – and get those phone addicts to convert.
Make sure your web forms are actually mobile optimised.
This one sounds a bit common sense, especially if you’re launching an online SMS campaign, but it’s a largely important step to ensure conversions on your mobile forms. According to Google’s Mobile Playbook, 57% of Internet users won’t recommend a site that isn’t mobile-optimised, and that goes for web forms, too. Keep your users from pinching and scrolling around your page by using a web form builder that automatically creates mobile-friendly layouts.
Avoid large headers or graphics at the top of your form.
Don’t text your a lead a witty call to action for a promotion, only to have them arrive on a page with a huge image at the top. If your prospects don’t see a direct way to engage with your brand, they may not bother scrolling on their phone, and you may be causing abandonment. Try to include at least a few form fields toward the top of your page so the mobile visitor understands your intent. If you need to include a logo or graphic, make it small, or opt to stick to your brand colours instead.
Prevent “thumb fatigue” by asking the right kinds of questions.
Don’t you hate it when you have to type a long email on your phone? Your thumbs get tired, and you’re more likely to make errors or misspellings. Well, you can expect the same from your bulk SMS messaging campaign if you send visitors to a form with lots of long-answer fields or other typed questions. Try to include drop-down lists or single-select questions as much as possible. If you need to get more info, test including the question in different areas on your form to see if your prospect is more likely to fill it out at the beginning or the end of the form.
Capture quick data using social media autofill.
You know that point above about leads hating having to type a novel on their phones? Get some of those easy fields, like name and email address, out of the way with social media autofill functionality. Social media autofill lets your leads auto-complete certain fields using data from their social media profiles. Studies have shown the feature can increase conversions up to 189%, so add it to your page and make it even easier for those online SMS leads to get to the final button on your campaign form.
Seal the deal with a strong call to action.
You’ve optimised your form, asked the right questions, and used the right features to get your prospect through your landing page. Don’t have them abandon your lead gen form because of a boring call to action button! It’s tempting to go with a generic “Submit Form” or “Done” phrase on your button, but this area is the last possible place you can engage your lead. Try personalising it a bit more to your campaign by trying CTAs like “Download this coupon” or “Enter the contest.”
Once your web form is ready to go, you can feel more confident about the overall success and accurate performance of your text message marketing campaign.
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