Steps to Build an SMS Marketing Campaign 

• Define your audience: Before sending any messages, determine who should receive each communication. You can segment them based on demographics, past purchasing behavior, or other factors. The more personalized you can get, though, the more engagement you’re likely to receive.  
• Set some goals: Determine what you want to achieve with your SMS marketing campaigns. Each time you send a message your objective could differ — from driving sales to increasing website traffic to building brand awareness to getting referrals.
• Determine frequency and timing: Decide how often you will send messages to your subscribers. Too many messages can lead to opt-outs, while too few may be ineffective. You can also play around to find the right timing and frequency for your texts. Just be cautious of early morning or late-night texts or spamming customers with too many messages. 
• Craft your message: This is the easy part! But keep in mind, not everything is suited to be sent over a text. And depending on your type of business, certain SMS campaigns will make sense over others. We’ll share more on what to include in your actual text shortly. 
• Measure the results: Track your SMS marketing metrics, such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions, to determine the effectiveness of your campaign. Use this data to refine your strategy and improve future campaigns. 

As you can see, SMS marketing doesn’t have to be overly complicated. It’s a simple process to get started with your first campaign. As a business owner, it’s easy to do and quick to implement. This means you can spend more time on other, more important aspects of running your business. Before you send your first message, here are some best practices to make sure you are communicating correctly and getting the most out of your SMS marketing. 

Best Practices for Texting Customers

Include a CTA and contact method

Any text you have should include a call to action, a way to opt-out, and a way to contact you. Even if you’re doing something as simple as reminding them of an appointment, a link for them to review the time and details of their appointment or to call you to reschedule can improve the customer experience — not to mention avoid no-shows and loss of revenue for your business.  

A CTA is also vital for any communications that you want to invoke a sense of urgency with — such as promotions. It can make a difference in conversions to link directly to a product page for customers to complete a purchase versus just your website. You can use a tool like Bitly to shorten the link to save on characters. 

Speak conversationally 

While a lot of marketing communications through email or your website are a time to be grammatically correct and professional — text isn’t one of them. You only have so many characters to communicate with so using short-hand abbreviations or emojis is okay, just make sure they are still easily understood by your customers. Additionally, texting is more personal, so text like you’d text your family or friends! 

Keep texts short and to the point 

A single text is typically 160 characters. However, you could send a message as large as 1600 characters, but after it reaches 160, it’s broken down into chunks. Avoid sending long messages where your customers get multiple texts at once — we all know how annoying that can be. If you find the message getting lengthy — an email may be better. 

Keep it legal

Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), companies may not send messages to consumers without their consent. Don’t contact customers or prospects who haven’t voluntarily provided their contact information or opted into receiving your texts. It’s a sure way to irritate customers and get into trouble. Any message you send should also include a quick way to opt out of receiving communications, such as a line that says “Reply STOP to unsubscribe.” Read more about SMS compliance here.