Cultural structures and events: should you integrate SMS into your customer loyalty strategy?

Solène Jimenez
Apr 18, 2024

While SMS is now widely used by brands as one of the key channels in their loyalty strategy, this communication channel is still little used in the cultural world.
Too commercial, too intrusive, or in a word, too "marketing". SMS is said to have characteristics that limit de facto its use with a cultural audience that is presumably reluctant to receive it.

Venues, museums, festivals... Should you do without this communication channel or integrate it intelligently into your customer loyalty strategy?


High efficiency thanks to exceptional opening rates

The opening rate of SMS campaigns is the first advantage of SMS. Typically between 95 and 100%, this communications lever is an undeniably effective tool for reaching your audiences and delivering an important message. Generally opened within 3 minutes of receipt, it's an emergency channel, delivering a message faster and more reliably than email.


300 times less carbon impact than an email

If you're interested in your carbon footprint and that of your CRM strategy, you should know: every email you send emits a few grams of CO2. However, did you know that SMS is much less energy-consuming than email? It's 300 times less, in fact!
 

American researcher Mike Berners-Lee (his brother Tim is known as one of the main inventors of the Internet) has tackled the issue of the carbon impact of communication in his book How bad are bananas? The carbon footprint of everything. He compares the impact of an email with that of a text message. While a short email would produce 4g of CO2, an SMS would have a carbon footprint of 0.014 grams, i.e. almost 300 times less. The main reason for this difference? SMS messages are transported via telephone network technologies, not via the Internet.


An effective lever for nudge marketing

Do you know anything about nudge marketing ? Nudge is that little gesture you make to encourage someone else to pay attention to what they're about to do. Applied to the economy, it becomes a small intervention aimed at modifying choice mechanisms and people's behavior to influence them in their own interest or in the general interest.

Several studies have statistically demonstrated that SMS reminders are a particularly powerful lever. For example, this study this study based on 250,000 people summoned to court in New York. Here, SMS reminders reduce the number of no-shows by 21%, reducing the number of people arrested and incarcerated for this reason by 30,000 over 3 years (no-shows are a misdemeanor in New York).

What if you integrated SMS reminders a little more, especially on your free events, to reduce your no-show rate to a minimum?


Varied use cases : from practical information to original content

The most widespread use of SMS among Arenametrix customers : SMS event reminders. As mentioned above, this SMS is particularly useful when it's a reminder for a free bookable event. In this SMS, don't forget to offer the possibility of cancelling a reservation, either by means of a cancellation link or by specifying a contact person at the ticket office.
 

SMS is of course particularly useful for informing audiences of last-minute event cancellations due to bad weather, for example, as in the case of the SMS sent by the Center National du Costume de Scène below.

 


It can also be interesting to use SMS to inform the public of an event that complements the offer they have already booked whether free or paying.
For example, the Centre National du Costume de Scène organizes musical picnics every Tuesday evening during the summer, with reservations required. And it uses SMS to inform the public of the related programming, for example, by suggesting that they come an hour before the picnic to visit an exhibition.


A few favorites

Among a few examples of SMS messages we've received recently, a few in particular caught our attention.

To start with the festival La Semo, which used the SMS as the starting point for a treasure hunt organized during the festival. 

 
 
 

Or even, a text message received prior to arrival at a hotel offering guests several music playlists. And what if music venues took inspiration from this before a concert or festival?

 
 

Would you like to find out more, and discuss with us how SMS can be an effective channel for communicating with your audience? Please note that SMS must be used wisely, and several bad practices must be avoided. Would you like to find out more and discuss the benefits of integrating SMS into your relationship strategy ? 

Make an appointment with us to discuss it!