Crafting an effective SMS marketing strategy ensures each message resonates with your intended recipient and prompts action.
By leveraging the immediacy and intimacy of SMS, businesses can build deeper relationships with customers to keep them loyal and engaged. To create an effective SMS marketing strategy, follow these steps:
Define goals and objectives
Before launching an SMS campaign, you should understand your goals and objectives.
Do you want to boost sales through limited-time promotions, or are you looking to gather feedback? Defining the precise objectives of each individual SMS marketing campaign can help you compare metrics over time.
Understand your target audience
Your messaging must be precise and relevant to your target audience. Whether using SMS marketing automation strategies like reminders, cart abandonment messages, or promotions, you should understand who you're speaking to.
Past purchase patterns, product preferences, and feedback allow you to tailor your SMS campaigns to different audience segments based on their preferences to make your messages more impactful.
Build a quality subscriber list
Whether sending an email or an SMS message, you must build a subscriber list and send only solicited communications. SMS marketing requires explicit consent.
To build a quality subscriber list, you can use social media, email, or website opt-in campaigns to encourage customers to sign up for communications and SMS alerts. Offering incentives like deals or access to sales can help encourage signups.
Segment your subscriber list
Not every SMS message you send will be relevant to every subscriber. Segmentation allows you to divide your list based on factors like purchase history, demographics, or engagement to target the right audiences at the right times.
Segmentation also allows for deeper personalization, allowing you to create content most relevant to your SMS subscribers.
Create compelling content
SMS messages must be concise, and you don't have supporting images to help encourage customers to take action.
A clear call to action (CTA) ensures that every message tells customers what to do next. In addition, you should use urgency, exclusivity, and emotion to make your message stand out.
Choose the right timing
With SMS automation tools, you can choose the timing to ensure your texts reach the right customers at the right time. Consider where your SMS subscribers live and avoid sending texts at odd hours, such as early in the morning or late at night.
Test and optimize
SMS marketing strategies enable you to test and learn from real data to continuously improve. You can use A/B testing with different messages, timings, or CTAs to determine what elements work best. You can also encourage feedback on your SMS campaigns to refine your strategy.
Best practices for sending SMS marketing messages
SMS marketing can be an effective strategy when done right. However, like email marketing, you should aim to use the best practices to ensure consistent communication that complies with regulations.
Ensuring your SMS campaigns drive results and respect the preferences and privacy of recipients is crucial. Follow these best practices for sending SMS marketing messages:
Obtain consent
You must obtain consent to send customers marketing texts. You should have explicit opt-ins before sending any promotional message to ensure the recipient has opted in via a signup form, subscription code, or other clear and understandable method.
In addition, you must have easy opt-outs that allow recipients to opt out of receiving your messages at any point.
Keep messages concise
Messages should be clear and concise. Ensure the main offer, CTA, and other relevant information is upfront and easily understandable. Avoid fluff, like unnecessary words or information that can influence the impact of your message.
Comply with regulations
Familiarize yourself with regulations like the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) or Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).
You should regularly update your subscriber lists to remove any customers who have opted out of receiving your texts. If you're using SMS marketing automation strategies, your software should automatically remove those who have opted out from receiving further communications.
Avoid text message fatigue
Like email marketing, SMS marketing should provide value. Don't bombard recipients with multiple text messages throughout the day because it can increase opt-outs.
Instead, consider how often to send messages and test your strategy to find an optimal frequency based on your audience and offerings.
Personalize content
Personalizing content can significantly enhance engagement and conversion rates. Address recipients by name whenever possible to make the message feel more personal.
You can also tailor offers based on behavior or purchase history, sending deals and promotions based on the recipient's preferences.
Maintain consistency
Each message should offer value while maintaining brand consistency. Ensure the tone of your SMS campaigns is consistent with your brand's voice and other marketing channels. You can also incorporate branding elements like a signature, hashtag, or consistent phrasing.
Analyze the performance of each SMS campaign you send to determine how successful it was. Measure engagement metrics like click-through rates (CTRs) for messages with links or redemption rates for those with promo codes.
Improve engagement with effective SMS marketing campaigns
SMS marketing is a direct and personal form of communication between businesses and their customers. Text messages are convenient and fast, providing essential information that's easily digestible. When used effectively, it can lead to improved engagement, immediate responses, and improved relationships.
Use Mailchimp SMS marketing tools to create effective text message campaigns. Create automated campaigns, segment your audience, and track performance metrics. Sign up today.