A successful and efficient SMS campaign always requires 3 key ingredients:
- A well extracted and target segmented database.
- An efficient and intelligent SMS portal – TheSMSBuddy.
- And a well-researched and drafted offer/update for your respective target audience.
The right combination of these 3 ingredients will set aside an excellent campaign from a mediocre one.
Having gathered decades of experience in carrying out result oriented SMS marketing, we have penned down the Top-5 Do’s and Dont’s to guide you reach your audience more effectively, thereby ensuring that you get maximum returns for your SMS campaigns.
Do’s
1. KISS (Keep It Short and Simple) Content!
Whether you’re sending a welcome message, a booking reminder, a delivery confirmation or a seasonal offer, remember to keep it short and simple. You could also use the Up7 feature on TheSMSBuddy platform to attach files and create a brief yet powerful message to convey more in just 160 characters.
2. Include a Clear Call to Action
Each message goes out with a clear intention behind it. A strong, immediate call to action step is typically a line of text prompting your customer to make the next move. Typically, this line would ask the recipients to use a Coupon Code for their next purchase or prompting them to sharing a Referral Code with friends and more.
3. Give Customers the Opportunity to Opt-Out
A customers may have given consent to receive marketing communications before, but sometimes she/he may change their mind. Do act responsibly and give them an option to opt-out, at the end of the text. It benefits your business too, so you’re not wasting money targeting a cold prospect. Keep your mobile list warm and you’ll see better results.
4. Track your SMS Campaign’s Effectiveness
Tracking a campaign’s performance to learn, test, measure, modify and optimize campaigns helps in getting better returns from your campaigns. Utilize TheSMSBuddy’d extensive and fast Reports feature to extract desired campaign reports in order to identify the right measure, and the right time to send messages to ensure high open and read rates. Our portal also extends insightful features like time of the click and device characteristics – browser, OS etc.
5. Use A Conversational Style with a Personal Touch
Create texts that engage, persuade and inspire your customers. Bring a personal touch to your bulk SMS campaigns by inserting recipients’ names and other custom details using our advanced dynamic messaging feature.
Don’ts
1. Don’t Text at the Wrong Time
SMS marketing enables you to reach out to customers in real time. 90% of the messages are read less than five minutes after they are received. Therefore, you should send messages around the time you want recipients to read them and take action. Eg: sending a message 5 days in advance for a job walk-in might not be as effective as sending it the previous day.
2. Don’t Include Lengthy URLs
If you intend to include the link to an article, your YouTube channel or your website as a part of your SMS content, don’t forget to shorten them. A longer link not only uses up valuable characters, but also signals a customer to think of the message as a SPAM content. You could use TheSMSBuddy’s URL shortening feature called UP7, to shorten your URLs and have them included in your text.
3. Don’t Miss Out on Introducing Yourself
It is extremely important to highlight your business, product or service name as early as possible in a message, given the extremely low attention span of readers. Ensure that you identify your company clearly in the text message. This is important to ensure brand recall and reach.
4. Don’t Use Text-Speak
Though, character and personality is key to creating a successful SMS campaign, using the widely known SMS lingo, going overboard with abbreviations or using incorrect grammar or spelling is an absolute NO when it comes drafting your SMS content. It looks unprofessional and your message could easily be misinterpreted by the receiver.
5. Don’t Keep your Conversation One-Sided
Make sure that your campaigns are not one-sided. Encourage your customers to respond. You can make use of long codes, short codes and dual VMNS to recieve SMS. You can ask them to text back to avail a special offer or send surveys for them to fill out. This also gives you a chance to build your opt-in database.
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