Text Marketing Mastery: 5 SMS Campaigns Best Practices for 2019

If you are considering investing in text marketing for your business, then it’s important for you to master the fundamentals and get up and running quickly.

Why?

Like most marketing strategies that you invest in, the hardest one to predict is the learning curve. You never know how long it’s going to take to get your team trained, build a strategy, execute it, learn and revise, and finally see results.

Fortunately, we’ve helped thousands of businesses just like yours get started quickly and start generating results. We’ve learned what it takes to build successful campaigns, and we’re ready to help you too.

We’ve compiled some of the top SMS campaign best practices that you need to master to get results faster.

SMS Campaigns Best Practices to Master in 2019

These five core SMS best practices are essential to the success of any texting campaigns that you want to run. From legal hurdles to relationship and conversion tips, you’ll learn everything you need to get started.

1. Get Permission Before Texting

The first step towards building a text marketing campaign is to get permission from your subscribers. You are legally required to get permission in writing if you want to send a text message.

Getting text marketing opt-ins is easier than you might think. Your sign-up process should be intuitive and straightforward for people to sign up. You can ask for sign-ups in a variety of locations, including:

• In-Store Signs and Flyers
• Your Website and Social Media
• Email Marketing Campaigns
• Business Cards
• Register Receipts
• Printed Ads
• Radio and Television Spots

Your opt-in request can be as simple as prompting them to text a short code to your number — such as “Text GetTexts to 858585 to sign up.”

2. Text During Normal Business Hours

Like most marketing campaigns, they are only effective if your target marketing sees them and acts. You should carefully consider the day and time that you choose to send your messages.

The best times to send text messages are typically during normal business hours. Also, avoid sending messages during rush hour. Rush hour is typically from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. in their local time zone.

While that’s a general best practice to follow, it’s important to consider that there may be exceptions for your target audience. If you want prospects and customers to be more involved on weekends or during particular sale dates, then you may want to consider different send times. 

3. Be Conversational

Many brands that are using SMS fail to really consider and implement the conversational aspect that text messaging provides. They push the notifications that we’re used to like the discount coupon offers we get from restaurants like Chipotle or balance notifications we get from credit cards.

When you send a text, you should try to humanize your brand and make a connection with your customers. Talk to people like people. Use their first name and make the conversation about them.

Consider the context of the conversation. Use the data that you have available in your CRM to help your messages be more relevant. For example, you can use their ZIP code to send your messages at the right time for their location and time zone.

4. Include Hyperlinks to Relevant Information

To achieve a personal and relevant mobile marketing strategy, you need to know as much as you can about your subscribers. Taking the time to gather additional insights will enable you to send messages that link to offers and promotions that are relevant to your customer at that moment in their life. 

For example, if you run a restaurant, then you should learn about their food preferences and the times and days they like to dine with you. You can use this information to send links to sales pages with promotions for the food they like.

If you run an event venue, you might want to know something about the sort of music they like. This information will allow you to send them links to events that you’re hosting that they might enjoy.

If you own a retail shop, you should know what types of clothes they like to buy. When you’re ready to run a sale on that clothing, you can send a link to the sales page to people that would be interested.

You can collect this information in a variety of ways — social media, shopping history, and links to surveys or polls. A wider variety of channels will give you the best results since you will get different levels of details from each avenue.

Using this information in the right way will help you build relevant messages with links to helpful information so that you can reap the full benefit of your SMS campaigns.

5. Measure What Works

The success of any marketing activity is bound by its ROI. Fortunately, most text marketing providers make it simple and easy to measure text message marketing effectiveness. To measure the effectiveness of your own SMS campaigns, consult your reporting and analytics dashboard. 

Click-Through Rate

Your click-through rate is a measure of the percentage of your subscribers that take action by clicking on a link in the message you send.

Opt-Out Rate

While we’d all like to keep all of our subscribers, that’s not a reality. You will always have some subscribers that will opt out of your messages. However, you want to keep this rate relatively low.

Conversion Rate

Your campaigns will have actions that you want people to take. 

Growth Rate

Growing your list extends your reach, so if the rest of your campaign is performing well, then you should see more ROI as your list grows. 

Learn More Strategies for Successful Text Marketing

Now that you know the top best practices for building successful text marketing campaigns, it’s time to start preparing to launch your first initiatives.

SMS marketing is one of the fastest-growing and most effective ways to build relationships with your customers. 

It’s time to learn how to:

• Effectively promote your goods and services
• Increase engagement
• Learn how to send quick alerts
• Automate appointment reminders

Photo: Getty Images/PhotoAttractive