The hard “cell”: SMS marketing best practices
If you are looking to reach large amounts of people or communicate to your audience without using SEO practices or going exclusively online, text message marketing or SMS marketing is an incredibly powerful tool.
But it’s crucial to realise that when you follow this approach you’ve got to be quite strict with your practices. It can prove someone invasive if you keep texting them. But if you do it right, you may find a more intimate way to liaise with potential customers. With this in mind, what are the best SMS marketing practices to utilise?
Acquire permission
This is the most important practice for any SMS marketing program. If you don’t get consent you are potentially breaking laws, but it can also give your business a bad name. You can get permission by asking subscribers to opt-in or if you are uploading a manual list you will need their written consent.
Clarity is key
People need to know what they’re signing up for. When text messages are vague or don’t set up your intent, this doesn’t communicate the right message and it doesn’t set anybody’s expectations about what you provide. Text messages need to be short and sharp but you need to be to the point.
Be careful with your message frequency
Much like when anybody receives emails all too often, they will soon move them to the junk folder. The same applies here. The best approach is to send a minimum amount per month. Between 2 and 6 messages throughout the course of the month should be more than enough to get the message through without annoying your subscribers. It’s also a good idea to let them know how often you will be messaging them.
Give them the opportunity to opt-out
Your subscribers need to have an exit. SMS marketing services need to have an opt-out part of the message. This should be a default part of your auto-reply. It doesn’t necessarily need to be in every text you send, but it is crucial to remind customers that they don’t need to be bombarded if they don’t want to.
Use normal language
Via text, it’s so easy to use abbreviations. But while “lol” is commonly understood, you have to remember that it needs to look professional. It’s important to use shorthand sparingly.
Text during the day
When we have such intimate access to our subscribers’ phones, we don’t want to annoy them by texting them in the middle of the night. It’s not just going to annoy the customers, but it may not help your business to get custom. Not many customers would take advantage of offers in the middle of the night!
The importance of value
People don’t just want a text message to remind them of your existence. If you provide value with every message this will keep people interested. Because if people are happy for you to message them you need to give them something that will keep them coming back.
It may seem like a campaign method that’s not as popular as SEO or email marketing but SMS marketing can help you to cover a part of the market that isn’t necessarily savvy online.
