Know What You Shouldn’t Do To Your SMS Marketing Campaigns
There are specific guidelines that you shouldn’t skip when running an SMS marketing campaign. Some are covered by the CTIA and others are just expected. But if you do…..not only will you not be maximizing your ROI, but there will be other consequences your business will experience from these SMS marketing mistakes.
Here’s a compilation of other typical SMS marketing mistakes and how to avoid them.
Unshortened URLs
SMS has a limit of 160 characters. That’s why shortening your URL can open up space for your messages. Unshortened URLs look more spam than shortened ones. So when you use raw links, you are missing opportunities of having a higher click-through rate.
What should you do instead: Txtra has a tool that can help you shorten the links before sending the message to your subscribers. A click of the button “shorten URLs” will do a quick fix before sending that precious text.
Repetitive Messages
Nobody wants to hear and read messages in a loop. Feeding your subscribers’ inbox with the same text messages is a mortal sin for SMS marketers.
What should you do instead: try making a rough topic outline of your weekly or monthly messages. Not only you can give variety to your messages, but it will also help your strategy be fresh and adaptable to the marketing weather. And when you plan ahead, you can schedule all of your text messages as far in advance as you want using Txtra’s scheduled texts feature.
Sending Messages Out Of Business Hours
Unless it’s an emergency, sending a message outside business hours can make you lose your loyal customers and you won’t be in compliance with CTIA guidelines. . Know that doing that can make your subscribers feel like receiving a call from a telemarketer when they’re about to have dinner with their family.
What should you do instead: Send messages from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM in the recipients’ time zone
Sending Too Many Messages
You don’t want your business to look weird and clingy to your customers. Sending messages more than your subscribers expect might ruin your marketing strategy.
What should you do instead: whether you send one weekly or daily, be upfront about your schedule when they subscribe. Sending a couple of messages every week is optimum, but it depends on your customers’ expectations.
Forgetting A Welcome Text
After your customers subscribe to your marketing list, they will expect to receive a confirmation message. But if you fail to send them, they might forget that they already signed up. So receiving a message from you might surprise them and make them unsubscribe.
What should you do instead: Txtra has an auto-response feature that can send an initial message to your new subscribers. A welcome text saying thanks for signing up for our service will help you provide a good gesture and give you an opportunity to inform your new subscriber how many messages they can expect to receive from you every week or every month.
Ignoring How To Grow Your List
Sometimes when SMS marketing platforms like Txtra are being used by a customer, they use it to simply send messages and they neglect to grow their SMS subscribers list. However, growing your marketing list is a different task. It entirely depends on your strategy. You’ll be surprised when the growth of your SMS list doesn’t meet your expectations.
What should you do instead: Include your SMS campaigns on your online or offline ad campaigns will help. You’ll never know what you missed when new subscribers boosted your revenue. Txtra offers a ton of different features to help grow your SMS subscriber lists.
No Call To Action
Statistics show that personalized calls to action perform better than basic ones. You can easily reduce your potential ROI from your SMS campaigns if you don’t include a CTA in your texts.
What should you do instead: Tailor your message to your customers. You can use jargons that your audience can understand, and tell them what you want them to do through your CTA.
Being Too Focused On Sales
When you look too pushy to your audience, you might be pushing them away. The reason this happens is that nobody wants to talk to anybody trying to sell them something regularly.
What should you do instead: Keep your messages conversational and use a friendly tone. It will help you communicate organically to your customers. You can send tips or feedback requests entertaining your subscribers once in a while.
Inconsistent Branding
Nobody likes to talk to two-faced people. The character limit of SMS still allows you to show authenticity to your messages.
What should you do instead: Know what your organization’s best feature will help you learn why your audience follows you in the first place. Deal with customers and meet their expectations of your brand.
Sending Messages Without Consent
Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) requires businesses to gather written consent from recipients. It means that you are legally liable to ask your audience for confirmation before sending them a message. Sending messages to an audience who didn’t subscribe yet has the potential to make your audience put your business down.
What should you do instead: read this guide to get your customers to subscribe to your text marketing will help you. After you obtain consent from your target audience, you are free to use creative and legal SMS marketing strategies.
Final Takeaway
Little mistakes, like the ones mentioned above, are easy to avoid. So when you run your next SMS marketing campaign, make sure that you don’t skip the necessary steps. Investing time to build a good plan is a proven method to boost marketing ROI.
You are now aware of what you must not do when running SMS campaigns. All you need to do is do your best to avoid these SMS marketing mistakes.
