SMS Marketing
SMS powered by the #1 email marketing and automations platform*
Unify your marketing under one roof by seamlessly integrating SMS into your email, automations, and social campaigns. Our SMS features help you create personalized, effective marketing strategies—and drive results.
Get more customers and grow your lists with ease
Draw in qualified subscribers from embedded or pop-up forms and landing pages. Improve engagement metrics with seamless tap-to-text and text to join that offers effortless opt-ins via easy self-serve signup.
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Boost your sales with abandoned cart automations
Recover lost sales opportunities while maintaining regulatory standards with pre-built abandon cart triggers and double opt-in guidance that aligns with carrier guidelines.
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Target your customers by location
Speak directly to your customers in a specific area, so they receive highly relevant messages about your services.
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Increase engagement with tailor-made messaging
Show your audience you care about their preferences. Use SMS to send transactional follow-ups, customer support messages, and more.
Enable always-on marketing—without the always-on presence
Automate your SMS marketing with Mailchimp’s custom triggers and save time with pre-built content templates. Send notifications, promotions, inventory alerts, abandoned cart reminders, and more—all personalized to the user, and all automatically.
Build a stronger subscriber profile with seamless contact import
Foster deeper connections with a diverse range of contacts by engaging them on their preferred channel. You can reach a broader audience and personalize email and SMS campaigns at scale by segmenting them based on the customer interaction.
Boost conversions with email and SMS in one platform
When you switch to Mailchimp, you can effortlessly craft omni-channel campaigns that drive high-impact results and maximize engagement, with the tools to create and manage seamless email and SMS campaigns all in one place.
We have 22+ years of experience in safeguarding your data
Don’t take your chances with SMS compliance. From consent management to quiet hours to 24-hour support, we help protect your customers’ information so you can run your SMS marketing with peace of mind.
See up to a 58% higher click rate with Mailchimp email + SMS*
Optimize your SMS and email marketing with advanced analytics
Maximize your ROI with real-time reporting and advanced audience analytics
Make better marketing decisions with a unified dashboard for both email and SMS that gives insights into revenue attribution, performance data, audience monitoring, and SMS credit usage—all from one place.
“We added over 100 people to our SMS audience in a couple days, and then had a 50% click rate on the flash sale message. Within the audience who clicked the link, we had a 91% conversion rate!”
PERC Coffee, Alan Fischer, GA
Mailchimp SMS users see up to 16.5x ROI after launching their first SMS campaign*
Get started easily with a personalized product tour
Schedule a call with an onboarding specialist at any time during your first 90 days to help you get started with confidence—it’s already included with Standard and Premium plans.*
Learn more about SMS marketing
FAQs
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SMS marketing is a strategy that involves sending offers, notifications, and personalized content directly to your customer or prospect's mobile phone through text messages, otherwise known as SMS (Short Message Service). It's a direct and immediate way to engage with customers, and drive engagement or conversions through concise and targeted messaging.
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SMS marketing offers several advantages for businesses. Most importantly, it provides a direct and immediate way to reach your audience, as most people carry their mobile phones with them at all times. Its concise and targeted nature makes it ideal for time-sensitive promotions, reminders, or urgent updates. Text messages also have high open and read rates, which improves the odds of your content being seen. Additionally, SMS marketing is a great channel for personalization, and can be used to engage customers with exclusive offers and content. When used right, it can be a powerful tool for driving engagement, conversion, and brand loyalty.
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Best practices for bringing SMS marketing campaigns into your business include:
Get consent: Obtain permission from customers to receive SMS messages by offering opt-in opportunities through your website, social media, and email campaigns.
Keep it brief: Create concise and engaging SMS messages that provide value to your audience. Make use of personalization, a clear call-to-action, and a sense of urgency when appropriate.
Know your audience: Use SMS marketing automation to divide your subscribers into segments based on demographics, preferences, or purchase history. This allows for targeted messaging and better response rates.
Test and optimize: Experiment with different timing and message formats to dial in the resonance with your audience. Use analytics to track performance and make data-driven optimizations.
Make unsubscribing easy: Even though you have consent to send text messages, people have the right to change their minds. Include a simple unsubscribe link (or instructions) at the end of every marketing text.
With solutions such as Mailchimp, you can optimize your SMS marketing campaigns with collected data and analytics in real-time. Mailchimp provides the automated text messages and SMS marketing tools you need to engage your audience, drive conversions, and enhance customer relationships.
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Mailchimp is a multichannel marketing platform, and SMS marketing is available as an add-on for all paid Mailchimp plans. Use SMS (and MMS where available) to engage directly and efficiently with customers, send automated discounts, target customers by location, and more—all integrated with your email campaigns.
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SMS marketing is available to Mailchimp users in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia with a paid marketing plan. After you agree to the terms, submit an SMS Marketing application, and get approved, you can purchase SMS credits from the SMS overview page, the SMS settings page, the SMS editor, or through an email link sent to the primary email address associated with your Mailchimp account.
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There are two main types of SMS marketing: transactional and promotional. Transactional SMS informs your customers in real-time when something relevant happens, such as a shipped order or a confirmed appointment, while promotional SMS lets customers and prospects know about offers, sales, and opportunities. Both require opt-in consent—though each has a different set of additional legal regulations that apply to them—and both can be personalized to drive engagement, conversion, and loyalty.
While SMS marketing has some unique benefits and considerations, such as the direct nature of text messages and a greater need for concise wording, it's similar in many ways to other marketing channels like email and social media. Acquiring consent, knowing your audience, staying on brand, personalization, and data-driven optimization are necessary strategies that apply to all forms of digital marketing, SMS included, and all can benefit from automation and segmentation to direct your marketing to the right people at the right time.
If you're using a marketing platform like Mailchimp, which offers SMS marketing tools, automations, and analytics that work alongside your email and social media campaigns, you can take advantage of everything SMS marketing has to offer your business without a lot of extra effort.
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How to best use SMS marketing depends on the kind of business you have, your marketing strategies and goals, and the other forms of digital marketing you plan to use in your campaigns.
If you have an e-commerce business, transactional SMS can help you build a stronger relationship with your customers by providing notifications when orders are received, shipped, and delivered. You can also send promotional text messages with discounts and sales, making use of SMS automation and audience segmentation to reach customers you think would be more likely to engage based on their purchasing behavior.
If you have a business that takes appointments, transactional SMS can help reduce your cancellation and no-show rates by texting appointment confirmations and reminders. And just as with e-commerce, you can reach out to customers with personalized offers, as well as suggestions to book again if it's been awhile since their last appointment.
Whatever your business, Mailchimp can help you integrate SMS into the rest of your marketing efforts with a powerful set of tools, automations, and analytics that work alongside your email and social media campaigns.
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SMS marketing can be very effective. Recent research shows that a majority of consumers prefer to receive marketing communications through SMS, and open rates for text messages can be extremely high. SMS marketing offers a direct, immediate, and personal channel to reach customers with timely notifications and offers. When used strategically and in compliance with regulations, SMS marketing has the potential to drive conversions, increase customer loyalty, and strengthen relationships with your brand.
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There are a number of ways to responsibly collect numbers for SMS marketing campaigns, including:
Opt-in forms: Allows visitors to voluntarily provide their mobile numbers on your website or landing page to receive updates or promotions through SMS messages.
Mobile keyword campaigns: Promote keyword campaigns where customers can text a specific word or code to a designated number to opt-in for SMS messages.
Contests and giveaways: Organize contests or giveaways where participants can enter by providing their mobile numbers, giving you permission to send SMS marketing messages.
Customer checkout process: During the online checkout process, offer an opt-in checkbox for customers to receive SMS updates or exclusive offers.
Remember to clearly communicate the purpose, frequency, and content of the SMS messages to gain customers' trust and ensure compliance with privacy regulations.
Millions of users trust us with their marketing. You can too.
*Disclaimers
- #1 email marketing and automation platform: Mailchimp is the #1 email marketing and automation platform based on December 2023 publicly available data on competitors' number of customers.
- SMS Marketing: SMS is available as an add-on to US, UK and Australia paid plans only. Application and agreement to terms is required before purchasing credits. Messages can only be delivered to contacts in the country selected. Australia messaging available only for contacts with +61 country code. SMS credits are added to your account after purchase and approval. Credits are issued monthly and unused credits expire and do not roll over. MMS only available for Standard and Premium plans sending to US contacts. Pricing varies. See terms for details.
- 16.5x SMS ROI: Based on U.S. SMS users’ e-commerce revenue attributable to first SMS campaign launch during September 2023 through April 2024.
- Personalized onboarding: Onboarding services differ per plan and are available for new or upgraded users with a Standard or Premium plan for the first 90 days after account creation or upgrade. Onboarding services are currently offered in English, Spanish and Portuguese for Premium plans, and in English for Standard plans.
- 58% Higher Click Rate: Based on US users who sent both email and SMS campaigns compared to users who sent only email campaigns from 8/1/23 to 5/14/24.
- Availability of features and functionality varies by plan type. For details, please view Mailchimp's various plans and pricing.