Imagine this: You receive a text about a flash sale on your favorite clothing brand. Pretty easy to imagine, right? We’ve all received these kinds of notifications at some point, probably because SMS marketing is effective, with an average conversion rate of 45%. More businesses are adopting this strategy to send targeted and timely messages – and now you can too!

HubSpot recently announced SMS marketing features built-in to its robust marketing platform. In this blog, we’ll lay out all the must-know information about HubSpot SMS and how it can elevate your marketing efforts.

How does SMS Marketing Benefit Businesses?

SMS marketing has extremely high open rates, averaging about 90%, which is more than 3X that of traditional email marketing. It’s one of the most effective channels for reaching a targeted audience. Consumers are more likely to respond to SMS messages and 77% have a more positive perception of companies that use it.

Other advantages of SMS include:

• Higher engagement rates than other marketing channels
• Superior affordability compared to other advertising methods
• Dynamic use cases for purchases, webinar registrations, sending reminder notifications, and initiating other desired actions
• Natural integration with other marketing channels for omnichannel marketing efforts
• Instant delivery to a broad audience

Who is Eligible for HubSpot SMS?

HubSpot’s SMS for Marketers is available to Marketing Professional and Enterprise customers. It’s a paid add-on for any business that does not fall under restricted categories. High-risk financial organizations, third-party lead generation services and marketing, and debt collection agencies are a few of the business types restricted from using SMS to communicate with customers or prospects.

Not sure if your business is restricted from SMS? You can review forbidden message categories on Twilio’s Help Desk.    

How Much does HubSpot SMS Cost?

At the time of this blog, the cost of HubSpot SMS is $75. The cost includes setup fees, maintenance, and 1,000 message segments per month. It's important to note that unused message segments cannot be rolled over to subsequent months, so use 'em or lose 'em!

For full details on pricing, check out HubSpot’s product and services catalog.

What Kinds of Metrics Can I Pull from HubSpot SMS?

As you might already expect, HubSpot offers useful metrics for all marketing actions inside its platform. The SMS feature allows users to measure the success of campaigns with analytics and reporting features. Delivery rates, open rates, click-through rates, and conversions can be easily tracked and viewed on your dashboards. If you use HubSpot’s other analytics tools, you’ll find the look and feel of the SMS analytics is very familiar and simple to navigate.

How do I Use HubSpot SMS Features?

There are so many ways you can utilize HubSpot SMS for marketing. Once you’ve purchased the add-on, you must take these initial steps to get started on your campaign:

1. Register your business
2. Opt-in your contacts
3. Create your SMS messages

To register your business, go you’re your HubSpot settings. Under “Tools” you’ll find the listing for SMS.

The section will prompt you to set up by defining examples of how you plan to use the SMS and getting the phone number to send messages from. Once approved, you can opt-in your contacts.

You can only opt in contacts who’ve given you explicit permission to text them. Manage and view your customer subscriptions by going into your contacts and checking which “Communication subscriptions” are set for that contact.

Or, if you know there are several contacts you want to opt-in at once, you can edit their SMS subscriptions in bulk by selecting them from your main contact list, selecting the “More” option, and choosing “Edit Communication subscriptions”. If you are set up for SMS, the option to enroll them in that subscription type should show up in your list of communication subscriptions.

Once you’re set up, you can find your SMS messaging tool under the “Marketing” tab of your HubSpot instance. Similar to the functions of your email marketing tool, SMS in HubSpot allows you to personalize, test, and schedule your messages as you choose. To learn more about getting started with SMS marketing in HubSpot, check out this video!