By John Eberhard

One of the problems with email marketing today is open rates. That’s the percentage of people who open your email. With in-house lists, i.e. lists of clients and prospects, open rates today vary from 15-30%. That means at the high end, 70% of people on your lists won’t even see your email. For email to cold lists, open rates hover around 1%.

So what can you do to reach more people?

One excellent solution is bulk texting. Open rates for bulk texting are 98%. That means that almost everyone on your list will at least see your message.

There are bulk texting companies where you pay a monthly fee, upload your phone numbers, and send out your texts. You usually pay on a tiered system based on how many total texts you want to send out per month. You are limited to a certain number of characters per text, and you can include a link to your site or a landing page. I’ve only used one company, Textedly.com.

My experience with bulk texting has been good. I have definitely gotten better response than with email.

Of course the trick is compiling your mobile phone list. My opinion is that this list should be made up of clients and prospects. And I would advise not sending to it too much, as a lot of people will ask off. Once a week is probably the max.