SMS is the UK’s fastest growing marketing channel last year, Statista revealed that the number of mobile phone users would surpass five billion by 2019.

Not only do most people in the world have a mobile phone but they’re also receptive to it being used for marketing.

According to Statista, SMS marketing has become the fastest growing marketing channel in the UK, with more than 33 million people now opting in to receive business text messages.

Premier Travel is extolling the benefits of SMS marketing, having rolled it out across all its retail shops. “We’ve been using it for two years,” says the company’s director Paul Waters.

“The Travel Network Group’s group marketing director Si Morris-Green did a presentation for us a while back talking about its success for other members, so we thought we’d test it out.”

Premier Travel now texts its clients around once a month, either highlighting a promotional offer or an in-store event.

“We use SMS to whet people’s appetites and drive them in to the retail branches,” Waters says.

“We know that once we have the customers in front of us, we can convert in to a sale.”

Perks aplenty

For Waters, the perks of SMS marketing are manifold: “It’s instant. It’s even quicker to put together than a newsletter. Not all clients have email or social media, so it’s another way of reaching people – almost everyone has a mobile phone.

“A text message can also have more hype around it, encouraging clients to act now rather than later,” he adds.

More positive still is the fact that SMS marketing has led to a boost in bookings. “It’s easy to track success when we use SMS for events, as we can look at the number of attendees,” Waters says.

“We have regular meetings with store managers who say that it’s working well, and that clients have come in to book holidays because of text offers they’ve received.”

The texts are composed by Premier Travel’s marketing team and sent out via a system supplied by TTNG, as part of Premier Travel’s membership.

“The texts are short and snappy. It’s a relatively painless and cheap marketing process,” Waters muses.

Premier Travel uses SMS alongside other marketing methods including email and social media for a streamlined, multi-channel approach.

Plans are afoot for the agency to further refine and smarten up its SMS marketing, Waters confirms.

“We’re looking in to a new travel system which will give us a better ability via our CRM system to be more targeted with what we’re sending to who, segmenting data so we can send out cruise deals to cruise clients, for example.”

With a tactical, targeted approach on the agenda, no doubt SMS marketing will continue to bear fruit for Premier Travel and countless other agencies too.