SMS Marketing Best Practices for Highly Effective Campaigns

Investing in a Short Message Service (SMS) marketing campaign is one of the best strategies to amp up engagement and revenue for your business. Promotional SMS offers returns of up to 7,100%, and it’s the vast majority of consumers' favorite way to communicate with brands. 

To make the most of promotional text messaging, however, you need to learn and implement essential SMS marketing best practices. Let’s explore the most effective strategies for implementing your campaign, boosting engagement, and optimizing your promotional messages.

Table of Contents

• Foundational Best Practices for SMS Marketing
• Best Practices for Writing Impactful Messages
• Best Practices for Enhancing Engagement
• Best Practices for Measuring and Optimizing Campaigns
• Best Practices for Leveraging Technology

Foundational Best Practices for SMS Marketing

Here are the SMS marketing best practices you must adhere to in any campaign, to ensure you maintain legal compliance and build rapport with your clientele:

1. Understand Your Audience

To craft effective messages that resonate individually with each audience member, you can break them down into smaller, similar groups. Segment your audience based on key demographic data such as:

• Location
• Age group
• Gender
• Purchasing history

Segmentation allows you to write more targeted texts with a carefully catered tone that reflects each demographic. Factor in the recipient’s general location and provide relevant product suggestions for effective targeting. 

2. Gain Explicit Consent

Before you send a single SMS marketing message, you must first obtain explicit consent from the recipient. Failure to do so breaches the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in America and, for those operating across the pond, goes against the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) instituted by the European Union.

Breaking either one of these guidelines can result in legal trouble and fines; ensure you stay compliant at all times. 

3. Stay Compliant with Regulations

Obtaining consent isn’t your only concern when designing a legal and ethical SMS campaign. To ensure you’re operating to the letter of the law, follow these rules:

• Avoid messaging between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. in the recipient’s time zone
• Give customers the option to opt out of messages with every text
• Don’t purchase or obtain your audience’s contact information from third-party lists

4. Respect Privacy and Preferences

Allowing for easy opt-outs isn’t just the law. It’s savvy marketing practice. Your recipients will view your business more favorably—and be more likely to purchase your products—if they can choose to receive your promotional messages. 

In essence, building customer trust matters more than constantly keeping your brand at the top of their minds. 

Remember that repeat customers spend 67% more per purchase than one-time buyers; keep them coming back by respecting their privacy and practicing proper texting etiquette. 

Best Practices for Writing Impactful Messages

Legal compliance and respect for privacy will get you into your customers’ inboxes—but evocative, impactful messaging will get you into their minds and keep you there. To that end, practice these strategies to keep your audience on the hook and waiting for your next text:

1. Write Clearly and Concisely

Standard SMS messages only support 160 characters and, realistically, that should be more than enough to communicate effectively. If you need extra space, stay under 300 characters to hold the interest of your recipients.

Your messages shouldn’t only be short. They should also:

• Have a unique tone that matches your brand’s voice and image
• Express the value of the product, event, or promotion you’re messaging about
• Be easily understandable and avoid overly complex language

2. Personalize Your Messages

Over 70% of customers expect brands to personalize their interactions with them. Including personal greetings and relevant recommendations in your SMS campaigns can boost your sales, cut costs, and enhance your marketing strategy. 

To customize messages for your audience, include key features such as:

• The recipient’s name
• The closest branch of your business (if applicable)
• Purchase suggestions based on the recipient’s past buying history

3. Time Your Messages Appropriately

As mentioned, sending promotional messages between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. in the recipient’s timezone can land you in legal trouble. Not to mention, most people don’t check their texts late at night, anyway.

The best times to send SMS marketing messages are in the morning, midday, and evenings during weekdays. Generally, people are less fixated on work during these moments. 

Interestingly, however, the best days to send texts vary by industry:

• Entertainment – Mondays

• Retail – Mondays

• Financial services – Mondays

• Recruitment – Tuesdays

• Healthcare  – Tuesdays

• Transport – Thursdays

• Other industries – Wednesdays

Best Practices for Enhancing Engagement

SMS is the best platform for driving user engagement. Case in point: 98% of text messages are opened, nearly half are responded to, and, on average, they only take about 90 seconds to get a reply. To elevate that engagement even further, however, try implementing these practices:

1. Include and Optimize Your Call-to-Action (CTA) 

Your CTA is a short, explicit set of instructions at the end of promotional messages pushing the recipient to take a key action that benefits your company. You may ask them to:

• Browse your website
• Come into your shop for a sale
• Participate in a promotional event

The right CTA depends on the nature of your business, your customers’ preferences, and the goals of your campaign. Experiment with different CTAs to find what resonates best with your audience and drives the most engagement with your business.

2. Incorporate Multimedia

Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages allow you to incorporate pictures, videos, audio, and other files into your campaign. 

Texts deliver information quickly, but visual media and music simply capture more attention than plain lettering on its own—about three times more, in fact. Recent studies reveal MMS campaigns receive 300% more engagement in comparison to their plain-text counterparts.

Best Practices for Measuring and Optimizing Campaigns 

When you implement the above practices, your SMS marketing campaign should run smoothly and help you achieve your organizational goals. To measure and optimize every aspect, be sure to:

1. Track the Right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Tracking the right KPIs tells you if your campaign is performing up to your standards. To get a complete sense of your campaign’s health, track:

• Return on Investment (ROI) – ROI gauges how much of your marketing investments you’re recovering through your campaign, represented as a percentage of your implementation and operating costs. To track it, divide the total return you see from your campaign by your initial investment, then multiply by 100.

• Total sales – This is simply the amount of money you generate through selling over a given period. Track it both before and after implementing your SMS campaign to see if your marketing efforts boost your revenue. 

• Click Through Rate (CTR) – This measures how many recipients follow the links included in your messages. To express it as a percentage, divide the total number of clicks you receive by the number of messages you send and multiply by 100.

2. Test and Iterate

You’ll never truly know how well your campaign will perform until you launch it and start tracking the results. 

In the early stages of implementation, consider running two versions of your campaign with a technique known as A/B testing. Track essential KPIs for both, identify which parts of either campaign are successful, and refine and optimize your approach until you land on the right promotional strategies for your business. 

Leverage Mozeo to Implement Smooth, Salinet SMS Campaigns

SMS marketing can elevate your business’s engagement, help you develop closer relationships with your customers, and lead to laudable financial returns. 

Before implementing any campaign, be sure to gain consent from your audience, segment them into similar groups, and find ways to personalize each message. Then, after launching, track crucial KPIs such as ROI, total sales, CTR, and more to test and refine your messaging strategies.

To expedite implementing your SMS campaign and replying to customers, leverage Mozeo for your day-to-day messaging needs. With Mozeo, you can group contacts based on relevant characteristics, send mass messages with ease, and even generate automatic replies to common queries. 

Give Mozeo a try on your next SMS campaign to take your promotional texting to the next level.