Canadian texting service: How to reach your customers with business texting and SMS marketing

Recently, the national statistics office, Statistics Canada, decided to start texting questions to confront the falloff in its response rates.

Their reason was simple: people avoided picking up phone calls and didn’t respond to emails.

They aren’t alone in their pivot towards SMS. Organizations of all stripes and sizes are turning to business texting services to communicate with their audiences and take advantage of the 98% open rates of SMS.

It’s not just businesses that are benefiting from this shift. A full 75% of Canadians said they would consent to receive communications (“opt in”) from a brand they trust.

If you’re looking to get in on the action, we have good news for you. In this article, we explain how our SMS marketing service service works.

• Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation and SMS Marketing
• How to Start SMS Marketing in Canada
• How Canadian Businesses Use SimpleTexting
• How to Choose a Canadian Texting Service

Yes, SMS marketing is legal in Canada.

If you have a list of phone numbers, you will need to be aware of compliance requirements. That’s because Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) requires anyone sending text messages within Canada to:

• Get express consent before they send people marketing SMS messages
• Provide identification/contact information and an unsubscribe mechanism in all SMS

We always advise our customers to consult with their legal counsel to understand the details of compliance legislation and how it may affect your texting campaigns. We also encourage you to review our compliance guide for more general information about compliance.

It’s incredibly easy to start text marketing in Canada with SimpleTexting. You can get up and running in just four steps.

At any point in your free two-week trial, you can head over to the billing page and upgrade to a paid plan. This will give you full access to our suite of SMS marketing tools and texting capabilities.

Note: You’ll need to register for a Canadian 10DLC number to send texts to Canadian numbers. After upgrading your SimpleTexting account, you can let our customer support team know that you’d like a Canadian number. If you want to send messages to both U.S. and Canadian numbers, you’ll need to register for a toll-free number.

If you already have a list of contacts who you have express content to text, you can import them directly to our platform by following these instructions.

Even if you have no experience with text marketing, it’s easy to collect numbers. Here are three tried-and-tested methods you can use.

SMS text-to-join keywords

An SMS keyword is a word or phrase that your customers can text to your phone number to receive future messages. Also known as text-to-join, you can set it up so that you also collect email addresses.

Web signup form

You can also have your customers subscribe via a web form on your website. With SimpleTexting’s web form, you can capture phone numbers, first names, last names, and more. To add one to your website, all you have to do is copy and paste a small piece of code.

Mobile signup widget

If you’re after 670% list growth, then our mobile signup widget is for you. 

When someone clicks on it, their phone’s native messaging app opens with your phone number and keyword prefilled.

All they have to do is click send and they’re subscribed to your messages.

Once you’ve got everything set up and ready to go, it’s time to write your first promotion, update, event reminder—whatever you want, really—and then send or schedule it for later.

SMS marketing is a dynamic and impactful tool for Canadian businesses, offering distinct advantages in today’s digital landscape. Its directness, efficiency, and expansive reach make it an indispensable tool in the modern marketing mix. Here are five key benefits:

1. Immediate reach and high open rates: The remarkable immediacy of SMS marketing ensures that over 90% of messages are opened and read within minutes. This rapid engagement is crucial for delivering time-sensitive information and offers.
2. Enhanced customer engagement: Personalized text messages create a more intimate communication channel with customers. This approach keeps your brand relevant and top-of-mind, fostering customer loyalty.
3. Supports multichannel marketing strategies: SMS marketing complements other marketing channels, like email, to enhance the overall effectiveness of your campaign. It provides a direct and concise way to reinforce your brand message and stay connected with your audience.
4. Effective promotion of events and offers: Use SMS to promote events, special offers, or sales. Text messaging allows your audience to receive these promotions here and now, increasing the likelihood of a positive response.
5. Building a loyal customer base: Customers demonstrate a significant interest in your brand by opting to receive your text messages. This platform is ideal for nurturing this interest into brand loyalty through exclusive offers, VIP programs, and targeted engagement.

For Canadian businesses, SMS marketing represents a direct, efficient, and highly personal way to connect with customers, enhancing brand engagement and fostering long-term customer relationships.

Text message marketing is just one of the many ways that you can use bulk SMS.

Here’s a simple table that covers a small portion of all the different types of SMS campaigns businesses send daily.

It’s worth calling out here that businesses can do more than send text blasts. You can use our SMS chat to have two-way conversations and:

• Provide text-based customer service
• Text 1-on-1 with sales leads
• Set up a text-an-expert hotline

If you want to see some real-world examples of the above use cases, we recommend you check out our success stories.

If you’re only starting to research text messaging services in Canada – and not ready to sign up for a free trial – then here are a few things to look for in a text messaging service. (Beyond the ability to send and receive text messages.)

• A lot of text messaging platforms allow you to either text 1-on-1 with customers or send bulk texts. You want a platform like SimpleTexting that will enable you to do both. It gives you the flexibility to expand the ways you deploy texting.
• Do you need to integrate with other platforms or send automated text messages? If so, you’ll want a service that offers multiple SMS integrations.
• Businesses need to be careful of services that limit the number of keywords and contacts they can have. (We don’t limit either.)
• You’ll need a text messaging service that has a mobile app so that you don’t need to be in front of a computer to manage texts.

The final consideration is the pricing structure of a Canadian texting service. The per-message price is a huge factor. It’s also worth understanding if credits roll over from one month to the next.

The cost for all of our pricing plans are the same for Canadian users, except that we have them listed in USD, so they will be charged differently in CAD.

The current fees for SMS and MMS sent to devices on Canadian wireless plans are listed below. The fees below are listed in CAD, but will be charged in U.S. dollars (based on a trailing-average CAD to USD exchange rate). All rates are subject to change.

In early 2021, Canadian carriers applied surcharges on outgoing messages to Canadian phone numbers from toll-free numbers.

The current Canadian fees for SMS are below; MMS is passed through at twice this cost. Fees are charged in U.S. dollars (based on a trailing-average CAD to USD exchange rate).

All rates are subject to change.

For Canadian users, dedicated short codes come with a $4500 app fee and $12k/year for leasing and hosting.

SimpleTexting supports many of Canada’s most widely used wireless carriers. Check out the full list.

• Acrovoice
• SaskTel Mobility
• Fibernetics
• MTS Mobility
• Public Mobile
• Telcentris
• MiKE
• Txtwire
• Cityfone
• Mobilicity
• Rogers Wireless
• Telebec Mobilite
• Videotron
• ISP Telecom
• Fongo
• Thunderbay
• Chatr
• Les.net
• Voxbone
• NorthernTel Mobility 
• Koodo Mobile
• K-Net Services
• Gogii
• Bell Mobility
• GoogleVoice
• Northwestel
• Text Me!
• Ice Wireless
• Solo Mobile
• Fido 
• Eastlink
• Line2
• Telus
• Virgin Mobile

• Fibernetics
• Bell Intl
• Bell Mobility
• Eastlink, Inc.
• Execulink
• Fongo – Canada
• Genband
• Freedom Mobile, Inc
• Globalstar
• Globalstar Spot 4
• Textplus – Iristel
• Google Pn
• Google Thinktel
• Ice Wireless
• Imimobile
• Isp Telecom
• K-Net Services
• Les.Net
• Les.Net – Iristel
• Fido
• Mts Mobility
• Rogers Wireless
• Sasktel
• Ssi Micro Ltd
• Telecom Na Pri Can
• Telus Mobility
• Text Me
• Videotron
• Wightman
• Xplornet Communications Inc

If you have more questions, you can also request or watch a demo. Alternatively, you can text or call us at (866) 450-4185 or use the chat at the bottom of your screen.