Balancing the frequency and relevance of text messages is crucial for SMS success. Customers who encounter inconsistent experiences are often confused and may drop out. It is therefore important to follow certain best practices to achieve success with SMS campaigns.
We’ve included 16 suggestions in this post for effectively executing SMS plans. Let’s get going straight away.
- Start with a welcome SMS
How do you start your campaign? Greeting new subscribers when they sign up is always a good idea. Thank them for signing up, give them a brief rundown of what to expect, and let them know how to opt-out.
You should also use welcome message flows as an opportunity to elicit some information from users in order to better segment and tailor the SMS campaign to their needs. For instance, you may find out who they want to buy for or when their birthday is (so you can give them exclusive offers). Don’t make customers wait if the campaign’s goal is to send bargains and discounts by SMS. Once they opt-in, give them their first opportunity to purchase and save.
- Remind your audience of your identity
Every SMS marketing communication must begin with you introducing yourself to the audience. Contacts won’t identify you by a sender ID, such as a short code, especially at first.
Many companies simply put their brand name at the beginning of the text, followed by a separator, and then the rest of the message. Try using an acronym or a short form of your brand name (SMS messages have a character limit of 160).
- Write concise copy
An SMS message can only have 160 characters. Emojis and other Unicode characters reduce the maximum character count to 70. SMS campaigns with more than 160 characters can be sent. But when you do that, the message becomes multipart, and the character limit reduces to 153 (or 67 for Unicode characters). This is due to the fact that multi-part messages need a data header to guarantee that everything is put together correctly on the recipient’s device.
Writing succinct, impactful marketing content that complies with legal requirements can occasionally feel difficult. Just keep in mind that texting has always been a condensed, direct method of communication. People may disregard lengthy copy in favor of shorter texts.
In your SMS campaigns, you can also experiment with regularly used texting acronyms (FYI, BTW, ICYMI, etc.) if you are certain that the intended audience would understand them. This will help you stay within the character constraints.
- Include precise Call to Action (CTA)
Including call-to-actions (CTAs) in your SMS marketing is another best practice that will help you get results and adhere to compliance, particularly if you want the recipient to visit a certain website or take action. A shortened link frequently follows a call to action in text marketing. You should be clear in your content about what will happen when they click on that link and what they will see on the page.
- Avoid free URL shorteners
Shortened URLs are another useful tool for SMS campaigns. Shortening the link will be essential if you’re using UTM parameters to monitor the effectiveness of your SMS campaign. There is a small catch, though. The majority of cell carriers forbid using open-source or free link shorteners. This is a result of SMS spammers regularly abusing those free services. Their use lends an air of suspicion to the communication.
Using a branded or private URL shortener that uses your custom domain is required by mobile carriers.
- Use a conversational tone
Peer-to-peer (P2P) communication via text messaging is ubiquitous, thus it’s reasonable to expect a familiar, conversational tone on the channel, even if it is being used for business communication. This means that application-to-peer (A2P) SMS campaigns can also be conversational. Ultimately, text messaging facilitates bidirectional communication. It follows that your texts ought to sound more like a friendly conversation.
Your brand tone can still be used, of course, but you might want to modify it a little for this channel. There may be some differences in the way you compose emails, articles, or landing page copy and how you text your customers and contacts.
- Personalize your SMS messages
Adding the contact’s first name to your SMS campaigns is a simple method to make them seem more conversational and personal. It’s the perfect technique to make your automated responses seem less robotic. But that’s just the start.
By segmenting campaigns based on information you know about the interests and preferences of your contacts and customers, you can further personalize your communications. Name customization no longer impresses most customers. However, sending them messages based on your CRM data will surely resonate with your audience. This is where a Salesforce SMS app can be very powerful.
- Add emojis smartly
There is a method to incorporate visual components into your SMS marketing, even if they typically consist primarily of plain text with the occasional link. Emoji usage is supported by SMS. So, you could add a few well-chosen and placed emojis to spice up the campaign.
Emojis reduce the character limit of an SMS message, so keep that in mind. Consider both your brand and your audience. Would an emoji be appropriate? Emojis, for instance, can readily improve an SMS campaign for a flash sale; but, it would seem inappropriate to use an emoji in a fraud alert text.
- Be timely and relevant
Although sending during a suitable time of day is important for both compliance and receiving a positive response, timely SMS messages can also be delivered in other ways. Take into account basing your SMS marketing approach around holidays and seasonal occasions. Consumer spending often follows a seasonal cadence.
Additionally, you can send SMS messages at the optimal moment by utilizing the data and insights you have about the buyer’s journey. If your consumer product, for instance, has a supply that lasts 30, 60, or 90 days, you can precisely determine when to ask customers to place a new order.
- Nudge subscribers to take action
One advantage of SMS marketing is that it’s a direct marketing medium that motivates the recipient to take action right away. It’s improbable that a customer will return to the text if they decide later on not to click on your call to action when they initially see the message. Because it will be lost in the sea of other texts they receive, your message is likely to be forgotten.
Your SMS campaign should therefore exhort the recipient to take immediate action by creating a sense of urgency. For this reason, time-sensitive promotions, last-minute requests, and FOMO are effective text marketing strategies. It’s not necessary to be overly dramatic, but you should inform recipients when the offer is about to expire.
- Find the right cadence
According to research, the most frequent reason people unsubscribe from a brand’s messages, be it emails, texts, or other digital communication, is that they receive too many of them. Irrelevant texts are a common cause for opting out.
- Keep email and SMS campaigns separate
In marketing, there is always the risk of inundating customers with promotional material across channels. For this reason, separating email and SMS campaigns is a smart idea. You might want to use them for various discounts and offers. A person is likely to unsubscribe from at least one channel if they consistently receive the same kind of messages at roughly the same time on several of them.
There may be times when you wish to promote a significant sales event for your company using a variety of media. In that scenario, consider working together via SMS and email. For example, deploy email marketing efforts early in the campaign rather than spreading messaging over many media. Send contacts an SMS reminder when they have one final chance to save money and use it to inspire them.
- Enable two-way conversations
Usually, we view SMS marketing as a one-way communication channel where we send out our mass promotions and then stop. Well, with that biased approach, you might be missing out on a lot of your customers. Customers want to interact with brands. They genuinely want to communicate with you, therefore it really annoys them when they run into a roadblock or if you don’t respond to their queries.
Compared to direct marketing, conversational messaging usually generates higher conversion rates, more engagement, and a closer relationship with customers. Take advantage of that!
- Make opting out easy
Just as important as getting consent in the first place to receive messages from you, is giving them a simple way to withdraw their consent. Your SMS campaign workflow must contain terms that allow subscribers to unsubscribe in order to be approved. The opt-out keywords may also include CANCEL, QUIT, and other terms in addition to STOP.
Legally, you must inform people about their right to opt-out on a regular basis and comply with their requests as soon as you can.
- Make it easy to opt back in
The choice to opt-out might change in the future. People may occasionally decide they missed your communications or that they should start getting them again.
For this reason, a keyword that adds users back to your list of opted-in contacts should be a component of your campaign flow.
- Track SMS campaign performance
You’ll need a method to monitor and assess the campaign’s performance whether it ends or carries on with new contacts and messages. You will probably receive a campaign reporting dashboard from the SMS platform you use, though the specific metrics and data may vary.
Some essential parameters for assessing the performance of SMS campaigns are as follows:
- Delivery rate: This gives you the proportion of messages that are delivered to their intended recipients without encountering a delivery failure or carrier blocking.
- Open and click rates: This reveals how many messages are being read and how many links in them are being visited. Low numbers can suggest that you need to modify.
- Response rate: This number shows you what proportion of people texted you back after receiving your message, even if they used pre-defined SMS keywords.
- Unsubscribe rate: The percentage of contacts that choose to unsubscribe following a communication.
- Conversion rate: This indicator shows you what proportion of readers finish a desired action after reading your SMS. This could involve a sign-up, buying something, viewing a video, applying a coupon, and more.
SMS can be used in a variety of ways to enhance customer communication and marketing, and there is a plan that will work for your business. Take our 100% native Salesforce texting app for a test drive today.
Discover more from Techcolite
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
