SMS Marketing Best Practices: Dos and Don'ts for SMS Texts

SMS marketing is an abbreviation for short message service marketing—in other words, it’s a form of digital marketing that relies on bulk text messaging. Large corporations, small businesses, and nonprofits alike can use various marketing tools to send information about special offers, e-commerce promotions, and other updates to customers’ cell phones.

While many companies opt to use only text in their SMS marketing, it’s possible to use multimedia, such as photos and GIFs, too. SMS marketing software can also integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) technologies for further automation and integration in your marketing efforts.

One of the main benefits of SMS marketing is how quickly it reaches users. In contrast to email marketing, customers are far more likely to check a text in real time than an email. Text message marketing works by sending customers short and actionable promotional messages, whether reminders, discount offers, or something else. This can lead to both a higher and more cost-effective conversion rate than is likely with many other forms of marketing.

Text marketing requires salespeople to maximize a sense of utility and minimize a sense of intrusion for customers. Use these seven SMS marketing best practices as a basic template in your marketing efforts:

1. 1. Ask customers to opt in to receive messages. SMS marketing texts are a two-way street, and they need to read that way from the first text you send to a new customer. Give all customers a clear option to either accept or reject future SMS messages right from the start of your interactions. If they respond in the affirmative, you can set up an autoresponder to send them a follow-up confirmation. Keep an eye on your affirmative versus negative response rates to see if you can tweak your messaging to encourage more opt-ins.
2. 2. Identify yourself. Customers need to know who the messenger is behind any SMS text message campaign, so make who you are clear. Other marketing channels offer far more up-front brand visibility than SMS marketing. With a text, all customers have to go off of at first is a seemingly random phone number, rather than a recognizable company email address or mobile app logo on their phones. If you choose to use this form of marketing, clearly identify your company to the customer in every text.
3. 3. Offer immediate value. Use the immediacy of SMS marketing to offer your customers a sense of real-time value. Provide them with a timely call to action (CTA). For instance, you could announce a short-term discount on a new product or information about a flash sale. These types of mobile marketing solutions to customer needs can quickly generate conversions and foster a more efficient and enjoyable customer experience overall.
4. 4. Provide an opportunity to unsubscribe. Just as potential customers need to be able to opt in to initially receive text messages, current SMS subscribers need an option to stop receiving messages at any given point. Ultimately, it’s better for both you and your customers to view SMS messages as welcome surprises instead of intrusive pop-ups. Marketing automation tools make unsubscribing easy on both companies and customers. SMS marketing platforms can automatically log both new and canceled subscriptions, streamlining the general workflow.
5. 5. Respect privacy and security concerns. Recognize that people are wary of clicking on links from random phone numbers. To encourage a better click-through rate, optimize your messaging to provide concrete proof you represent the company you say you do. Refrain from asking for credit card information or other transactional data via text. Also, it’s helpful to use an SMS marketing service provider that sends out individual rather than group texts for a more personalized touch.
6. 6. Time your messages well. Use SMS marketing messages with your customers’ time zones in mind. You’ll have a better time increasing brand awareness by ensuring updates hit your user’s smartphones while they’re awake. You can still use bulk SMS tactics, but use software that can comb through contact lists and texting service providers to ensure you send out batches of texts at appropriate times. In general, it’s also better to run a steady drip campaign over a long period of time than one in which you bombard the customer with updates and promotions every single day.
7. 7. Use texts for real-time updates. In your SMS marketing efforts, use this tool for its innate ability to offer time-sensitive updates and reminders. Your SMS marketing service provider can offer customers abandoned cart updates, appointment reminders, general notifications, order confirmations, and information about pricing changes.

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