Text messaging has played a huge part in modern culture, as it brings people closer together without the need to be in the same area. It’s no wonder that this medium has proven to help businesses connect and engage with potential clients as well as everyone else who may be interested in your services. If used correctly, marketing through text messages can be your ticket to building your clientele and getting repeat customers over and over again.
Creating a Great Text Marketing Strategy
Simply drafting a text and sending it to your clients isn’t going to cut it. There are a few things you need to consider when setting up your SMS marketing campaigns to ensure that your message brings in the customers you want. Here, we’ve listed the six most important elements that make up a great text marketing strategy, whether your business is big or small.
1. Always Identify Your Brand Name
Before everything else, never forget to include your brand name. There’s nothing worse than receiving a fantastic 50% discount but not knowing where to use it. If your clients can’t identify you, the whole text message is wasted. It won’t even matter how much they’ll save using your discounts if your customers don’t know where to redeem them. To avoid this rookie mistake, always indicate your brand name right from the beginning.
2. Give Value in Every Message
It’s important to remember: don’t just type and send. Instead, reflect and honestly ask yourself what goods and services you’re offering to your customers and the value that they bring. If you don’t know what kind of value you’re giving to your clients, it’s best to rethink your campaign. You don’t want to send messages just for the sake of it, and you wouldn’t want to waste their time.
Instead, be customer-centric and make your messages about them. Check up on what they need and ask how you can serve your customers. In this way, your offers don’t come off as spammy and annoying. By talking less about you and your products, you make customers feel valued by reaching out to their specific needs, which in turn, shows them that you’re a business that cares.
3. Keep it Short and Sweet
Messages work best when they’re on point, and if you choose to send a text blast, every single word on that message needs to have a purpose. Start by presenting your offer and cutting out filler words and fluff. Your customers will thank you for it and a direct approach is more likely to get responses compared to overly long texts, simply because no one has the time to read them. So be precise and be quick, getting your point across shouldn’t look like writing an essay.
4. Make it Urgent
You don’t want your customers to disregard your message now and forget about it later. They need a reason to act quickly, and having an expiration to your offers will do just that. Creating a sense of urgency compels your customers to claim your offer as soon as they see it, so make sure of two things:
- That it is something they will want
- Use words and phrases like “limited time only”, “expires” and “good through”
You can also include a SMS coupon and restrict the number of redemptions in each of your SMS campaigns.
5. Make it Exclusive
Making customers feel like they’re part of something special is an important part of making effective text messages. Making use of a deal or coupon that anyone has access to doesn’t have much of an appeal. Instead, offer something that serves as a reward for staying engaged with your messages, or even surprise them with a deal for being long-time subscribers. This is why it’s always good to have offers that are only available for your text list.
Using language like “Offer only available to VIP text members” or personalizing the SMS with the subscribers’ first name will have a significant impact on its effectiveness. “We have a special offer for you Bob!”
6. Include a Call-to-Action
It’s not about telling them what to do, you’re simply telling your subscribers what the next move is. While this may seem like an obvious thing to do, leaving your customers with clear instructions can have a significant impact on your SMS campaigns. Doing this gets rid of any doubts or questions that may hinder them from completing a transaction with you. And you’d be 😲 surprised at the effectiveness of including an emoji in your call-to-action!
7. Provide an Easy Opt-Out
The text marketing industry is heavily regulated, which is something that leads to its extraordinary success, especially when compared to something like email. With that regulation comes guide rails that SMS marketers must adhere to and one of those is providing every subscriber the ability to easily opt-out. Make sure that your first message to every new subscriber includes clear instructions on how to opt out of your list. Simply including something like “STOP to end” or “STOP=end” or “STOP to stop”.
