SMS Marketing: DOs and DON’Ts

With more than 290 million smartphone users in the US, SMS marketing is a powerful channel to keep your customers engaged, communicate with them, and increase brand awareness. SMS Marketing enables you to reach a wider audience and simultaneously whenever you need it. Your prospects and customers use their phones on average 5.4 hours daily, so most likely, your text message in their inboxes won’t be left unnoticed. SMS open rates are 98%, compared to 20% of email marketing. However, keep in mind to first check the policies of your preferred platforms. For instance, not all platforms allow CBD advertising (although Klavyio.com does). The CBD industry still faces numerous marketing restrictions, so understand the advertising policies of the platform of your choice first and make sure you are allowed to promote your products there.

Although SMS marketing might sound impressive, you need more than just your customers opening and reading your texts – you want to engage them. So before sending out your messages, it’s essential to consider some crucial factors that can significantly impact your SMS marketing campaign’s success. The DOs and DON’Ts of SMS marketing will help you effectively communicate your message you’re your customers and engage them more easily.

The DOs of SMS marketing

DO Include a Call-to-Action in Your Messages

You send each text with some objective, whether it’s encouraging sales or visiting your blog for a new article. Make sure to include the call to action to encourage readers to take action after reading your message. A Call-to-Action is how you tell your customers what to do after reading the text, like visiting the link to get a 30% discount code. Make sure to communicate the urgency in your messages with words like — act fast, last chance, limited time offer, etc.

DO Use Promo and Coupon Codes.

Almost 70% of consumers love receiving coupons, and they can be a great way to drive sales. In addition, promo codes and coupons can grab readers’ attention and encourage them to make a purchase, so they are great to include in your SMS marketing campaigns.

DO Write Compelling Text

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” – a quote by Mark Twain says it all, writing short texts is much more challenging than long ones because you have to include all the information is such a short amount of content. SMS marketing messages are limited to 160 characters, so you must make sure to write a brief but compelling text that will grab your customers’ attention and spark their interest. The best way to do so is to keep your messages simple and make their intentions clear. You can highlight the most crucial words with capital letters like DISCOUNT or ALMOST GONE.

DO Include an Opt-Out Option

Like with any other marketing message, your SMS messages must include an opt-out option. The best way is to add “opt-out reply STOP” or similar text to the message and send it from a virtual mobile number where your recipients reply.

Keep in mind that it must be clear to recipients who the sender of the message is. According to the TCPA — Telephone Consumer Protection Act, text messages must include the identity of the entity sending the text. So, either you should use a virtual number and have your brand name in the promotional text or send it using your brand name and include your virtual phone number in the text where recipients can reply.

DO Choose the Right Time

If you send your messages at night when most of your customers are probably asleep, don’t expect much engagement with your messages. Regardless of how urgent you make them look, if you send your message at night and customers read it several hours after receiving it, they might think the deal has already ended. Plus, weird timing can make anyone doubt your company’s reliability. Instead, send your messages when you think your customers are more likely to read and interact with them, such as after the standard working hours or in the morning before work. The time you choose depends on the products you sell, the message you send, and your target audience.

The DON’Ts of SMS marketing

DON’T Overdo it

Just because you can send promotional texts to your customers anytime you want, it doesn’t mean you should go ahead and do it. Instead, send your messages only when you believe you have something valuable to offer to your audience. When you overdo SMS marketing, your customers will get overwhelmed, opt-out, and you’ll lose subscribers.

DON’T text customers without their consent

Under the TCPA, companies aren’t allowed to send messages to customers without their written consent. So even if you have your customers’ phone numbers and they have verbally told you that they want to receive your promotional text messages, you cannot text them unless you have written consent. Sending messages to your customers without their permission could get you into trouble and result in fines.

DON’T Send Messages Without a Link

Even if your message includes a Call-to-Action (it must), it might not promote action if there is no link readers can click. You want your SMS marketing recipients to interact with your message easily. Plus, without links, it’s more challenging to measure and track your campaign’s success, so always include a traceable link along with your clear call to action (CTA).

DON’T Include Long URLs in Your Messages

Links are essential in SMS marketing, but they don’t have to take up the whole space of your text. When you’re limited to 160-characters only, including long links in your messages will make it even more challenging to squeeze all the information into one text. Plus, it’ll look unprofessional.

URL shorteners available for free are great to use for your SMS marketing campaigns, and they can create short unique URLs to redirect your audience to a specific page without using long URLs. For instance, a link to one of our blogs is 94-characters long, and that would leave us with only 66 characters which wouldn’t be enough to write our text –

“Limited time offer!

Take part in Internet Marketing Geeks’ online q”– that’s already 66 characters.

the original link – https://internetmarketinggeeks.com/blog/how-to-choose-an-ecommerce-platform-for-your-business/

Using bitly URL shortener, we cut down our link to 22 characters https://bit.ly/3nocuUr.

“Limited time offer!

Take part in Internet Marketing Geeks’ online quiz today and win our first book, Digital Marketing Era 101!

Play at https://bit.ly/3nocuUr“

DON’T Make it a One-Way Communication

The great thing about digital marketing is that it allows you to build personal relationships with your customers. Unlike putting up a billboard at the city entrance and not knowing who’s looking at it, digital marketing allows you to target the right audience, measure the success of your campaigns, and receive feedback from your customers.

Channels like social media, blogs, and email, allow you to build authentic relationships with your customers, and SMS marketing is no exception. People use phones all day long, and if you enable two-way communication through your SMS marketing, your audience will most likely respond to your texts, ask questions and provide feedback.

The two-way communication can help you better understand what your customers expect from your brand and how they benefit from your products and services. It can become an excellent feedback channel you can use to provide customers with an even more pleasing shopping experience.

However, if you allow two-way communication, make sure to respond to all messages in time. Otherwise, your audience might not see your company as trustworthy and may not take the risk of buying your products. Will you answer them promptly If something goes wrong with their order? They won’t know if so far, the only channel they have used to communicate with you was through texts you didn’t respond to for several hours. We hope the DOs and DON’Ts above will help you refine your SMS marketing strategy and write texts that will attract your customers’ attention and spark their interest. SMS marketing is undoubtedly an excellent channel to increase sales, so fine-tuning its strategy will only bring better results and increased ROI.