How to Leverage SMS Marketing for Your Small Business

Customer attention spans are shorter than ever. Small businesses looking to get ahead must find innovative options to connect directly with their audiences to promote their products and services. That’s where SMS marketing comes in. 

Text message marketing for small businesses offers an instant form of communication with customers, delivering personalized messages right to their phones. 

This guide helps small business owners leverage SMS marketing, follow text message rules, and create successful SMS campaigns. 

Why SMS Marketing Is Key for Small Businesses

Small businesses often operate with limited or strict marketing budgets. Subsequently, their sales and marketing departments must strategically design cost-effective and engaging campaigns. Text message marketing offers businesses an impressive 98% message open rate. Compared to email campaigns, which see only a 21% open rate, marketers can expect better results with SMS. 

Further, most people read text messages within 5 minutes of receiving them, so you can ensure messages are seen at the right time. While it costs slightly more to send a text than an email, SMS message campaigns offer better ROI. In fact, SMS ROI can be as high as 7,100%, making it one of the most cost-effective channels. These results are seen because SMS avoids the delivery, spam, and oversaturation issues commonly seen in email campaigns. 

Additionally, 90% of customers today say they want to receive business text messages. So don’t waste resources sending emails that customers may not want or may never open. Overall, SMS messaging offers an instant, reliable, and cost-effective way to connect with your customers.

Setting Up Your First SMS Marketing Campaign

When executed effectively, SMS marketing is a great way to increase your business’ revenue and sales numbers. To make the most of SMS messaging, you’ll want to develop a campaign plan to strategically reach your goals. 

Follow the five simple steps below to craft and execute your first SMS marketing campaign. 

Step 1: Define Your SMS Marketing Goals 

Your SMS marketing goals should be aligned with your business goals. The best way to define your goals is to start with the end in mind. You should ask yourself, what do you want to achieve with your SMS marketing campaign? Every business will have a different goal, but here are a few common ones for small business SMS:

• Increasing revenue and sales
• Boosting customer engagement 
• Improving event attendance

When it comes to effective goal-setting, consider using the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) framework. This framework defines:

• Objectives, which set direction
• Key results, which set measurable outcomes
• Initiatives, which set the projects to meet goals

Step 2: Build Your Contact List

Next, you want to get people to subscribe to your text marketing program. SMS marketing is so effective because customers must opt-in to your channel before you can text them. This regulation protects consumers from unwanted texts and ensures that your customers want to engage with your content. 

Here are a few creative ways to entice customers to opt-in to your subscriber list:

• Add popups, banners, or opt-in forms on your website
• Put QR codes on printed marketing materials 
• Incentivize opt-ins with discounts or promotions
• Use in-person networking events to collect phone numbers 
• Convert existing email subscribers 
• Use opt-in capture forms in social media links 
  
  

Step 3: Choose the Right SMS Marketing Platform

The SMS platform you chose will play an important role in the execution of your marketing campaign. You’ll want to pick one that caters to the specific needs of your small businesses. For example, you can evaluate SMS providers for specific features, pricing structure, and automation capabilities.

Let’s look at a few leading platforms and the different features they offer: 

• Mozeo is a powerful, web-based SMS software that offers a wide array of features. It helps small businesses effectively send promotional texts with features like mass texting, audience segmentation, MMS, 300-character messages, click tracking, and auto-replies to inbound messages. Mozeo’s low price point also makes it an exceptional choice for small businesses looking to scale their SMS campaigns.
  
  

• Textedly is another popular SMS marketing platform for small businesses. It offers several core features like text-to-pay, bulk texting, two-way messaging, and facilitates Google review capture via text. However, its premium plans are more expensive than Mozeo’s.
  
  
• Textline is a robust business texting platform with many of the same features and extensive automation capabilities. However, it differs in that it’s one of only a few HIPAA-compliant SMS platforms and offers true group messaging. However, Textline’s price point may make it a better fit for enterprise-level businesses. 
  
  

Step 4: Craft Effective Messages

Here are a few SMS marketing writing tips to keep in mind to create effective and compelling messages:

• Keep messages clear and to the point. Standard texts are limited to 160 characters, so keep your messaging concise. You should also use simple language, leverage active verbs, and check for grammar and spelling errors.
  
  
• Be mindful of tone. You should also consider your brand voice. The tone and style used on your website and social media channels should be consistent in your text messages as well.
  
  
• Provide valuable content. Ensure your messages are relevant and valuable to your audience. Offer incentives or discounts to increase click-through rates.  
  
  
• Include a call-to-action. Remember: the purpose of your text is to inspire action. As a result, it’s important to always include a call-to-action (CTA) in your messages. Some common CTAs used in SMS campaigns are: shop here, buy now, learn more, and enter this code at checkout.

Step 5: Schedule and Launch Your Campaign

Before launching a full campaign, your business should test the message with a small group of trustworthy customers or internal stakeholders. Developing an SMS testing plan allows you to ensure messages function properly and are error-free.  

Executing effective SMS campaigns also requires businesses to be intentional about how often they text customers and at what time. You want your business in the forefront of a customer’s mind without overwhelming them with too many messages.

Additionally, just because you can send a text at exactly 9 p.m. Friday night doesn’t mean you should. In fact, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) requires businesses to respect certain marketing quiet hours. This means you can’t text subscribers before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. in their time zones.

Here are some other tips to help you determine optimal timing and frequency:

• Know your recipients’ time zones
• A/B test different send times during business hours 
• Put a limit on the number of marketing texts you send per month
  
  

Best Practices in SMS Marketing for Small Businesses

Small businesses are investing in SMS marketing because it drives growth and reaches customers instantly. When executed correctly, SMS messages boost engagement numbers and revenue. To succeed, businesses need to follow best practices for effective and compliant marketing messages. 

Here are some strategies, tips, and regulations your small business should know before launching an SMS marketing campaign. 

Personalization and Segmentation

Today, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized content to them. Overall, they want to feel that your business understands them and is invested in building a relationship. This can be something as simple as suggesting a relevant product or service, or something as in-depth as a software plan designed specifically for them. Either way, consumers today don’t respond to the catch-all sales strategies of the past. 

Personalization is key to delivering tailored and relevant messages to subscribers. To personalize your business messages, you’ll need to divide your audience into groups. You can do this based on several different factors:  

• Demographics
• Buyer’s journey progress 
• Interests
• Purchasing habits
• Level of engagement 
• Geographic location

Using detailed customer data, build buyer personas and strategically target your campaigns toward each persona. Understanding what content engages your customers will help you convert more leads into paying, loyal customers. 

Build Automated Workflows

SMS workflows allow businesses to automate their messaging process, saving manual time and effort. These workflows are usually time-based or action-triggered messages that are automatically sent to your customers. 

Rather than sending text messages individually, workflows allow you to set triggers based on events or conditions, ensuring your customers are notified in a timely and consistent manner. 

This feature is particularly useful for small businesses who have limited resources and time to perform tasks. 

Some common automated workflows include: 

• Appointment reminders 
• Out-of-office notifications
• Auto-replies to inbound messages
• Welcome messages
• Review collection

Timing and Frequency

Today, multiple marketing channels and sources bombard consumers with content. For businesses wanting their content to stand out, timing and frequency are crucial elements of an SMS marketing campaign. 

For best results, consider sending messages during business hours, specifically on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. For optimal results, send messages on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

To avoid subscriber fatigue, limit your messaging to once or twice a week for promotional and marketing-related messages. Additionally, it’s useful to vary the type of messages you send. Consider swapping in events or special announcements to keep your audience engaged. 

Monitoring and Analyzing Performance

Making data-driven decisions is the most reliable and insightful way to lead successful marketing campaigns. That’s why it’s so important to track the success of your SMS campaigns. 

Understanding where your marketing efforts are successful and where you can improve will benefit your next campaign efforts.

For small businesses executing SMS campaigns, engagement metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are necessary for tracking success. 

For SMS KPIs, your small business can track: 

• Subscriber growth 
• Customer engagement 
• Revenue growth 

Other SMS metrics to track are: 

• Delivery rates 
• Open rates
• Click-through rates 
• Conversion rates
• Opt-out rates
• Return on investment (ROI) 
  
  

This SMS data will allow you to measure the performance of your campaign and adjust accordingly. 

Navigating Legal Considerations

We already covered many of the important legal considerations for SMS marketing, but let’s recap the most important laws and rules. 

Businesses marketing to American customers via SMS must comply with Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Businesses that use SMS marketing to send text messages to EU customers must follow the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The rules and regulations are generally simple, but still important to adhere to as it builds trust between you and your customers. 

Let’s look at a few key ways to stay compliant. 

• Gain express consent. For promotional (or sales and marketing) content, a customer must give written permission for you to text them. You can obtain consent through a web form, opt-in keyword, or a check box. For promotional messaging, a customer must give written permission for you to text them. You can obtain consent through a web form, opt-in keyword, or a check box.
  
  
• Offer simple opt-outs. Businesses must provide a simple way for customers to opt out of SMS messaging. Simple options include allowing them to reply with keywords like STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, END, or CANCEL. Most SMS platforms will automatically unsubscribe contacts for you that reply with one of these keywords or terms.
  
  
• Find a compliant provider. Choose a texting platform committed to compliance. A service provider like Mozeo can help your business stay compliant as it helps you register your phone number, offers opt-out automations, and protects your user data.
  
  
• Stay up-to-date on regulations. As the use of SMS for marketing becomes more popular, regulations are continuously evolving. Keep your SMS texting practices up-to-date by referring to trusted sources and comprehensive compliance guides. 

Start Your SMS Marketing Journey with Mozeo

Text message marketing for small businesses is a cost-effective way to boost your engagement and revenue numbers. It gives you direct access to your customers, reaches them instantly, and grabs their attention. Why not choose a platform that provides all your SMS marketing needs at a budget-friendly price? Mozeo is a powerful SMS marketing tool for small businesses, offering them access to list segmentation, auto-replies, mass texts, and MMS. It’s a user-friendly platform designed to help propel their communications forward. 

Ready to jumpstart your SMS marketing efforts and propel your communications forward? Try Mozeo today for free and start growing.