All about
Via is a mobile-first SMS marketing platform for Ecommerce merchants. They’re strongest feature may be in their list growth functionalities, where they claim to outperform many other leading SMS providers in growing that subscriber list… faster.
A few ways they do this:
- Swipe up links
- Out of stock
- QR code
- Landing page
- Pop-up
And most intriguingly, they have a one-time message functionality that can be sent to all existing phone numbers you have, requesting them to opt-in to receive marketing communications from your brand.
You can get a long-code, shared short-code, or your own short-code for $1000/month.
They come with 45 pre-populated automations such as post-purchase order receipt, abandoned cart, product reviews, win-back, etc.
What’s a Rich Text element?
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
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- List
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Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
Via is the only SMS provider that I know of that comes with a free mobile app builder tool that allows you to quickly and easily launch an app on the Apple and Google Play stores, and they have features that can help you encourage usage of that app via mobile, link, website, etc.
List growth tools:
- They have this unique functionality that they had to get approved by all the major phone carriers in the US, which is a single-time mass opt-in text message. It’s a one-time message to previous customers that asks them to opt-in by responding.
This is a company that has raised $80mm to build the future of mobile commerce.
Via is all about improving revenue and conversion rate through the use of mobile communication - SMS and mobile app messages. Using their tool, you will grow your subscribers faster, send more text messages, start more timely conversations with your customers, you’ll be able to follow up on those messages with your customer service team, and then of course convert prospects into paying customers and repeat customers.
Worth noting, Via has also tightened their attribution window to 24 hour view-through, 7-day click, to better reflect their performance results.
Typically it’s the owner or Ecommerce manager or head of marketing who is going to setup and run Via on a regular basis. Once you sign up, you get the full support team - one person dedicated to list growth, and one person dedicated to automations and campaigns.
Within your 30 day trial you will start to see the profitability of the platform. Their job is to make it a no brainer to become a customer by the end of the trial.
From there, you will likely log into the platform on a weekly basis (or more frequently) to set up blasts/campaigns, monitor results, adjust copy or discounts depending on your unique seasonality, etc.
Via’s best designed for merchants doing over $1 million a year, with a solid customer base, and a reasonable (50%+) of their customers coming in from mobile. To get the most out of the platform, you are going to need a head of marketing or dedicated marketer to use Via in conjunction with email and other channel marketing activities.
Via isn’t for small or starting stores. They won’t be as powerful for brands that are not very marketing savvy. And they won’t be as powerful for brands with really really small lifetime value or margins (like under $10 LTV), as they do have a cost per message of a few cents.