The Anatomy of a Successful Text

If you’re using SMS marketing for your business, you’re already a step ahead of your competitors. But for your SMS marketing to be a real success, you should get your desired response or experience a spike in your response rates. How do you accomplish this?

It’s high time for you to sit down with your team, take aim, and embark on a more strategic SMS marketing approach.

What Makes a Successful Text?

An excellent SMS marketing strategy begins by understanding what makes a successful text. Whether you’re running a dental office or an e-commerce campaign, you have 160 characters to work with when writing SMS messages for your business.

Here’s a quick checklist (with examples!) that you can use to make each word count in your SMS marketing campaigns.

1. Be mindful of delivery times and days.

Rule of thumb: Steer clear of sending SMS messages too early or too late in the day. Consider time zones too when you’re marketing to a broad customer base located in different states and countries.

As for the perfect day to send your SMS, there are no hard and fast rules. It depends on your industry and the context of your text message.

For instance, sending texts on Thursdays or Fridays is a fantastic idea if you’re a restaurant promoting your weekend discounts. Most people eat out during the weekends and sending texts days before the weekend ensures top-of-mind awareness about your promo.

2. Identify yourself or your brand.

Your desired boost in marketing and sales won’t happen unless you have brand recognition and awareness.

When you’re competing for attention from other competitors and communication channels, you’ll want your recipients to know that the text is from your brand. Plus, customers may not recognize your phone number. You don’t want a recipient dropping by a competitor’s store thinking that your promotional text was from the competition. A dedicated SMS short code can help address this issue, giving your brand the opportunity to stand out more.

3. Provide value upfront but don’t sound like a spammy marketer.

Offer immediate value to keep customers reading your entire SMS. This practice also shows customers that you’re not marketing but simply communicating a useful tip to them.

Word of warning: Using ALL CAPS, excessive use of the word free, or adding multiple exclamation marks is the quickest way to have your number blocked.

4. Make it personal.

Whether it’s in print or digital marketing, personalization almost always drives high engagement and conversion rates. Adding a bit of personalization in your text shows your recipients that you’re talking to them exclusively. After all, no one wants to feel that they’re just another customer in the list.

Fortunately, our platform offer personalization through built-in custom fields. By using this feature, you can populate texts with customer names and other personal information. You can also add birthdays and gender!

5. Focus on a specific call-to-action that you want the recipient to take.

A call-to-action is a word, phrase, or sentence that tells your recipient what to do. The most effective calls-to-actions in SMS messages are specific, easy to understand, and motivate your customers to take immediate action.

In the example below, the hair salon does a great job in writing their call to action because it’s specific and easier for the client to comply. Some hair salons will either not bother sending follow-up reminders or instruct the client to call the salon instead. What if the client can’t call at the moment?

6. Make it exclusive.

Apart from personalizing your messages, make it more exclusive. A great example of this best practice is sending promo codes exclusive to people in your SMS marketing list, Facebook group, or VIP list.

7. Have a deadline.

The best way to create a sense of urgency is to add deadlines to your messages. The vaguer you are in your SMS, the less likely the recipient will take action or respond to you.

8. Speak your target customers’ language.

If your products or services target a specific group of audience, speak their language and use phrases that are highly relatable to them.

Ready to send your first SMS marketing campaign?

When it comes to SMS marketing, brands that are helpful and human in their textspeak are almost always more successful than brands whose mission is to simply sell.

In summary, a successful text message should be clear, specific, helpful, personalized, and have a strong call-to-action. Bonus points if you can speak your audience’s language. Feel free to mix and match the best practices we’ve listed above before clicking send!