Got a new sale or product to share? Learn what a promotional message is and browse some real-life examples to get your creative juices flowing.
Sending promotional text messages to customers is a great way to get the word out about an exciting new deal or product launch.
Promotional messaging, or “promos” are messages sent to sell, upsell, or advertise a product, business, or service. But when these messages slide toward the overly promotional end of the scale, it gets a little dicey.
This example below is a no-no.
Such SMS messages can turn off customers.
But you can still share deals, coupons, products, and more with promotional messages. We’ll show you how and give you some helpful examples.
Disclaimer: Please note that this advice is for informational purposes only and is neither intended as nor should be substituted for consultation with appropriate legal counsel and/or your organization’s regulatory compliance team.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A promotional message is a text that advertises a deal, sale, or special offer. For example, you might send a message that promotes an upcoming flash sale, a holiday discount, or a personalized coupon—something that will lead to sales and new customers.
The trick to an excellent promotional message, however, is not to come off too salesy.
What do we mean by salesy?
A good promotional message is the kind of text you’d want to receive from a business. It should be conversational, stick to one topic, be timely/topical, provide a clear call to action, and deliver value/information like this:
🔖 Learn more: 20 sales promotion examples from real brands (and why they boost response and conversion rates)
There are many scenarios where sending a promotional text message will be great for your business.
When you need inspiration, you can gain some from these marketing and promotional SMS templates:
Sharing discounts directly to customers’ phones is a great way to translate messages into actions quickly. 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile devices in the last six months.
Shopping from your phone is the new norm, so why not drive more mobile purchases with text message coupons?
Sometimes your business may go through a slow period, in which case you may want to give people a reason to visit.
Because 98% of texts are read, text ads are a great way to push people to your business right when you need them.
💡 Check it out: 50+ must-know texting & SMS marketing statistics in 2024
If you’ve recently launched a new product or service, it’s a newsworthy event for your customers. Build up some momentum by texting your audience before, during, and after the big release.
Another event worth noting to customers is sales and clearance events. Your sales alerts must include what’s discounted, for how long, and specific price points to draw the most intrigue.
If it’s a larger sale, like an annual or semi-annual event, priming your customers with texts leading up to it can also help build anticipation.
Bundles are a great way to introduce customers to new products and increase Average Order Value (AOV). Group together relevant or similar items and send a message to your customers giving them the chance to invest.
According to Adobe Analytics, U.S. holiday shoppers spent a record $211.7 billion online holiday shopping last year. The rules go out the door when it comes to the holidays because spending habits aren’t the same.
To help you break through the noisiest marketing season of the year, send customers promotional text messages. With texts, the open rate is significantly higher than email, giving your message a better chance of getting noticed.
Also, be sure to include a photo whenever possible. Research shows that messages with photos have higher click-through rates.
💡 Check it out: Holiday SMS ideas to increase revenue
A flash sale is a promotion that runs for a short amount of time and features a specific product/service.
Another common hallmark of flash sales is a limited quantity of items up for grabs. Flash sales are great for offloading old products that may be out of season. They can also be an exciting way to drive new or more traffic to your site.
Either way, texts are a fantastic way to announce a flash sale because they’re read so quickly. The odds of your customer seeing the text right when the flash sale is happening is exponentially higher.
Daily deals keep your brand front-of-mind and encourage fresh sales every day. Send reminders to your customers to make sure they have the opportunity to buy the daily deals that suit them best.
It’s important to keep these messages short and sweet—after all, you’re going to be landing in your customer’s inboxes a lot.
Offering early access to new product arrivals is a great way to thank customers for subscribing to your SMS list.
If you like, use this offer to reward a select number of customers in your text message loyalty program and make them feel special. Done right, this will boost conversions and grow sales for your new product.
Be sure to emphasize that your early access offer won’t last. This ensures your customers take action by grabbing the offer fast.
Pre-selling your upcoming collection or new service will help you measure interest in it and generate a buzz before it goes live. Send a message to customers in the lead up to your sale or launch to give them the chance to sign up early.
Everyone wants to feel special on their birthday. But the thing is, giving a discount on someone’s birthday might feel insincere (at least to me).
Before sending your birthday offer to a customer, make the customer know that you truly care.
How? Send at least one message before their birthday. Ask about how they are preparing to celebrate themselves, what they’ll wear, who they are celebrating with, and so on. This makes your promotional text message to seem like it’s coming from a friend (which you or your brand should strive to be).
Organizing online events is a great way to interact with your customers if you don’t have a physical store.
If you run a business with customers in several locations, online events can also help you reach them at once. With promotional text messages, you can announce your online events to not only educate customers on a topic but also sell event tickets.
Sending promotional SMS messages is not the be-all and end-all of selling to customers.
Sometimes, you can halt the direct sales offer and promote content that includes your offer. The outcome? You win on two fronts: share valuable content with your customers and possibly make sales.
Loyal customers are the bosses when it comes to purchasing power.
If you reward them with a customer loyalty program, you can use promotional text messages to get even more customers into your program.
BOGO offers have existed for a long time and customers love it when they’re getting something free. Here are some promotional text message examples of how to alert your customers about a BOGO offer.
Free shipping offers customers an opportunity to save transport fees and they love it.
Even if they don’t want to buy instantly, they could change their mind to take advantage of your offer and save some cash.
People like to feel special—fact. Use personalization to send relevant text message promotions based on a shopper’s unique interests and previous buying behavior. Include their name where possible and create unique discount codes just for them.
In the world of text marketing, there’s what’s known as a text-to-subscribe keyword. This is a word or phrase that people can text to your number to sign up for your messages.
In a sweepstakes promotion, when someone texts in the word, they’ll be entered for a chance to win a prize. The great part about this type of marketing campaign is that it helps you build your list if you’re just getting started with SMS.
Sometimes, short and simple messages from our favorite brands do the trick. This text message by Grinds Coffee Pouches is a brief way to promote coupons.
Launching a new product without a good story isn’t great. Olipop knows this and they nail this SMS well. While this product announcement is lengthy, it has a great buildup to the core message and includes a discount to make customers try the new product.
Exclusive offers make people feel special. This sales alert does that by stating it’s for rewards members only. The 50% discount is the icing on the cake for the customer. That said, the limited time offer which ends at Xmas will cause customers to make a purchase fast.
Pretty Litter speaks the same language as its audience (because who doesn’t love their cat and believe it deserves the best?!). The discount plus a free gift makes this a deal that’s hard to ignore.
Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping holidays and the perfect opportunity to send a well-timed text message to announce the launch of your sales. Salomon includes the discounts shoppers can expect in a casual message.
If you want to secure an influx of sales in a short space of time, flash sales are the way to go. Do what TRIC does and send a promo message to announce the start of your sale and include the discount percentage and end time to inspire shoppers to take action.
Daily deals give you the chance to spotlight some of your best products to new customers. Backcountry is sensitive to its customers’ time and asks them if they’d like to receive all, some, or none of their daily deal promos. This is a great way to build trust and still generate sales.
People like new products, but if you don’t prompt them to purchase, they could bail on you.
Some great ways to make them act is to offer a time-limited discount or inform them of your limited stock like Doe Lashes.
This is another great example of an early access offer from Bombas. The sock brand also sends a final reminder to customers to warn them that their time is running out. This creates a sense of urgency and can pull in a few extra last-minute sales.
Pre-sales in a sense give customers a sense of exclusivity—that they’re getting something other people aren’t or, at the very least, are getting it before anyone else. When We Were Young play into this exclusive strategy by reminding customers they’re on a pre-sale list and they’ll be the first to claim their discount.
Asking customers to buy every time won’t look good on your business.
Occasionally share content with no strings attached. If they love this content, they could find your website and make a purchase.
Who wouldn’t want to get rewarded for being loyal to their favorite brands? A short and snappy SMS is a great way to invite customers to earn rewards they can redeem for products.
Giving your best customers early access to an upcoming sale strengthens your relationship and makes them feel special. Tailwind Nutrition gives a segment of its best customers early access to its latest product.
These customers can buy the product before it goes on sale to the general public, which again creates a sense of exclusivity (and gets the brand a few early sales to build confidence).
Buy One Get One Free offers have been a sales tactic for as long as we can remember. S-W promotes theirs with a text message announcing the launch of the deal with the end date and link to the products that customers can browse right away.
Most consumers today expect free shipping — in fact, 73% of shoppers are likely to ditch their cart if they have to pay for shipping. Avoid this by providing free shipping and shouting about it in your text messages like 1-800 Contacts does here.
Curious what it looks like to send a promotional text message in an easy-to-use SMS platform? Check out the video below.
Now you know a lot more about what promotional texts are and the creative juices are flowing. Before you start sending, here are a few best practices to keep in mind.
By consistently, I don’t mean constantly.
Bottom line: ensure your SMS marketing strategy doesn’t include spammy tactics. This will help you stay on top-of-mind for your contacts and in their good graces.
Always have express consent from your contacts to text them. This will keep your texts compliant with industry laws and regulations.
When sending messages to customers, personalize your texts with what they’ve shared with you, like their name, birthday, or location. This makes each message feel like it was written for them.
Hint: Tools like custom fields make personalization a breeze.
One of the best parts about SMS and its 160-character limit is that you must get the details across in a short space. Even if you’re using the larger MMS format, no one wants to receive a novel over text.
So, stick to the important information and your brand’s voice. There’s no need to be formal unless that’s an integral part of your business.
This is hands down the best way to make sure contacts are always happy to hear from you.
Looking at your text, does it sound like a real person wrote it? Is it pushy or too vague? If you said yes to the former and no to the latter, you’re ready to send.
SMS messages aren’t like emails that people will often re-read. If people don’t take action immediately, chances are they won’t at all.
So tie your offers to a specific time. This instills the fear of missing out on customers and propels them to act on your message.
Promotional messages often have a purpose: to get customers to buy. Make sure recipients know what you want them to do by sharing a clear, concise CTA. For example, you might link directly to a product page or ask customers to “enter a discount code a checkout”.
The best promotional messages are personalized to a consumer's interests, shopping behaviors, and preferences. You can send a mass campaign but still make each text unique to the recipient. Use SimpleTexting’s custom fields feature to add in customer names and other details in your messages.
Personalization is also about sending the right texts to the right people. Make sure you segment your audience based on interests, demographics, or other defining characteristics and send promo messages that align with these details.
Obviously you love your offer and you want your customers to love it too, but overhyping it by sending too many texts, writing in all caps, or going overboard on emojis and exclamation marks can have the opposite effect.
Your promotion should speak for itself and, if it does, customers will be able to see the value in it without you having to convince them with words like FREE and NOW.
Text messages have much higher open rates than other forms of marketing—often around 98%.
But if you send your message late at night or at a time when your audience is likely to be at work or doing something else, your open rates can suffer. This is especially true if you’re promoting a limited-time offer, like a daily deal or a flash sale that runs for a couple of hours.
Luckily, with SimpleTexting, you can schedule texts to go out at the best time for your audience so you don’t have to sit around with your finger hovering over the “send” button.
Text message promos can be a great, direct way to reach customers and share valuable deals and discounts with them. To have the best success, make sure your promo messages are short, sweet, and timely. Avoid sending too many texts in a row and make sure you include all the valuable information recipients need to know to make their next move.
Want more inspiration? See how others are using promotional messages to drive sales in our customer success stories. Or, if you’re ready to try it yourself, sign up for a 14-day free trial to start sending promotional messages.
Lizzie Davey is a freelance writer for B2B SaaS and eCommerce companies with 10+ years of writing experience. She's written about marketing, SaaS, and e-commerce for brands like Shopify, CoSchedule, and Sprout Social.
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