Do you want to have a spook-tacular Halloween marketing campaign? Let Pony Express HQ show you how!
Updated: Sep 28, 2022
Halloween 🧙🏼… one of the most fun and engaging holidays in the US! Are you excited about your Halloween sales? Is your marketing strategy ready for this huge day? Do you have something special in mind to boost your sales this Halloween?
But let’s be real, are your Halloween marketing ideas different from the previous year? Do they stand apart from your competitors’ strategies? If your marketing ideas include one of these below, your answer is more likely to be no:
● Covering everything with Halloween decorations like your store, social media posts, website, etc.
● Halloween discounts and campaigns that match your competitors
● Limited-time products or services for the Halloween period like Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte
The above marketing strategies are the most common ones used by all brands to increase sales on Halloween. Of course, you can utilize them. But how will you differentiate yourself from the pack if you just lean on the “tried and true” and add nothing more to your marketing methods? How are you going to get ahead of your competitors?
If you don’t want to engage in a fa-boo-lus marketing campaign this Halloween, that’s okay. You can close this tab and keep going with your happy life. But if you want to make an impact on your revenue, brand loyalty, and customer engagement – then let Pony Express HQ show you how! 👻
Leverage a niche marketing method on Halloween: text marketing
As we already know, every brand prepares special campaigns for Halloween. The point is to make your customers aware of these campaigns. Most brands still utilize analog marketing methods like in-store posters or paper advertisements… But come on, it’s the digital era now! To get the most out of Halloween, you need to digitize your marketing techniques.
You might consider sharing your offers on social media or through email marketing. These are certainly tried-and-true ways to reach customers but not the most effective ones. Do you know what is the most effective marketing method to reach customers today? Text marketing!
💡Discover: 3 reasons why SMS - text marketing wins over email marketing every time
Why should brands use text marketing to increase sales on Halloween?
Here are 5 reasons to use text marketing on Halloween:
Mass text messaging gives you the power of control over your promotions. You can deliver your Halloween offers to your customers whenever and wherever you want. But in other marketing methods like social media, you will never know if your target audience sees your post or not.
Keep in mind that the SMS open rate is 98%, meaning almost all your text messages will be seen by your customers. (Which is not possible with email or social media marketing methods 💁🏻♀️)
SMS messages can be personalized, which can facilitate customers feeling special; that you are communicating to them directly.
Mass text messaging is still a niche marketing technique that differentiates you from competitors.
Text marketing is the easiest and most affordable marketing method. You don’t need to manage various platforms. All you need to do is collect your customers' opt-ins, create plain text messages, and send them!
If you are lacking ideas about a text marketing campaign, you can reference our SMS marketing 101 blog post. Pony Express HQ also explains how it all works in the following blog post: How to run successful text marketing campaigns
If you are familiar with mass text messaging and business texting services, let’s move on to the best some practices for Halloween engagement!
Follow these 10 rules of mass text messaging for your Halloween promotions
The following rules will help you create a professional text marketing campaign for Halloween:
Always collect opt-ins before starting Halloween SMS marketing campaigns
Make sure to introduce your brand first to avoid confusing your customers
Personalize your message to create a sense of familiarity
Use holiday-themed language with Halloween terms such as boo, spooky, frightening, etc.
Include key information like the end date of the offer and how to use your promotional coupons
Respect customers' time by sending your Halloween messages between the hours of 9 am - 9 pm
Leverage the use of emojis to break the up the monotony
Start texting customers 1 month before Halloween, and be mindful to set up a regular follow-up texting schedule leading up to Halloween
In addition to promotional messages, send them a meaningful message on Halloween to celebrate the fun holiday
Add “Reply STOP to opt out” to all of your messages to show your customers how to opt out from your text marketing campaigns
Know and meet customers’ needs
The way to create the most effective text marketing campaign is to know your customers' needs. Of course, your experiences from the prior years can inform your strategy. But once again, it's a digital era, and you should use its opportunities to take a step further.
As an example, you can use Keyword Planner, a free tool of Google Ads, to find out what people are searching for as Halloween approaches. Then you can use this information when preparing your Halloween promotions.
To illustrate, we explored the “Halloween” related search terms using Google Keyword Planner. And we saw that the number of people searching for “Halloween costumes” increased by 900% in the last three months. So consider how you can use this information to include this popular Halloween term instead of just saying, “Hey, we are offering a 15% discount!”.
As you can see from the image above, every single industry can benefit from utilizing keywords to improve their Halloween text marketing campaigns.
How about a little bit of fun?
We covered the basic rules of text marketing and ways to discover customer needs until now. How about including a little bit of fun now? Consider the usage of Halloween MMS messages. 💀
Remember, you want your customers to want to hear from you. By keeping your messaging light, fun, AND informative, you are likely to see more engaged customers who want to partake in your offerings. How can you get started? MMS messages are easy to create with the help of our Halloween MMS templates.
In a nutshell
Mass text messaging makes all the difference to your marketing strategy. Pony Express HQ offers the most straightforward interface if you are looking for the best text marketing platform. You can join today and start with 100 bonus text message credits.
Remember to trick or treat yo’ self with a successful Halloween text marketing campaign.
Spooky texting 🎃
The Pony Express HQ Team