SMS marketing is possibly the most intimate form of digital communication.
It’s a high engagement channel with a 98% open rate and industry studies show 90% of users will read their messages within three minutes of delivery.
As Paul Bonner explains, the Group CRM Director at THG that sends millions of SMS for marketing each month, "The engagement rates with SMS are really high so we know that it works really well for campaigns like short term flash sales and it’ll obviously work great on Black Friday. If I’ve got the CEO at my desk asking for a few more sales, I know that an SMS will drive that."
SMS marketing works. However, it takes a bit of know-how and application of best practices to do it right. We can help you with both (whether a small business, nonprofit, or big-time enterprise).
Below, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about SMS marketing.
SMS is powerful, but it comes with unique constraints. Because it’s so personal, customers have a lower tolerance for unwanted messaging and over-communication. So to maximize the effectiveness and benefits of SMS, you’ll need to be intentional about how you integrate SMS into your overall marketing strategy. Let’s look at 5 steps to creating an effective SMS strategy.
Before sending customers SMS, you must get the recipient’s explicit consent. Simplify this process by offering your customer something of value in return for their consent. This could be in the form of trust (e.g., receipts, delivery updates, order notifications, etc.) or promotions and discounts (e.g., 10% off their purchase for new SMS subscribers).
Other ways to gain subscribers include using QR codes, “text this number” displays, and social media messaging.
Next, develop a communication strategy for every phase of the customer journey. Here’s where SMS can play a meaningful role throughout the customer lifecycle. For example:
Every marketer knows the key to success lies in your ability to share the right message, at the right time, with the right person. Luckily, you can do just that with SMS personalization.
SMS personalization is unique compared to other channels due to the intimacy of this channel and its limited character counts. Still, there are many ways businesses can leverage SMS personalization to engage customers. For example, you can send customized messages using first-party data, like a customer’s:
We’ll discuss this topic in more detail in the “What is SMS personalization?” section below.
There are 2 elements of your campaigns you can optimize: delivery and messaging.
The key to optimizing delivery is partnering with the right provider to benefit from uptime, carrier relations, redundancy, and more. Your ideal provider will also offer guidance on how to reduce filtering (e.g., when a carrier blocks messages because the content is illegal, inappropriate, or considered spam).
For message optimization, you can rely on A/B testing to compare different copy, visuals, offers, and more to determine what messages resonate most with your audience. For example, you can test the words “discount” versus “coupon” in your message copy to see which drives more conversions.
After sending your SMS campaign, monitor the effectiveness of your program to demonstrate return on investment (ROI) and adjust campaigns as needed. Metrics to track include subscribers, opt-outs, sends, replies, deliverability, click-through rate (CTR), revenue, conversions, and more.
While getting started with mobile marketing is easy, we don’t recommend rushing into it without a well-thought-out SMS marketing strategy.
People tend to treasure their phone numbers more so than their email addresses—and for a good reason. It’s easy to create multiple email addresses for different purposes: work, family, promotions, hobbies, and the like. And while getting a second phone number isn’t difficult, not many people do it.
Improve your subscribers’ experience and your bottom line by following these SMS marketing best practices.
Only send SMS texts to customers who give you permission. Finding a number online or in a phone book doesn’t give you a license to send messages to it. Get permission first.
SMS marketing, like email marketing, is a form of permission-based marketing. Users opt in to these communications. They don’t get to choose what TV or Instagram ads they see, but they do get to choose which emails and texts they receive on their mobile phones.
You can gather permission from subscribers by asking them to fill out a form or text a keyword (like “join” or “subscribe”) to a phone number or short code. When they subscribe, send a follow-up text confirming their interest. This is a form of double opt-in to ensure they meant to subscribe to your SMS marketing messages.
Give your SMS subscribers a way to stop receiving your messages. For example, you might include in your first message that they can text “stop” to opt out of further marketing communications.
You want to give your customer an easy way to unsubscribe from your messages. If they can’t figure it out quickly, they may just block your number instead—and that could prevent you from ever messaging them again (even with important information). Also, if carriers see large amounts of your texts marked as spam, they may stop delivering your messages.
When you message someone (especially for the first time), you want to make it crystal clear who you are. You don’t want to send a generic “Thanks for subscribing” message. The recipient might have forgotten that they subscribed to your messages.
We recommend branding all your texts with something that’ll make it clear who you are. That could be as simple as signing off with your brand’s name or including your tagline in the text.
Additionally, when introducing yourself to new subscribers, provide them with expectations. For example, let them know what kind of content they can anticipate.
Be considerate of your recipient’s time zone. You don’t want to send them text messages at 5 a.m. or 10 p.m. Remember, people check their phones for new messages almost immediately—it’s a little bit different than email, which consumers tend to check periodically throughout the day.
Also, consider the content of the message. Does someone really need to know about your upcoming product launch when it’s 2 p.m. on a Sunday? Probably not. Instead, think about sending that text message during regular business hours during the workweek.
Text messages should be quick and concise. If you can’t squeeze your message into 160 characters or less, maybe you should send an email instead.
Focus on a single CTA. Give your target audience one key piece of information and one exact thing to do with it, whether a special offer or free shipping discount.
While most modern phones and networks support message concatenation (splitting large messages into smaller SMS segments, then recreating the entire message at the receiving end), you have to pay for each segment. For example, if you send a message with 180 characters, it’s going to cost you the price of 2 text messages.
Learn more about SMS character limits.
It's vital to set expectations for the frequency of your SMS marketing communication. The goal is to garner trust from your subscribers so they get excited about the value you offer and don't unsubscribe.
At sign-up, tell subscribers how many messages they may receive every month, such as "never more than 6 per month." Next, test and optimize your message frequency to determine what works best for your business and customers. After all, what works for one industry or company may not work for another.
Ready to get started with SMS marketing? First, you’ll need to decide whether to build or buy a messaging solution depending on your team resources, scalability needs, budget, and other factors. But once you’ve decided on your SMS provider, it’s simple to start sending.
Here’s how to get up and running with Twilio’s SMS marketing platform.
Sign up for a free Twilio account. You’ll receive free credits to get started.
Next, follow along with this tutorial—it’ll show you how to start sending SMS messages in less than 5 minutes.
It’s that simple.
Plus, it’s scalable. If you want to send 10, 100, 1,000, or 10,000 text messages, you’ll be on a platform that’s ready to support you. Give it a try and see what you think.
Begin building your list of subscribers. You could try adding a form to your website or trading valuable content for your customers’ phone numbers.
Building a list takes time and patience. So don’t get discouraged and rush off and buy an SMS marketing list—that’s a big no-no. Provide value, and the subscribers will come.
Choose a phone number type for your business. But remember, the type of phone number you use for your business SMS will impact costs, message throughput (how many messages you can send per second), your ability to initiate 2-way communications, and which regulatory guidelines you need to follow.
The phone number types for businesses in the US are:
Read more about how to choose the right phone number type for your business needs.
Remember that marketing messaging isn’t a one-way street. You want to be available for (and encourage) a bit of back-and-forth with customers.
For example, when you send a discount code to your recipients, you want them to be able to ask, “Can I use this on your clearance items too?”
That’s where Twilio Studio comes in handy.
Twilio Studio is our drag-and-drop visual communications builder. You can build intelligent chatbots, automated attendants, and autoresponders to create personal conversations with your recipients.
Want more information on Marketing SMS, Cloud Call Center, Voice SMS Service? Click the link below to contact us.