What is MMS and why you should start now

Multimedia messaging service, or MMS, are quickly becoming a powerful marketing tool for businesses seeking to engage their customers in more dynamic and visually appealing ways. Since Dotdigital’s initial release of MMS for North America, brands have started embracing MMS to reach their target audiences effectively. 

In this blog post, we’ll explore what MMS is, the key differences between MMS and SMS (short message service), and how implementing MMS can increase engagement between brands and their audiences.

What is MMS?

MMS is a way for brands to send visual messages to their customers on their mobile devices. This includes multimedia content such as images, audio files, and video clips alongside text messages. Ever sent or received a picture message on your phone? That’s MMS in action. MMS takes text messaging to a whole new level, providing rich and interactive content that goes beyond the traditional 160-character text limit.

By integrating MMS into their communication strategies, brands can create more colorful and engaging messages that capture their customers’ attention. Dotdigital offers MMS capabilities for audiences in the United States and Canada, providing brands with customers in these regions with a powerful new tool to stand out from the competition and generate an impressive return on investment (ROI). 

What is the difference between MMS and SMS?

It’s important to understand the differences between MMS and SMS to choose the right marketing tool to reach your target audience. Here are the key distinctions between the two:

Content type and flexibility

SMS only allows you to send text messages up to a certain character limit. On the other hand, MMS allows you to share a variety of multimedia content with text messages, including files of up to 750KB in formats such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF, making it more visually appealing. By incorporating multimedia content, MMS can increase your engagement levels.

Message size and character limit

A single SMS message can only accommodate 160 characters (including spaces). If your message exceeds this limit, you’ll need to send multiple messages, which will increase the cost of your campaign. MMS provides a much larger message length of 1600 characters (10x greater than SMS), enabling you to send detailed and engaging messages at a fraction of the cost.

So with Dotdigital MMS, you have the flexibility to include high-quality multimedia files while still enjoying the benefits of increased message length. This combination of rich media and additional text enables brands to create captivating, informative, and persuasive messages designed to drive customer action.

Cost and carrier compatibility

While SMS messages are generally cheaper due to low data requirements and widespread carrier support, MMS messages may incur additional costs for end-users and brands due to larger file sizes and increased data usage. However, the visual appeal and potential for higher engagement and conversion with MMS can directly offset the added cost, making it a valuable investment.

What are the benefits of MMS?

MMS is an essential part of any mobile marketing strategy, providing businesses with a range of benefits. Some of its key advantages include:

Enhanced engagement

MMS messages have been proven to have a more engaging impact on recipients compared to plain text messages. This is because MMS messages can include rich multimedia content such as images, videos, and GIFs, making the recipient’s experience more memorable and immersive. As a result, recipients are more likely to take the desired action. 

One example of the effectiveness of MMS messaging is TractOptics, a US-based customer, who utilized MMS during its Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns. TractOptics saw an impressive 17:1 ROI (return on investment) after utilizing MMS messaging. This highlights the potential benefits of using MMS messaging to enhance engagement and improve the chances of achieving a higher ROI for businesses.

Greater flexibility and versatility

MMS provides a broad range of options to create visually appealing content that caters to diverse marketing applications and industries. Whether you want to send promotional offers, event invitations, or product launches, MMS offers you the creative freedom to design messages that resonate with your target audience.

Higher conversion rates

MMS messages have the potential to drive higher conversion rates than traditional text messages by optimizing messaging with persuasive multimedia content. With visually appealing content and enhanced engagement, you can encourage recipients to take the desired action, whether that’s making a purchase or signing up for notifications.

Improved brand perception

MMS marketing can be a game changer if you’re looking to improve your brand recognition. Using multimedia content in mobile messages can help differentiate your brand from competitors who rely solely on plain text messages. By including visually appealing and engaging content, you can make a stronger impression on your audience and foster better relationships with them.

Repeated exposure to your brand visuals and logo through MMS messages is essential for building brand recognition. Studies show that 91% of customers are more likely to purchase from brands that they recognize and trust. This is especially true in mobile communications, as messages that include your brand visuals or identifiers are considered more trustworthy and authentic by recipients.

Elevated customer experience

In today’s fast-paced digital world, customers have high expectations for personalized and visually appealing experiences. Using MMS, you can create more engaging and interactive experiences that can help you connect better with your customers. By incorporating multimedia content like images, GIFs, and videos into your messages, you can encourage your customers to take action and build deeper relationships with them. 

For instance, if you run a travel agency, you can send an MMS that features a beautiful image of a beach sunset to your customers, inspiring them to plan their next beach holiday. Similarly, if you provide event management services, you can send a GIF of their favorite artist performing live in town to promote your event management services. The possibilities to get creative and engage with your customers through MMS are virtually limitless.

How MMS can be used to increase customer engagement

There’s a wide variety of opportunities when it comes to using MMS to increase customer engagement. The ability to include visually engaging content allows you to create more exciting promotions and offers by sharing eye-catching visuals when advertising sales, discounts, and other special offers. The same can be optimized when launching new products by utilizing images or GIFS to showcase the new product and generate excitement amongst your shoppers. 

Event invitations can be given a new lease of life by creating and sharing visually appealing invitations to a concert, webinar, or workshop to drive audience attendance. MMS can also be used to boost customer support by providing visual instructions, demonstrations, and more which can be used to troubleshoot and enhance customer satisfaction levels.

MMS messages can be highly personalized to individual customers based on their preferences, behaviors, and much more. The introduction of incorporating liquid (a templating language to create highly personalized content) to SMS and MMS for Dotdigital means you’re able to incorporate multiple personalized fields.

This can be seamlessly previewed as each customer so you can be confident that your recipient will receive a message highly targeted to them directly. WinstonAI™ can also be used to help you set the tone for your MMS messages. 

Getting started with MMS

For now, MMS with Dotdigital is available to businesses with customers in the United States and Canada. To enable MMS in your Dotdigital account, contact your Customer Success Manager, who will guide you through the setup process. Once MMS has been activated in your account, you’ll see the SMS section in your left-hand navigation now reads SMS/MMS. 

If you’re not a Dotdigital customer yet, you can request a demo of the platform.

Conclusion

MMS is a powerful marketing tool that enables you to enhance your mobile communication strategies by providing visually appealing and engaging content. By incorporating multimedia content alongside text messages, MMS can increase engagement levels, improve brand perception, and drive higher conversion rates. With Dotdigital’s MMS capabilities, brands can harness the power of MMS to reach their audiences effectively and generate an impressive return on investment.