Top 8 Easy Practices For Your Next Business Text Messaging Campaign

Let’s face it,

Business text messaging, sometimes referred to as SMS marketing or mass text marketing, is quickly becoming the marketing world’s favorite customer communication channel. With incredibly high open rates and data showing reduced churn rates, it’s no wonder that every company is trying to jump on the bandwagon.

Here’s the deal,

As more companies join the business text messaging revolution, the potency of your branded messaging will need to increase as well.

In order to help you craft well thought out messages and stay one step ahead of the competition, we have laid out X best practices that will help you get the most out of your mass text marketing campaign. Let’s take a look.

Best Practices For Business Text Messaging Campaign

1. Be clear about your text messaging program

From the very first message that you send your customers, often an auto-reply to their agreement to subscribe, be clear about your intentions. Right off the bat, you need to let your customers know what to expect.

By setting expectations early, you are able to control the flow of communication and meet, if not exceed, their expectations.

If you don’t communicate clearly with your customers, you will likely encounter a rapid drop-off in engagement. After all, a lot went into the customer acquisition cost, it would be a shame to lose them early on.

Customers that have the wrong perception of your program will be the first to jump ship when it doesn’t line up with their idea. This is why it is so important to be clear about your intentions.

2. Get Consent

As in many other things in life, consent is very important. For SMS marketing campaigns, it’s actually the law. Other than potentially being subject to hefty legal penalties, your brand’s image will suffer greatly and you may end up worse off then you started.

Thankfully, avoiding this is very simple. Either has your subscribers opt-in online or by sending their code to your short link or prompt them on the initial touch-point to agree to receive messages. Unless you have their written consent, you should never send even one message.

algorithm

3. Limit your frequency

Even though both you and your customers are used to receiving text messages all the time, business text messaging doesn’t need to have the same frequency. In fact, it should be much less often. Over-texting is one of the quickest ways to lose the subscribers you spent time and effort cultivating.

Again, just be clear with your customers on how often they will be receiving text messages. Ideally, this number will be anywhere from 1-4 messages per month, but it will be different for different industries and they will receive messages.

SMS marketing

4. Include disclaimers

According to the CTIA (the Wireless Association), there are certain disclaimers you must include in any advertising sent via SMS. Your subscribers only need to see this once, but you must include:

Msg & Data rates may apply

Make sure that you include this in your initial messages to make sure and avoid any potential fines. It’s a small thing to include, so don’t make the easy mistake of forgetting!

5. Provide an exit

While obviously any sort of customer retention marketing should focus on retainer customers, when it comes to text message marketing, you always need to provide an exit for your subscribers. Simply put, you need to include

Text “STOP” to cancel

Or some other form of exit for your customers each time you send them a text. While this seems counter-intuitive, your customers will likely be even more frustrated if you should forget to include it. Be open to your customers and they will be more inclined to stick around.

6. Be aware of timing

When it comes to the right time to send business text messaging alerts to your customers, always reach out to them within business hours. A common mistake made by marketers when they first begin their campaigns is they forget to make sure they are sending messages at appropriate times. Keep your messages within business hours, just to be safe.

Along with that, there is another reason you should be aware of the timing of your messages: inspiring immediate action. A huge advantage of text messaging marketing is how quickly your customers receive your message. Prompt them to take immediate action at a common time of day for your business.

For example, if you have a restaurant and want to let people know about your lunch special, send them a message just before the midday rush. Not only will this lead to more conversions, but your subscribers will appreciate you trying to help them get the best deals at the right time.

SMS and email marketing

7. Use normal language

When it comes to a business text messaging campaign, user engagement metrics dictate that you should use normal language in your messaging.

Inexperienced marketers often make the mistake of using ‘text lingo’ in their branded SMS messaging. Your subscribers are expecting to receive business messages from you, so your tone should be professional.

By using text language over normal language, you are putting the reputation of your company at risk. Obviously, there are some exceptions, like using acronyms or shortening words for the sake of character count, but despite these scenarios, you should always use normal language.  

mass text marketing

8. Provide value

The final best practice that we have for you in this article is to provide value to your customers with every text of your SMS marketing campaign.

Business text messaging service is a powerful tool, but only when it used correctly. Each of the best practices we have reviewed is different ways that you can add value, but you also need to make sure that your campaign serves a purpose.

If you find yourself short of ideas or using the same campaigns over and over, you might not need to have a business text messaging platform.

It would better serve your customers that you are adding value to every message than simply sending them more content that they don’t need and you aren’t making money off of.

Before every message you send, ask yourself how it can provide value to the customer. Only when you feel secure in the value you are offering should you hit send. Do this, and you should have no problem running a successful text messaging marketing campaign.

Final thoughts

While it can be easy to use a few of these best practices to improve a text message marketing campaign, the best way to get the most out of an SMS campaign is by using all of the best practices laid out above. In fact, some of them like “Provide Value” only become more potent when combined with other factors.

As you begin to lay out the plan for your SMS marketing campaign, remember each of these different ways to reach your customers in new and exciting ways. By creating a consistent brand message with your campaigns, customers will come to appreciate your business and you will have a real impact on their lives. So, what are you waiting for? Go out there and get after it!

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