SMS Marketing Checklist: What Are the Best Practices?

Posted on

September 26, 2020

If you’ve heard about some of the advantages of using SMS marketing, it’s understandable that you’d want to get started right away to start reaping the benefits. However, you need to remember that you’re new to the game and to take some time to learn the ins and outs of this method— including best practices— in order to actually benefit from it. Thankfully, we are super well-versed in SMS marketing and are here to break it all down for you.

What Is SMS Marketing?

In order to practice SMS marketing correctly, you need to know what it’s all about. At the most basic level, SMS marketing is contacting customers with marketing content through SMS text messages. SMS messages go directly to a person’s phone and are more likely to be opened and responded to when compared to other forms of marketing. This is because people are constantly on their phones and use text messaging to communicate with friends, family, colleagues, etc. So by using SMS marketing, you’re really putting yourself right in the middle of their lives rather than in some email spam folder that never gets opened.

Why Use SMS Marketing?

SMS marketing offers some unique advantages over other types of marketing that make it definitely worth investing in. SMS marketing is relatively cheap but has a big impact compared to other forms of advertising. SMS messages have a high open rate and a high action rate -- with 98% of test messages being opened. SMS marketing is a great way to personally engage with your customers and build rapport with them since text messages are so personal. SMS marketing is also customizable and more interactive than other types of marketing, making it all the more likely that people will complete the desired action. Finally, SMS marketing is easily shareable and communicated between people so it’s easy for one person to forward on the message about your big sale to a friend— potentially getting you a new customer!

How to Use SMS Marketing?

Depending on your type of business, there are several different ways that you can use SMS marketing to your advantage. Here are some great examples of how it works in practice:

If you’re an eCommerce company, you can use SMS marketing by texting people who abandon their online shopping carts on your website. This is often a huge problem for eCommerce businesses that end up missing out on tons of revenue from people who, for whatever reason, don’t pull the trigger on their purchase. By using an SMS marketing service like Cart Text, you are able to reach out to that person directly and remind them about the items they left in their cart. If you really want to sweeten the deal, you can offer them an incentive to buy like a small discount or even free shipping!
Another great function of SMS marketing for eCommerce businesses is using text messages to send out order updates. After making a purchase, people want to stay up-to-date on their order, including when it’s processed, when it ships, and when it arrives. That way, people don’t have to sort through their emails, find the order confirmation, click on the order status, etc.
SMS marketing is a great way for any business to alert people of promotions and general announcements. For example, if you’re having a big online sale, you can let people know some of the best deals, the dates, and how to access the sale. Also, if you’re opening a new location nearby, you can send out an announcement text about your grand opening event! Both of these cases help direct more traffic towards your business.
Finally, SMS marketing is a great way for any business to send out follow-up surveys to their customers to ask them about their experience. This process can be super simple over text— in fact, you don’t even have to use an outside website link! You can do it directly through text by asking “yes” and “no” questions and using numbers to rate certain aspects of their experience. To entice people to participate, you may want to offer a small incentive like a freebie or 10% off their next purchase.

Best Practices of SMS Marketing

SMS marketing can work wonders for your business, but only if you do it correctly! You definitely don’t want to jump the gun and just start firing off texts right away without a second thought. So here are some best practices of SMS marketing so that you can effectively reach your customers and get them to complete your desired action:

First of all, you need to obtain the consent of the people that you text. Regulations in the United States prevent companies from sending out unsolicited marketing text messages. But how do you get consent?

One of the easiest ways to get customers to sign up to receive your text messages is including an “opt-in” option as they are completing a purchase on your website. Not only is this a way to get people to opt-in to text messages, but emails as well! Even though SMS is definitely revolutionizing the way that we go about marketing in the 21st-century, SMS marketing and email marketing should be used together in a cohesive strategy that’s extremely effective.
Another way to get people to opt-in to your marketing messages is to promote your unique keyword and number on all your advertisements ranging from posters, billboards, print ads, social media, etc. The options here are really endless! And this just goes to show that while SMS marketing is important, it should be used to complement other methods of marketing rather than existing on its own.
A particularly effective way to get people to opt in to receive your SMS marketing messages is to offer an incentive. You’d be surprised what people are willing to do for a small discount or freebie! In the long-term, offering this incentive will be worth building your contact list.

Once you have consent, you’re almost ready to start sending out texts! This is where you really need to pay attention. Here are some tips regarding what to include in the actual messages themselves:

Most messages need to involve a call to action. What do you want the customer to do? Why are you sending them this message? Do you want them to check out a sale, complete a survey, refer a friend? Always make this clear in your message.
You should always include your company name in your SMS marketing texts so that people know who the message is coming from.
Personalization is also a good idea. So try including a person’s name within the message so that the person feels more involved and connected in the exchange.
Keep it short and sweet. Texts are pretty limited anyway, but you still want to avoid super long, wordy, or complicated messages. People love texts because they are short and easy to read— use this fact to your advantage to all but guarantee that your message will actually be read.
Don’t send out random texts that your customers won’t want to read. Your messages need to present some sort of value to their recipients. If you can’t tell what that value is, then you shouldn’t send out that message.

Now when it comes to methodology, here are some tips on how to best go about sending your texts:

Make sure that you’re sending your messages out at the right time of day! Obviously, you wouldn’t want to be woken up by a marketing text in the middle of the night— so send them during the day or in the evening for the best results since people are more likely to be on their phones during those times.
Don’t forget about time zones! This is especially true if you’re an international company. Just because it’s a decent hour in one hemisphere doesn’t mean that it is across the world. So make sure to review everyone’s preferred time zone and group them if you have to before sending out mass messages to everyone on your list no matter where they are.
Don’t send out so many messages that you end up annoying people. Again, think about the value of each of your messages and limit your messages to one to two per week.
Use data to your advantage! This is one of the best parts of SMS marketing. Keep track of what messages seem to be working well and which ones aren’t as effective. Don't be afraid to tweak a message a little bit and see if it’s able to get a better response.
Finally, always give customers the option to opt-out of your messages. However, if you follow these best practices, this will be a rare occurrence!

In Summary

As you can see, SMS marketing can be extremely effective if done correctly. If you really want to get it right, we recommend that you consult SMS marketing experts, like Cart Text, to help you out and really take your marketing game to the next level.

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