You know for a fact that Black Friday is one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Standing out in the crowded digital space is going to take more than generic SMS messages.

SMS marketing offers a direct and immediate way to reach your audience, ensuring your promotions are seen when it matters most.

With high open rates and instant delivery, SMS is a powerful tool for driving sales and engagement during this high-stakes event.

The many benefits of Black Friday SMS marketing

Although social media, direct messaging, and emails have become the staple channels of communication, SMS still holds its position as a channel to connect with customers on a more individual level.

Black Friday SMS marketing can do wonders to your bottom line by boosting customer engagement and improving conversion rates. Here are some of its assured benefits:

Instant delivery and high open rates

SMS messages are delivered almost instantly and boast open rates as high as 98%, far surpassing email and other digital channels. This immediacy ensures that your Black Friday offers reach customers at the right moment, increasing the likelihood of quick responses and conversions.

Personalization opportunities

From addressing customers by name to tailoring offers based on shopping behavior, SMS marketing offers you a higher degree of personalization. This personalized approach can create a stronger connection with your audience, making them more likely to engage with your Black Friday deals.

Additionally, personalized SMS marketing can significantly boost customer loyalty by making customers feel valued and understood.

Direct communication with customers

SMS provides a direct line of communication to your customers, cutting through the noise of crowded inboxes and social media feeds. This directness is particularly valuable during Black Friday, when timely and relevant Black Friday messages can make the difference between a sale and a missed opportunity.

Direct communication through SMS can also significantly improve customer retention by fostering a more personal and immediate connection with your audience.

Cost-effective marketing channel

Compared to traditional advertising, SMS marketing is relatively low-cost while offering a high return on investment. The ability to reach a large audience with minimal expense makes it an attractive option for businesses looking to maximize their Black Friday marketing budget.

SMS Marketing Vs. Social Media Marketing Vs. Email Marketing

We briefly mentioned earlier that SMS marketing stills holds value amidst social media and email marketing. 

SMS marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing each have unique strengths and weaknesses. 

Here’s a comparison to help you decide which combination of channels will best suit your strategy.

Planning Your Black Friday SMS marketing Campaign

Planning your Black Friday SMS marketing campaign is not going to be an easy task. Neverthless, if you follow a process you can still end it on a success note.

Setting Clear Goals

Whether you’re aiming to drive sales, increase website traffic, or build brand awareness, having specific goals will guide your strategy and help measure success. Introducing a Black Friday pre-sale can create early shopping opportunities with exclusive discounts, setting the stage for significant savings and encouraging early purchases. Be it for Black Friday SMS marketing, or for any other holiday season marketing, it is necessary to set SMART goals as a precursor. Setting clear goals can also lead to higher customer satisfaction.

For example, if your primary goal is to boost sales, your SMS messages should focus on time-sensitive offers and strong CTAs.

If brand awareness is the target, you might prioritize messaging that encourages engagement and social sharing.

Audience Segmentation

Effective SMS campaigns are built on personalization, and that starts with audience segmentation. By dividing your audience into specific groups, you can tailor your messaging to resonate more with each segment. For instance:

• Loyal Customers: Reward them with exclusive early access or higher discounts.
• New Subscribers: Entice them with a welcome discount or first-purchase incentive.
• High-Value Shoppers: Offer personalized recommendations or premium deals to encourage repeat purchases.

Segmenting your target audience can improve the effectiveness of your SMS campaigns by ensuring that each message is relevant and engaging to the specific needs and interests of each group.

Crafting Compelling SMS Offers

Different types of offers can appeal to various segments of your audience. Put in some copywriting effort to craft the right SMS that will hook customers and reel them into making a purchase. Highlighting black friday sale items can be an effective way to attract attention to special offers and discounts.

Some of the strategies you can give a shot are:

• Percentage discounts
• Specific amount discounts
• BOGO (Buy One Get One)
• Exclusive early/VIP access
• Free shipping
• Limited-time offers

Let’s take a detailed look at these strategies and how you can leverage them.

Best SMS Marketing Strategies to Create Black Friday Text Messages

The right sale offer can motivate customers to act quickly, driving sales and engagement, especially during Black Friday sales. Here’s how to approach crafting offers for different types of promotions:

Discounts – Discounts are a classic and effective way to entice customers, especially during Black Friday. When crafting a discount offer, focus on making it substantial enough to stand out in the crowded market. Whether it’s a percentage off or a dollar amount discount, clearly communicate the value to the customer and include a sense of urgency to encourage quick action.

Flash Sales – Flash sales are short, time-limited promotions that create a sense of urgency and excitement. These offers work well in SMS marketing due to the immediacy of text messages. The key to a successful flash sale SMS offer is to emphasize the limited time frame and make the offer too good to pass up, such as a deep discount or an exclusive deal available only during the flash sale window.

Exclusive Access – Offering exclusive access to Black Friday deals can make your customers feel valued and appreciated. This type of offer works well for VIP customers or those who have subscribed to your SMS list specifically for early access. The messaging should highlight the exclusivity of the offer, making customers feel like they are getting a special advantage over others.

BOGO (Buy One, Get One) – BOGO offers are a popular choice for driving volume sales during Black Friday. These offers provide customers with a perceived higher value, as they’re getting an additional product for free or at a reduced price. When crafting a BOGO SMS offer, be clear about the terms and make it easy for customers to understand how they can take advantage of the deal.

Free Shipping – Free shipping is a powerful incentive that can reduce cart abandonment and encourage more customers to complete their purchases. This offer is particularly appealing during Black Friday when shoppers are looking to maximize their savings. In your SMS message, emphasize the convenience and cost savings that free shipping provides, and consider adding a minimum purchase requirement to boost average order value.

Bundle Deals – Bundle deals encourage customers to purchase multiple items by offering them at a discounted rate when bought together. This type of offer can increase the overall order value and help clear out inventory. Your SMS should clearly outline what’s included in the bundle and the savings customers will enjoy by choosing the bundle over individual items.

Loyalty Rewards – Loyalty rewards offer an excellent opportunity to acknowledge and reward your repeat customers. This could be in the form of extra discounts, bonus points, or exclusive gifts with purchase. The messaging should convey appreciation and make loyal customers feel like they are receiving a special perk for their continued support.

Gathering customer feedback can help refine your SMS marketing strategies by providing insights into what works and what doesn’t, allowing you to tailor your offers more effectively.

The art and science of crafting effective Black Friday SMS messages

Not just campaign planning, but copywriting also plays a crucial role in making your Black Friday SMS messages work. Consider following these best practices when writing your campaign messages.

Writing Attention-Grabbing Subject Lines

Subject lines are the first thing your audience will see, making them crucial in determining whether your message gets opened or ignored.

For SMS marketing, the subject line needs to be concise, yet powerful enough to capture attention immediately.

The best practices you must adhere to include:

• Keep It Short and Sweet: Aim for brevity, as you have limited characters. Focus on the key offer or benefit.
• Use Action-Oriented Language: Words like “Grab,” “Save,” “Unlock,” or “Exclusive” encourage immediate action.
• Highlight Urgency or Scarcity: Phrases like “Limited Time,” “Only Today,” or “Ending Soon” create a sense of urgency that can drive quicker responses.
• Personalize When Possible: Including the recipient’s name or referencing their previous shopping behavior can make your subject line more engaging.

Effective subject lines can significantly improve open rates, ensuring your message reaches a wider audience.

Example: “Hurry, [First Name]! 20% Off Just for You – Today Only!”

Message Length and Content

When crafting your SMS content, less is more. Given the character limit and the need to get straight to the point, your text message should be concise and focused on the essential details. Here’s why:

• Be Concise: SMS messages should be clear and to the point, as you only have about 160 characters. Avoid fluff and stick to the core message.
• Incorporate Urgency: Urgency drives action. Phrases like “Act Now,” “Limited Time,” or “Today Only” can encourage immediate engagement.
• Emphasize Exclusivity: Making customers feel special can increase their interest. Use phrases like “Exclusive Offer,” “Just for You,” or “VIP Access” to add value to your message.

Example: “Flash Sale! 50% off everything – today only. Shop now: <Link>

Using Personalization and Emojis

Personalization and emojis can add a layer of engagement and personality to your SMS messages, making them more relatable and impactful.

• Personalization Enhances Engagement: Tailoring your messages with the recipient’s name, past purchases, or browsing behavior can make them feel valued and more likely to engage. For instance, “Hi [First Name], your favorite items are on sale!”
• Appropriate Use of Emojis: Emojis can add a fun, visual element to your messages, but they should be used sparingly and appropriately. Emojis like (celebration), (urgency), or (shopping) can enhance your message without overwhelming it. However, ensure that they align with your brand’s tone and the message’s content.

Personalization and appropriate use of emojis can significantly enhance the customer experience by making messages feel more tailored and engaging.

Call to Action (CTA)

A strong, clear call to action is vital to the success of your SMS marketing campaign. The CTA directs your audience on what to do next and should be compelling enough to drive immediate action. Black Friday SMS templates are essential tools for creating compelling messages that effectively communicate deals and promotions during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events.

• Crafting Clear and Compelling CTAs: Your CTA should be direct and easy to understand, leaving no ambiguity about the next step. Use action verbs and create a sense of urgency to encourage immediate action.
• Examples of Effective CTAs for Black Friday:
• “Shop Now” – Simple and direct, perfect for time-sensitive offers.
• “Claim Your Discount” – Creates a sense of ownership and urgency.
• “Unlock Your Offer” – Adds an element of exclusivity and intrigue.
• “Buy Now Before It’s Gone” – Combines urgency with scarcity, motivating quick decisions.

A strong CTA can significantly improve conversion rates by guiding customers towards completing a purchase or taking the desired action.

Example: “Don’t miss out! Claim a promo code for your 25% off today: Link

By focusing on these elements, you can craft SMS messages that not only capture attention but also drive the desired action, ensuring your Black Friday campaign is both effective and engaging.

If you’re looking for ready-to-use SMS messages for all occasions, here are 40 SMS templates you can use.

Black Friday SMS messages for all occasions

Now we have reached the most important part of this article. the one that is going to save hours worth of brainstorming and tedious copywritign effort.

Here are the Balck Fridat SMS message tempaltes that you can use for any occasion:

1. Exclusive Early Access Sale

1. You’re in! Get exclusive early access to our Black Friday deals now. Take advantage of our pre Black Friday sale to enjoy early discounts and exclusive offers. Shop before everyone else: < Link> #VIPAccess. Exclusive early access can significantly boost customer loyalty by making customers feel valued and appreciated.
2. Early birds catch the best deals! Use code EARLYBF for 20% off before the rush. Shop now: < Link>
3. Black Friday starts NOW for our VIPs! Hurry, grab your favorites before they’re gone: < Link>
4. Shh…it’s a secret! Early access to our Black Friday sale is live. Use code SECRETSALE: < Link>
5. You’ve unlocked early access! Shop our Black Friday deals before the crowd: < Link> Limited time only!

2. Last-Minute Reminders

1. Time’s almost up! Black Friday weekend ends tonight. Don’t miss out on huge savings: < Link>
2. Final hours! Shop our Black Friday deals before they’re gone. Hurry: < Link>
3. Last chance to save big! Black Friday ends soon. Get your deals now: < Link>
4. Tick-tock… Last-minute Black Friday shopping? We’ve got you covered. Shop now: < Link>
5. Only a few hours left! Grab your Black Friday favorites before they’re gone: < Link>. Last-minute reminders can significantly improve conversion rates.

3. Cart Abandonment Reminder

1. Hey < First Name>, you left something behind! Complete your purchase now and enjoy 15% off with code SAVE15: < Link>. Cart abandonment reminders like this can significantly improve customer retention by encouraging customers to complete their purchases.
2. Don’t miss out, < First Name>! Your Black Friday picks are still waiting. Complete your order: < Link>
3. Your cart is calling! Grab your Black Friday deals before they’re gone. Finish checkout: < Link>
4. We saved your cart! Use code BFCM20 for 20% off and complete your order: < Link>
5. Your Black Friday deals are waiting! Finish your purchase before they sell out: < Link>

4. Flash Sale Notifications

1. Flash Sale Alert! 50% off for the next 2 hours only. Don’t miss out: < Link> Cyber Monday deals are just around the corner, so stay tuned for exclusive offers.
2. Quick! Flash sale is live for the next 3 hours. Grab 40% off sitewide: < Link>
3. Surprise Flash Sale! Shop now and get 30% off for the next hour: < Link>
4. Limited-time flash sale! 25% off everything, but only for the next 2 hours: < Link>
5. Act fast! Flash sale ends in 1 hour. Use code FLASH25 for 25% off: < Link>

5. Personalized Product Recommendations

1. Hi < First Name>, we’ve handpicked these Black Friday deals just for you! Check them out: < Link>
2. Your favorites are on sale! Shop personalized Black Friday deals before they’re gone: < Link>
3. Special Black Friday picks for you, < First Name>! Don’t miss out on these deals: < Link>
4. Looking for something specific? Check out our personalized Black Friday recommendations: < Link>. Personalized recommendations can significantly boost customer engagement.
5. We know you’ll love these! Shop your personalized Black Friday deals now: < Link>

6. Bogo (Buy One Get One) Offers

1. BOGO is here! Buy one, get one free on select items for Black Friday. Don’t forget to check out our Cyber Monday sales for even more amazing deals. Shop now: < Link> BOGO offers can significantly drive customer acquisition by attracting new shoppers looking for great deals.
2. Black Friday BOGO! Buy one, get one 50% off today only. Don’t miss out: < Link>
3. Double the deals! BOGO on your favorite products for Black Friday. Limited time: < Link>
4. It’s BOGO time! Buy one, get one free on everything. Shop Black Friday deals: < Link>
5. BOGO Alert! Buy one, get one 50% off for Black Friday. Shop before it’s gone: < Link>

7. Free Shipping Promotions

1. Free Shipping Alert! Enjoy free shipping on all Black Friday orders today only: < Link>
2. Shop more, save more! Free shipping on all Black Friday orders over $50. Use code FREESHIP: < Link>
3. Black Friday Special! Free shipping on everything, no minimum required: < Link>
4. Skip the lines, we’ll ship for free! Black Friday free shipping on all orders: < Link>
5. Order today and get free shipping! Black Friday deals + free shipping: < Link>. Free shipping can significantly improve customer satisfaction by reducing overall costs and providing a better shopping experience.

8. Exclusive VIP Offers

1. You’re a VIP, < First Name>! Enjoy 25% off all Black Friday items. Use code VIP25: < Link> Exclusive VIP offers like this can significantly boost customer loyalty.
2. VIP Alert! Get early access to our best Black Friday deals with code VIPFIRST: < Link>
3. Exclusive for VIPs! 30% off your entire Black Friday order. Shop now: < Link>
4. VIP Black Friday sale just for you! Save big with code VIPSALE: < Link>
5. As a VIP, you get the best deals first! Use code VIPDEAL for 20% off Black Friday items: < Link>

Timing Your SMS Campaign

Timing is everything when it comes to SMS marketing, especially during Black Friday, when consumers are bombarded with promotions free gift, from all directions. Sending your messages at the right time can significantly impact their effectiveness. Timing your SMS campaign correctly can improve open rates.

Which are the best days and times to send black friday sms campaigns?

The days leading up to Black Friday, including the weekend before, are prime times for sending SMS messages. Early morning (8-10 AM) or late afternoon (4-6 PM) tend to be the most effective, as people are more likely to check their phones during these times. 

On Black Friday itself, consider sending reminders early in the day and then follow-ups in the late afternoon to capture any last-minute shoppers.

Do consider your audience time zones as well.

If your audience spans multiple time zones, it’s crucial to schedule your SMS messages accordingly. Sending a message at 8 AM Eastern Time might be too early for your West Coast audience. 

Most SMS platforms allow you to segment your list by time zone, ensuring your messages are received at the optimal time for each group. This consideration can prevent your message from being ignored or worse, seen as intrusive.

Drip Campaigns and Follow-Ups

A single SMS message might not be enough to engage your audience fully, especially with the heightened competition during Black Friday. That’s where drip campaigns and follow-ups come into play.

Drip campaigns can significantly boost customer engagement by providing consistent and relevant communication over time.

Setting Up a Series of Messages Leading Up to Black Friday:

Drip campaigns involve sending a series of scheduled messages to build anticipation and keep your brand top-of-mind as Black Friday approaches. Start with a teaser message a week before the sale, hinting at the deals to come. Follow up with a more detailed message outlining the key offers a few days later, and finally, send a last-minute reminder on Black Friday morning. This strategy ensures consistent engagement without overwhelming your audience. Additionally, a well-executed series of messages can significantly improve customer retention by keeping your audience engaged and informed.

Example Drip Campaign:

• 7 Days Before Black Friday: “Get Ready! Exclusive Black Friday deals are coming soon. Stay tuned for a sneak peek!”
• 3 Days Before Black Friday: “Here’s your sneak peek: Up to 50% off sitewide starting Friday. Don’t miss out!”
• Black Friday Morning: “It’s time! Shop our Black Friday deals now and save big: [Link]”
• Late Afternoon on Black Friday: “Last chance! Black Friday deals end tonight. Grab yours before it’s too late: [Link]”

Follow-Ups:

Sending follow-up messages is key to maximizing conversions. If a customer has clicked on a link but hasn’t made a purchase, consider sending a follow-up reminder with a slightly sweeter deal, like an additional discount or free shipping offer.

Timing these follow-ups is critical—send them too soon, and they might be annoying; send them too late, and you could miss the opportunity altogether. A well-timed follow-up, perhaps in the late afternoon or evening on Black Friday, can turn an undecided shopper into a buyer.

By carefully planning the timing of your SMS campaigns and incorporating strategic drip and follow-up messages, you can increase the likelihood that your Black Friday promotions will stand out and drive the desired results. Follow-up messages can significantly improve conversion rates by keeping potential customers engaged and encouraging them to complete their purchases.

Compliance and Best Practices in Black Friday SMS marketing

Compliance is a cornerstone of any SMS marketing strategy, especially during major shopping events like Black Friday. Failing to adhere to legal guidelines can result in hefty fines and damage to your brand’s reputation.

Moreover, compliance with regulations can significantly improve customer satisfaction by ensuring that customers feel respected and valued.

Understanding SMS Marketing Regulations

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in the United States is the primary regulation governing SMS marketing. It mandates that businesses must obtain explicit consent from individuals before sending them SMS messages.

This consent must be clear, voluntary, and specific to the type of communication being sent.

Additionally, messages must include a clear opt-out mechanism, allowing recipients to easily stop receiving messages. Violations of the TCPA can result in significant penalties, including fines of up to $1,500 per message.

Other regions may have similar regulations, such as the GDPR in the European Union, which also requires explicit consent and provides individuals with rights over their personal data.

Adhering to these SMS marketing regulations can build customer trust by ensuring transparency and respecting consumer preferences.

A note on obtaining proper consent from customers

Obtaining proper consent isn’t just about compliance—it’s about respecting your customers’ preferences and building trust. Consent must be explicit, meaning customers must knowingly opt-in to receive SMS messages from your brand.

This can be done through a signup form on your website, an in-store registration, or any other method where the customer is fully informed about what they’re agreeing to. Using pre-checked boxes or assuming consent from other forms of communication (like email) is not compliant and could lead to legal trouble.

Proper consent also ensures that your messages are welcomed and reduces the likelihood of complaints or opt-outs. Obtaining proper consent can significantly build customer trust, as it shows that you value their choices and privacy.

Managing Opt-Ins/Opt-Outs

Managing opt-ins and opt-outs effectively is key to maintaining a healthy, engaged SMS subscriber list and ensuring a positive user experience. Building a robust list of SMS subscribers is crucial for effective SMS marketing campaigns, especially around events like Black Friday. Managing opt-ins/opt-outs effectively can significantly enhance the customer experience by ensuring that communications are relevant and welcomed.

Follow these best Practices for Managing Opt-Ins and Opt-Outs:

Opt-Ins

When a customer opts in to receive SMS messages, it’s important to immediately confirm their subscription with a welcome message that outlines what they can expect, such as the frequency of messages and the type of content you’ll be sending.

Opt-Outs

Providing a simple and easy opt-out mechanism is both a legal requirement and a best practice. A typical method involves allowing users to reply with a keyword like “STOP” to unsubscribe.

It’s important to acknowledge their opt-out request with a confirmation message, and ensure their number is removed from your list promptly to avoid any further communications, which could lead to compliance violations and customer frustration.

By understanding and implementing these compliance practices, you not only protect your business from potential legal risks but also foster a trusting relationship with your audience, leading to better engagement and more successful SMS marketing campaigns.

Wrapping up: Black Friday SMS marketing

SMS marketing is a powerful tool for Black Friday, offering direct and immediate access to your audience during one of the most competitive shopping events of the year. Its ability to create urgency, deliver personalized offers, and drive quick actions makes it an essential component of any comprehensive Black Friday marketing strategy.

To launch a successful campaign, remember to plan your timing carefully, craft concise and compelling messages, and stay compliant with regulations. By focusing on these key elements, you can maximize engagement, boost sales, and make the most of the Black Friday shopping frenzy.

Now that you know how to go about your BFCM SMS marketing, it’s time to create your own campaign! Black Friday SMS marketing can significantly boost customer engagement and conversion rates.

With SmartrMail, it’s easy to set up an SMS campaign for Black Friday (or any other event for that matter) and also combine it with your email marketing strategy.

If you’re already a SmartrMail user, you can learn how to do this right here. Otherwise, you can install SmartrMail for free right here.

All the best this Black Friday!

The post 40+ Black Friday SMS templates to win this holiday season appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do about it. With the right customer retention strategy, you’ll win back a good portion of these lapsed customers, transforming them once again into loyal customers. 

And one of the best customer retention strategies is an SMS winback campaign. 

Just like your winback email series, an SMS winback campaign is an incredibly powerful way to reactivate and reengage with customers who have gone cold. 

That’s when your campaign is planned and executed well, though. 

So let’s take a look at what makes a successful winback SMS campaign and why it’s one of the most important SMS automations you can set up for your store.

The importance of customer retention 

While you might think winning back your inactive customers is next to impossible, consider this: It’s 6 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one.

Remember, every inactive customer was once an engaged, active customer. You’ve already won them over once. The hard work has already been done. 

Unlike people who have never purchased from you before, these customers know what to expect from your store. They know what your customer service is like. 

Because it’s so much easier (and more cost-effective) to make an additional sale to a past customer than convert a brand new customer, even a modest 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by up to 95%.

This is why no business should neglect customer retention.

The importance of SMS marketing

So now that you have an understanding of why winning back customers should be a vital part of your marketing strategy you might be wondering: why SMS?

Unlike other marketing channels, SMS has a unique ability to cut through the noise and ensure your customers receive your message. 

SMS enjoys an astronomical open rate of 98% (compared to roughly 20% for email marketing) and more than 60% of customers will read your SMS message within 5 minutes of receiving it.

This is largely because SMS is a much more personal channel. That means the flip side of these impressive statistics is that SMS marketing requires a light touch. 

If you spam your customer base with too many text messages, you’ll just annoy them. 

That’s why you’ll want to be strategic with your SMS winback campaign to unlock its full potential without falling into any of the all-too-common pitfalls. 

So let’s take a look at how to set up an SMS winback campaign.

How to structure your SMS winback campaign

Create a subscriber list of lapsed customers 

It might sound obvious, but when it comes to setting up your winback campaign, the first thing is to identify your lapsed customers. 

What qualifies a customer a lapsed will vary from business to business.

If you sell pet supplies and customers typically buys pet food every month, if someone goes 2 or 3 months without making a purchase then it could be fair to say they’ve gone cold. 

If you sell jewelry or apparel, then you’ll likely want to give customers more time before considering them having gone cold. 

Whatever the appropriate timeframe is for your business, you’ll want to create a segment of lapsed customers that you can target with your winback campaign. 

Remember to only add customers to this segment who have given their consent to receive SMS marketing campaigns.

Create your SMS messages

Your segment of lapsed isn’t going to achieve much if you don’t have some SMS messages to send them. 

Creating SMS winback messages is also the point that makes or breaks many campaigns. So here’s how you’ll want to go about it. 

First, it’s a good idea to send a typical-looking SMS promotional message. Your customers don’t need to know they’re only receiving it because you’re trying to win them back just yet. 

The key purpose of this message should be to get them to come back with an enticing offer. The winback SMS example below from Jangaroo does this well. 

What this message does is provides the customer with a limited-time discount code framed in a way that makes it seem unique and exclusive. This is achieved with copy such as “loyal customers” and the inclusion of a unique-looking discount code (it doesn’t have to be actually unique). 

The message also follows SMS best practices such as identifying themselves and including a way to opt out. 

By sending something similar to this, you’ll make your customer feel valued and hopefully remind them of why they converted into a paying customer in the first place. 

Automate a follow-up message

While your first message will win back some customers, the reality is that it won’t work for everyone. 

After all, it almost certainly took a lot more than just sending a single text message to get the customer to make their first purchase. The fact that some customers will be won back with just a single winback SMS demonstrates just how effective a customer retention strategy is. 

So for the lapsed customers who weren’t won back with your first winback message, you’ll want to automate a text follow-up a couple of weeks later. (Remember you don’t want to send too many SMS messages). 

In this message, you can be more upfront about it being a winback message. Such as in the follow-up winback example from Jangaroo below. 

One last attempt

Obviously not everyone is going to convert from these two text messages. 

Even after receiving the second message, there’ll be plenty of people who won’t end up coming back to make a purchase. 

This doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want to. Perhaps they just don’t have the money at the time, they might be taking an extended holiday, anything is possible. 

While there’ll be some cold customers you simply won’t be able to win back, for these customers where it’s just not the right time for whatever reason, it’s worth one last attempt. 

This doesn’t mean sending another promotion coupon in a few weeks. A few months to half a year is a more realistic timeframe so they have a better chance of converting. 

During this time, you’ll also want to be still sending them email campaigns as a more cost-effective way to keep your brand in mind. 

Conclusion

A winback SMS campaign is a simple and effective way to deal with one of the realities of doing business: customers going cold. 

While you won’t end up winning back every customer, the return on investment of winning back a portion of these lapsed customers compared to focusing exclusively on generating new customers is something you cannot ignore.  

With SmartrMail, it’s also incredibly easy to automate a winback SMS campaign and combine it with your email marketing strategy. 

If you’re already a SmartrMail user, you can learn how to do this right here. Otherwise, you can install SmartrMail for free right here.

The post How to Bring Back Customers with a Winback SMS Series appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

If so, you’re not alone. Customers abandoning carts is a major problem facing ecommerce businesses. It’s estimated that between 55% and 81.4% of online shopping carts are left abandoned, costing retailers approximately $18 billion every year. 

Thankfully, there are ways you can easily recover abandoned carts. Two of the most popular methods are abandoned cart emails, and, the topic of this article, SMS reminders.

This article will explore abandoned cart SMS, including best practices, as well as analyze some examples of real-world campaigns.  

Why SMS is vital to abandoned cart recovery

Chances are you already have an abandoned cart email automation set up (if not, check out this article here on why you definitely should), so why bother with SMS?

While email is a great, versatile and highly effective marketing channel, SMS has the ability to cut through the noise and grab customers’ attention in a way that no other channel can match. 

This is because, unlike emails and social media messages, virtually everyone reads SMS messages. In terms of open rates, SMS enjoys an open rate of 98% compared to roughly 20% for email. And more than half of SMS campaigns are read within 5 minutes of being sent.  

We also know that the longer a cart is left abandoned, the lower its chances of being recovered are. So combining SMS’s unique cut-through ability with your cart recovery makes for a powerful marketing strategy. 

That said, success with abandoned cart SMS campaigns isn’t guaranteed. 

While SMS can generate impressive results, it’s also a delicate marketing channel that requires a carefully considered approach. Otherwise you’ll risk annoying your customers and doing more harm than good.

That’s why it’s important to follow the best practices we’ve outlined below. 

Abandoned cart SMS best practices

Make it a friendly reminder

The tone you take in your abandoned cart text messages has a big impact on how successful it’ll be. 

What makes achieving the right tone challenging is that you’re walking a fine line between encouraging people to complete their purchase and coming across as pushy. 

Often the way merchants get around this is by framing their abandoned cart messages as friendly reminders. 

Phrases like “we saved your cart for you” help position your campaign as helpful and as though you’re doing them a favor in the minds of your customers. Especially when people may have genuinely forgotten about their cart. 

The SMS below from FREY is a great example of an abandoned cart reminder that achieves this and strikes a good overall tone.

Another good way to keep your abandoned cart marketing messages friendly and light is to ask your customers if they have any questions. Just as Brooklinen has done in the example below. 

Doing this will also help improve conversion rates when people abandoned their cart because they didn’t understand something or had a question about your product.

Maintain a light touch

We’ve already mentioned that people pay greater attention to SMS messages than they do to emails. 

The implication of this is that it’s important to be more selective about when and how often you send SMS campaigns to your customers. 

While you can send emails as often as once or twice a week, this frequency is inappropriate for SMS. Sending SMS messages this often will only frustrate your customers and end up with them unsubscribing. 

And while the same customer isn’t going to be abandoning their cart every day, keep in mind that your abandoned cart SMSs should be sent in conjunction with your abandoned cart emails. 

Because of this, we typically recommend the following sequence: 

Customer abandons cart > Wait 30 minutes to 1 hour > Send first email > Wait a few hours > Send first SMS > Wait 24 hours > Send final email follow-up. 

Of course, as soon as a customer comes back to complete their purchase, you don’t need to send any subsequent messages.  

Consider adding discount codes

When people abandoned their cart, it can be because they’re on the fence about purchasing the product or are comparing offers between different online stores. 

This is why including a coupon code in your abandoned cart SMS is highly effective. It’s often what pushes a customer across the line and gets them to complete their purchase. 

That said, this doesn’t automatically mean you should blindly add a discount code without fully considering the impact it’ll have. 

Firstly, you’ll want to consider how much margin it’ll eat into. There’s little point in giving customers a discount if it means you’ll end up selling your product at a loss. 

Secondly, it’s good to consider the impact adding a coupon code might have on your brand. Will it cheapen your brand in the eyes of your customers? Will it lead to them not wanting to pay full price again? These are questions to consider before offering a discount (and not just in your abandoned cart series). 

Decided you want to include a discount? The example below from Need Skin shows how you can easily add incorporate a discount into your campaign.

Make things interesting with an image

One thing you may have noticed about the two SMS abandoned cart examples above is that they both include images. 

Including an image, or even better, a GIF, makes your campaign more impactful and helps to grab your customer’s attention. Just compare the two abandoned cart SMS examples below from Homesick and Cloudy.

While there’s nothing glaringly wrong about the message from Homesick, it just doesn’t grab your attention the same way Cloudy does through its use of imagery and emojis. 

To learn more about including images, GIFs, and even videos in your SMS campaign, check out our explainer on the difference between SMS and MMS here.

Keep general SMS marketing best practices in mind

The final thing to keep in mind when creating your campaign is the general SMS best practices, including:

• Ensure you give people a way to unsubscribe from your SMS marketing messages. Such as a “reply STOP to opt-out” line at the end of your message.
• If possible, personalize your messages with your customer’s name. 
• Identify yourself by including your store’s name so that your customer knows who you are. 

For more on general SMS best practices, check out our ultimate guide to SMS marketing here.

Time to add SMS to your abandoned cart recovery strategy

Adding SMS to your abandoned cart strategy is a powerful way to recover otherwise lost sales. Especially when you have your email and SMS messages work together for the best results. 

With SmartrMail, it’s easy to properly combine email and SMS within your single abandoned cart campaign. 

If you’re already a SmartrMail user, you can learn how to create an SMS campaign here.

Otherwise, you can install SmartrMail for free right here.

The post Recover Sales with Abandoned Cart SMS Messages (with Examples) appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

Suppose your website has excellent conversion optimisation and your search engine optimisation (SEO) and ad campaigns are bringing you traffic.

But if a user suddenly needs to do something else unrelated, they might leave your website without doing anything but landing on it. Or they may start shopping and if something comes up on their end, they’ll abandon their cart.

You may have the best website in the world but that doesn’t guarantee that you won’t see significance bounce or cart abandonment rates. In fact, most websites have an average of 61% bounce rates and many consider that to be a normal part of eCommerce operation.

But you can save those lost customers through several effective marketing channels. And one of them is SMS marketing – a cost-efficient channel that you should leverage.

In this article, you will learn how you can get bouncers back to your website via SMS marketing so you can convert them.

What is SMS Marketing?

SMS marketing is the use of text messaging to get people to do business with you.

You can use SMS to promote a product or service, upsell or cross-sell, send vital business information, or save lost customers, i.e. reduce bounce rates and cart abandonments.

What is a Lost Customer?

A person who visits  your website but leaves without doing anything contributes to a bounce and is considered a lost customer. The more this happens, the higher your bounce rate.

A person who starts shopping and adds items to their cart but leaves without checking out is another type of lost customer. The more this happens, the higher your cart abandonment or cart abandonment rate.

A person who has done business with you but has stopped for some reason is also considered a lost customer.

You can get these types of people back to your site and profit from doing business with them via remarketing strategies like an SMS campaign.

How SMS Marketing Works for Saving Lost Customers

Essentially, you can use SMS at any stage of the marketing funnel. It is highly effective in saving lost customers.

To use SMS to save lost customers, the main idea is to send them SMS messages that will entice them to come back to your website. When you effectively get them to return, you can potentially convert them and profit.

With an SMS marketing platform, you can automate SMS messages that are triggered by actions like leaving your site, leaving a cart unchecked-out or cancelling a subscription.

You can send a single text message for individual instances or methologically send consecutive SMSs that will funnel your recipient back to your online store.

It’s all a matter of sending the right message at the right time to the right person.

What are the benefits of SMS marketing?

1. It is cost-effective.

SMS marketing is far less expensive than other marketing channels such as social network ads, Google ads, television, and print. So it’s definitely worth a shot!

2. It is seen as a reliable communication channel by consumers.

When you receive a text message, you probably will check on it at once, unlike when getting emails.

In fact, SMS is one of the ways stores ensure secure transactions with you. And that gives SMS a perceived reliability in the mind of the general users.

3. It can be automated. 

Of course, you won’t have time to individually text people who left your website. So you will have to use an SMS marketing platform where you can automate when, what and to whom messages are sent.

SMS remarketing doesn’t take much effort, especially with a proper tool. You can automate messages where you send out reminders 12 hours after they’ve left something in their cart or fifteen (15) days since their last purchase or visit to the site. This saves you time, effort and hassle.

4. It is one of the most effective channels for saving lost customers.

SMS, when done correctly, can power much more than just the acquisition stage of your marketing operations. It has the potential to become a vitally helpfull component of your overall customer retention strategy.

SMS is a personal channel of communication that you can effectively use to ensure that customers stay with you and engage with your business.

Tips on SMS Marketing for Saving Lost Customers

1. Make it simple and enticing for people to subscribe.

Do customers have to jump through hoops to join your SMS list? If you want to recoup lost customers, make it as simple as possible for customers to join your SMS list. 

This is dependent on your shop’s configuration, but you can make SMS signup easier by:

• Making SMS signup part of a subscription
• Including an SMS opt-in at the checkout
• Including a popup on your website that offers a discount to SMS subscribers
• Allowing customers to sign up via a simple SMS shortcode

Ensure to do a double opt-in for all of your customers. This maintains the integrity of your SMS list guarantees that you’re only talking to interested customers.

2. Make your copy personal.

The most common error that retailers make with SMS marketing is adopting robotic jargon.

SMS provides potentially sizable interactions with your customers. So feel free to use emoticons, pop culture themes, and friendly language.

While having individual discussions with customers might take longer, you can still create personalised, automated SMS messages:

• Requesting that customers vote on new looks, patterns, colours, or items
• Notifying SMS users about future specials or deals
• Celebrating the birthdays of your customers with your store, include a few amusing GIFs

Whenever possible, try to send particular, tailored SMS messages. Include the shoppers’ names in each message if at all possible.

3. See to it that it doesn’t contradict your email marketing efforts for lost customers.

You just have a few seconds to deliver a message and create a call to action. Provide all pertinent information in clear, concise, and persuasive language. Make sure that your SMS does not contradict your email marketing efforts to avoid discrepancies and inconsistencies.

4. Target dates when your recipients are more capable to return to your site and buy.

Paydays, peak seasons, birthdays, Christmas – SMS marketing is associated with a sense of urgency, as customers have a limited amount of time to act. Don’t give them a week to contemplate a forthcoming deal; instead, inform them about it just before it occurs.

5. Offer irresistible deals.

Giving a discount is most likely the simplest and most popular technique to recapture an abandoned cart sale. Retailers frequently offer 10% off an order if the shopper buys right away (or soon). If 10% isn’t enough, some organizations go as high as 15% or give free delivery to clinch the bargain, as costly shipping rates are the most common reason buyers abandon the checkout process.

SMS can help you to not miss sales. 

You can deliver engaging experiences and recover more abandoned orders at scale with SMS marketing.

SMS abandoned cart notifications are an excellent approach to reaching cart abandoners practically immediately after they leave products behind, whether through marketing automation or one-on-one live chat.

You’ve probably heard it before, and you’ll hear it again: SMS marketing has consumed the world.

Guest Author’s Bio:

Kas Andz is a multi-award-winning marketing leader, and the founder of KAMG. He is one of the top digital marketing experts in the UK and has helped companies and brands across Europe, North America, and Asia to achieve greater revenue and expand sustainably. He also tries to play football when he can but doesn’t succeed as well as he would like.

The post How SMS Marketing Can Help Save Lost Customers appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

The forecast is that there will be 4.3 billion email users in 2022. Most of these people have mobile devices and, therefore, a phone number. Between SMS and email marketing, one can get confused about which one to use for marketing.

Today, we will clear this confusion for you. We will reveal which tool to use for which situation. In the end, you should know which medium applies best for your business.

Let’s Compare Email vs SMS Marketing

Email marketing is an important strategy for sending newsletters, adding product placements, and sending announcements or offers. SMS, however, works best for urgent communication—especially if you want a high open-rate. 

To give you perspective, here are some stats to consider between the two marketing media:

• 87% of marketers use email to nurture their leads
• The average click-through-rate for email campaigns is 2.6%
• The average open rate for email is 21%
• 93% of B2B marketers use email as a marketing channel

On the other hand, here are some stats for SMS marketing:

• 91% of consumers like to receive texts from their favorite brands
• 34% of people open the SMS messages within five minutes after receiving the notification
• The response rate of SMS is 45%
• 58% of consumers say that SMS is the best way for brands to communicate with them (the consumers)

Now that we have seen some critical statistics, are we to assume that SMS is a better option? Not really; there are ways to use SMS marketing campaigns effectively. Then, there are situations where email marketing is the best approach. 

When To Use Email Marketing

Below are some of the best cases when to use email marketing.

1. Nurturing Leads

Send email materials to nurture leads. What it means is that you should avoid sending cliché marketing materials. Instead, give your recipient something they can use.

You must send materials that establish you as a credible source of information. For example, if you sell makeup and lipstick, send emails that teach the recipients how to apply makeup the right way.

If you do not do this, your subscribers will get tired and view your emails as spam. It is called content fatigue. There are many ways by which you can avoid subscriber fatigue, and one is by sending value-driven content. You can also utilize campaign management tools to plan your content newsletters and track your success.

2. Building Customer Loyalty

Loyalty is a result of nurture. Use emails to make your subscribers feel part of a community. More importantly, email them about things that help change their lives.

One pitfall of many email marketers is that they bombard their subscribers with announcements. Unfortunately, people do not become loyal to marketing content—they become loyal if they feel valued.

For example, instead of sending coupons and discount codes about your online course, send an email that navigates the recipient to a free online tutorial. This approach drives loyalty because the recipient feels that you are advancing his best interests, not yours.

3. Redirecting Traffic

Use email marketing to redirect traffic not to your landing page but to your blog. For example, you may have the best online business ideas to share. Send an email about these ideas but tell the recipient to click a link to get to your blog.

Email marketing is an effective way not only to sell but also to build traffic. Your subscribers gave you their email address for a reason—they want to hear what you have to say. Now, please do not give them a reason to unsubscribe. 

When To Use SMS Marketing

Now, let us discuss the situations where it is better to use SMS than email.

1. Short-Term Promotions

Text messages are excellent for telling your subscribers about a promotion. For example, let us say that you are giving a 20% discount on all your products. SMS is a better tool than email because it is straightforward.

In your SMS message, just tell the recipient upfront that you have a coupon code. The message should also tell the consumer where to go and when the promotion expires.

Remember that SMS is much more personal. It is an effective way to appeal to a customer’s emotion—far better than emails.

2. Urgent Updates

If there is a change in your policy, or if you will close your shop for a while, SMS is a better tool than email. Since more than a third of people open the SMS within five minutes, they get to know the news quicker.

An urgent update is something that a customer should know because it affects their life or business. You can also use it to send quick notes about a crisis.

For example, let us say that you have an app. An SMS is a better way of telling your subscribers that the app will be down for maintenance.

3. Polls and Surveys

SMS is an excellent method for sending polls and surveys. The message is brief, and it is easier to send your message across—no subject lines, no email body, no image, etc.

When you send this survey, it doesn’t mean that the recipient will answer via SMS. You can add a link to your SMS, redirecting a recipient to a webpage.

Most phones today are smartphones—customers have browsers in them. If you think that the consumer is offline, you can opt to survey SMS and not online.  

Best Practices For Email Marketing

Sending an email is easy, but writing the copy is not. To get the best results from your email campaign, we have prepared some best practices for you to ponder.

1. Keep the main message and CTA above the fold

The copy and CTA must be viewable when the consumer opens the mail to get the best of an email marketing message. Do not put these two things at the end of the email body.

Here is an example: 

As you can see, the “Watch Lesson” button is above the fold and is easily viewed.

Why is this important? Because people are more likely to respond if they see what’s on the table right away than having to read through the entire message.

There are three main reasons you must put the CTA above the fold. One is that subscribers do not read text; they scan it. 

2. Write compelling subject lines

Subject lines are the deciding factor in whether or not the recipient will open your email. Email recipients have an automatic response to emails—they think it is spam.

There are many ways to write compelling copy. However, you need two main things: the problem and the benefit of your solution. 

The subject title must immediately tell the recipient what is in store for him. Do not use your blog post title if you send a link to a blog post. Instead, re-write the subject line. 

Here are some examples of blog titles in subject lines:

• How to Find Dropshipping Suppliers
• Ways How to Make Money From Home
• How to Grow Your YouTube Channel

And here are the revised subject lines:

• 17 Suppliers That Will Bring Sales
• I Did This, and I Earned $2,000 a Month!
• Do These to Get 1,000 YouTube Subscribers!

As you can see, there is a big difference between these subject lines. The revised ones do not sound instructional at all. Instead, they tell the recipient something intriguing—something that they can use to achieve success. 

3. Split-test your emails

Always split test your emails. Split testing means sending two versions of the email. Just to be clear, it does not mean sending the two versions to the same person. In a split test, you want to measure which email design, or message, gets a better response.

Here is an example of two versions of the email split test from BuzzFeed:

What BuzzFeed does here is to test the subject lines and the images. Then, once they have enough data, they can analyze the results and tell which subject line has a better open rate.

Email marketing providers like Optin Monster tell their users how to do split tests. If they require you to pay for this service, your alternative is to manually send the two versions of emails. This way, you do not have to incur additional expenses. 

Best Practices For SMS Marketing

Now, let us give you some of the best practices for SMS marketing.

1. Send texts sparingly

SMS is personal. People use it to communicate with their loved ones, so do not spam your recipients. If you do, they will block you.

The word “sparingly” has no definite timeframe or schedule. It is always subjective. However, we recommend sending only one to two SMS messages per month.

Of course, it also goes that you must not launch new promotions all too often. Ideally, you must have a promotion that runs for a month or a quarter, but not more than two in a month.  

2. Be straightforward

SMS is short. People use it to convey messages that do not need a phone call. As such, you must keep your messages short and sweet.

Avoid fluff phrases like “did you know” or “Hey! We are launching….” Instead, say “Get 35% off on your next purchase…” or “Get FREE wallet if you buy our….”

A short message is not confusing. It immediately tells the reader what is up for grabs and why you are texting. A long and winding one is mentally draining, and it will never end well for your marketing campaign.

2. Tell the recipient what to do

Finally, your SMS message must tell the reader what he should do. Do not just announce a promotion or a discount. Tell the consumer where to go.

In our examples earlier, you can append words like “visit yoursite.com” to redeem your voucher!” You can also say, “go to this link to learn more!”

How to Find a Perfect Balance Between Both

Here are some of our recommendations on how you can find a balance between the two marketing strategies.

1. Get both phone and email upon opt-in

We are sure that you have a landing page, and that is where you get your leads. You can also ask your consumer for their phone number in your email opt-in.

This may be a tad personal, and the consumer may not like it. What you can do is make the phone number optional. However, give him a reason to share his number with you. Since you cannot use an ebook as a lead magnet, offer a discount in exchange for the consumer’s phone number.

2. Do not duplicate marketing materials

Do not send the same marketing campaign to the same person via both email and SMS. It does not make sense. It is annoying, and your lead will unsubscribe.

3. Use both in different ways

Create a standard for when to use these two platforms. We provided you with several ideas earlier. Now, what you need to do is write a rulebook.

For example, you can create simple bullet points that tell you when to use either. Below is an example 

Use SMS for:

• Coupon codes
• Downtime announcements
• New promotions

Use email for:

• New blog post
• New YouTube post

With a simple guide, you will not go wrong. Remember, emails and SMS messages have a cost. You want to get the best out of every penny you spend as a marketer. 

The Best Strategy: Pair SMS & Email Marketing

The best strategy is to pair email and SMS marketing. Use these two marketing tactics to reach out to different people differently. Our guidance is to use SMS and email marketing. Pick a reliable software platform for email marketing that also has SMS.  

Our recommended approach is to use SMS for announcements, but only to people who have already bought something from you. 

Then, use email to nurture leads who have not made a purchase yet. Of course, there are situations where you may want to use email, such as when you want to add images to your message.

The post When to Use Email and SMS Marketing appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

Why should SMS marketing services be part of your marketing strategy? Well, the majority of us have our phones within arms reach most of the day. Despite social media becoming more and more popular, communicating with someone via text is the most efficient method. 

This is the same for companies who want to connect with their customer base and engage with them on a personal level. SMS marketing is one of the top performing marketing channels for brands across all industries, with high open rates and immediate results.

SMS marketing is an efficient way to grab your audience’s attention. The average open time for a marketing text is 90 seconds. This is due to the fact that the majority of people say text is the number one reason for their phone use. With a text message only being a few taps away for your audience to read, your subscribers will prefer it as well.

Statistics show that SMS marketing is 6-8 times more engaging than email marketing. Here are 8 well thought out SMS marketing campaign ideas utilising sms marketing best practices to achieve their customer services results. 

1. Right people, right time

Bombers supporters received this amazingly executed SMS marketing campaign,on a recent game day, if they were likely to be going to the stadium. Targeting the right people at an optimal time, Essendon FC maximised their chances of improving their merchandise sales at the game!

Best of all, their audience is already highly engaged heading to cheer on their favourite Australian Football team, making this a great time to capitalise. 

2. Rewarding your customers for being signed up 

Oars + Alps messaged their subscribers regarding a new product. They gave them the inside scoop on a newly released product. Rewarding your customers this way, gives them a sense of privilege and reassures them that opting in to receive SMS marketing campaigns was in their best interests

3. Post Purchase Campaigns

Thanking customers after their purchase is a simple yet effective tool in the SMS marketing arsenal. Rainier Watch showers their customers with some solid love with this thank you text. If your brand links up with another organisation that also supports a good cause, we suggest dropping this to your customers also! 

4. Offer promotions based on special events

We all like taking advantage of a good deal, so capitalise with promotions that occur around holidays, birthdays and other special events. Sending these types of SMS messages are cheap and can be personalised to increase engagement with each customer. Subscribers feel great about receiving a discount at their favourite store or a ‘buy one, get one free’ deal for dinner on their birthday.

5. Time Sensitive Campaigns 

Surprising your customers with an awesome deal out of the blue is a fantastic way to keep your SMS list engaged. Having urgent offers encourages your customers to act now and compels them to stay subscribed. 

The guys at Bones Coffee Company threw in a random prize with each purchase. This “everybody wins” SMS campaign also includes a call to action, encouraging customers to engage now.

6. Conversational Campaigns

It doesn’t always have to be a sales pitch when using SMS marketing. In fact, there are many ways you use SMS marketing. Check out how Maev uses this conversational message to connect with their customers for interviews. Other ideas for non-promotional messages are:

• Supporting other brands
• Booking a webinar
• Reviews from customers

7. Abandoned Cart Campaigns 

Give your customers a friendly reminder after a few days when they abandon their cart. SuperCoffee kicks it out of the park with this abandoned cart reminder, wasting no time explaining why they are messaging!  

8. Consider your legalities!

You have to give your customers the opportunity to unsubscribe. Communication from businesses via text messaging, is classified as a ‘commercial electronic message’ and must conform to the Spam Act 2003, just like email marketing.
The three main points to consider are:

• Consent from the recipient to receive SMS Marketing (express or inferred)
• Correct identification of the Business (your business name)
• An easy way to unsubscribe

With our email marketing templates, we include an unsubscribe link in the footer. However, in SMS marketing most businesses allow users to respond ‘STOP’  to unsubscribe.

As seen here, The Fox Hotel has covered themselves legally without detracting from the message

Using SMS Marketing will help you successfully build and maintain solid relationships with your customers. One of the first ways you might use text message marketing is to welcome the latest customers who have signed up for messages from you. 

With SmartrMail, you can automate and personalise all of your SMS Marketing Campaigns.

Remember, your customer must have opted into receiving marketing messages from you. You can’t SMS your subscribers unless they’ve given you this permission to contact them. 

As you can understand, mass texting to your customer base can be an excellent way to engage with your subscribers. Keeping them up to date with products and promotions, offering special deals for birthdays and so much more. 

Are you ready to step up your marketing game and start sending text messages? 

Next Steps

If you would like to unlock the power of SMS Marketing,and be able to communicate with your customers in a more direct and effective way, consider SmartrMail. For our pricing go here and to get started go here

Check out our article on The Best Time to Send SMS Marketing in 2022 to answer all of your questions when it comes to sending sms marketing messages. 

The post 8 Examples of SMS Marketing Campaigns appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

As you might have guessed, the answer is: A universal best time to send SMS marketing doesn’t really exist and what works for one store and its list of subscribers will not necessarily apply to another store and its own audience. Thankfully there are some key take-aways and things to consider in regards to when your recipients might be most interested in your message. 

Considering that 62% of people check their phone within 15 minutes of waking up it comes as no surprise that text messages have an open rate of 99% with 97% read in the first 15 minutes of receiving.
 

Text messaging is the one channel where people can be reached throughout their day but the optimal time to send SMS Marketing is during business hours (10 a.m – 8 p.m.), as lifestyle-oriented activities such as apps and Web browsing dominate evening hours.

So, when SHOULD I be sending my marketing messages?

General Marketing Messages – Not too early to wake customers up and annoy them, but not too late that it digs into their personal time with loved ones. Some people have found fantastic results from sending their SMS Marketing campaigns at odd times such as 10:32am-11:28am or 2:31pm – 3:23pm, this is due to them not landing on the hour or half hour as most SMS messages are sent.

Weekend sales/special events – Thursday before the weekend or the morning of the special event is a good time to send sms messages. 

Overall however, the most popular time to send SMS campaigns is 12:00 pm regardless of the day of the week.

In general, the most helpful tip for deciding when to send messages is determining when you’re most interested in your customers taking action. If your message has information valuable for the start of the day, aim to send a text between 8 am and 12 pm.

If you think people will have a better chance of taking action on your message when they’re winding down from their day, try to send or schedule your campaign between 5 pm and 9 pm.

But whatever the case, make sure you take the time and research your customers, their time zones, markets, events in their life, etc. Make sure you then aim at maximum conversion, make the message relevant, and your business marketing campaigns will be good to go.

On the flip side of all of this maybe you are wondering “then, when is it not a good time to send texts”?

When should I NOT be sending my messages?

First, let’s state the obvious: 2am is not a good time to send texts. Wake up your subscriber, and you can be sure that you will not see him again. 

Likewise, if you have to send your message on a weekend day, your sms messages open rates will be higher if you schedule your campaign to send after 11am. This is especially true if you are targeting a younger audience.

The next point might surprise you, but you should avoid mass texting at certain times of year such as widely celebrated holidays like Easter and Christmas with Sunday being the least popular day of the week to send SMS Marketing. Instead, consider sending your Christmas offers a couple of days before these key Ecommerce dates.

As a rule of thumb, try to consider your customers ‘private’ times of the day to avoid negative reactions and low open rates. Simple considerations can go a long way! 

Conclusion

All in all, choosing the best time to send SMS marketing messages to your customers depends on many different factors, from the product you sell to the call to action you want your subscribers to follow. The rules that you have to follow are similar to the rules applying to email marketing campaigns.

Get to know your audience, consider their preferences, use segmentation, don’t be afraid to test a few different options, and track the performance of your texts. This will allow you to see what works and what doesn’t, thus helping to identify the time when your audience is the most responsive to your texts and use this information for further improvement.

Your customer base has given you their phone number, this means they want to receive text message marketing from you! Using our sms marketing software you are able to give customers shipping updates, introduce them to a new method of customer service and improve your conversion rates. 

If you would like to unlock the power of SMS Marketing and add this to your other marketing platforms as well as being able to communicate with your customers in a more direct and effective way, make sure to try out SmartrMail and send out your SMS Marketing campaigns or pricing go here and to get started go here.

About the Author: Jack is a fan of working collaboratively and thinking outside the box to create fantastic solutions for customers. Outside of work he is a musician, outdoor enthusiast, food lover and boxer. Passionate with curiosity for all things.

The post The Best Time to Send SMS Marketing in 2022 appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

And it’s easy to see why.

A phenomenal 98% of SMS messages are opened (compared to roughly 20-25% for emails) and more than 60% of customers read an SMS marketing campaign within 5 minutes of receiving it.

This comes down to the unique qualities of SMS as a marketing channel. 

It’s a highly intimate form of communication that lets you reach your customers quickly and directly without having your message drowned out by the noise like on social media. 

But whether you’ve just been thinking about getting started with SMS marketing, or you’ve already been sending SMS campaigns, you might be thinking: what about MMS? 

MMS was another popular form of communication along with SMS before instant messaging took over in the early 2000s. 

And while SMS and MMS are very similar, there are some key differences between them. Which also have implications for your marketing strategy. 

So in this article, we’ll take a look at what exactly is the difference between MMS and SMS, what the pros and cons of each one are, and when you might want to use one over the other in your marketing.

What is the difference between SMS and MMS?

To fully understand the difference between SMS and MMS, it’s worth reminding ourselves of what SMS is. 

What is SMS?

SMS (short for Short Messaging Service) is a text messaging protocol that lets people send short messages (of up to 160 characters) between mobile phones over the cellular network. 

Below is an example of an SMS campaign.

It differs from instant messaging applications like WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, etc. by not requiring an internet connection. 

This means that when you send an SMS, you’re sending the message to a phone number. 

So to send SMS messages to your customers they only need to have a mobile phone with an active number. In other words, they don’t need an account with any company like Facebook, or WhatsApp. 

With 97% of Americans owning a mobile phone and just 69% using Facebook and 23% using WhatsApp, this makes SMS marketing a great way to reach all your customers. 

What is MMS?

Now that we’re clear on what SMS is, what about MMS? 

MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service. 

While MMS uses the same technology as SMS (they both use cellular networks to send messages between phones), as the name suggests, MMS allows you to include a range of multimedia content with your message. 

This multimedia content can include images, audio, video files, and GIFs. 

In addition to this, MMS also supports up to 1,600 characters (ten times that of SMS) and multimedia content with filesizes of up to 500KB. 

Here’s an example of an MMS campaign from SkinTe that includes an image and longer message.

So what is the difference between MMS and SMS? 

It should now be pretty clear what the main difference between MMS and SMS is. 

One lets you send short, basic text messages (SMS) and the other lets you send longer messages with more options (MMS).

Because of these additional options, MMS is also more expensive to send than a simple SMS message. Typically double the cost depending on which platform you’re using.

So to summarize: 

• Character limits: SMS is limited to 160 characters while MMS lets you send up to 1,600 characters.
• Media: SMS only lets you send plain text (and links to webpages) while MMS supports rich media including images, audio, GIFs and even videos. 
• Cost: Sending MMS messages costs more than sending SMS messages.

SMS and MMS marketing pros and cons: Which one should you use and when?

Okay, so now you know exactly what the differences between the two messaging services are. The question now becomes when should you use one over the other? 

Both SMS and MMS are highly effective at reaching your customers quickly and directly. 

When choosing between the two, in addition to the differences between them that we’ve already looked at, you should also consider the following:

• What is your budget? While MMS gives you more options and lets you send multimedia like images and videos, it’s also significantly more expensive. 
• How long is your message? Can you fit your message within 160 characters or will you need the additional space MMS allows?
• What is the purpose of your message? Are you simply letting a customer know that an item they’ve enquired about is back in stock? Or are you sending a campaign to generate interest in your latest sale?

When to use SMS

SMS works best when you want to send a short, concise message to a large number of customers at once.

SMS is also the cost-effective option which makes it ideal if you want to message all your customers at once. 

The other time when SMS will typically make more sense than MMS is with any kind of transactional message. 

This includes order confirmations, shipping updates, payment reminders, appointment confirmations, letting a customer know an order is ready to pick up, etc. 

These are all short, simple messages that can easily fit within the 160 character limit and don’t require any multimedia content like images. 

When to use MMS

MMS, on the other hand, is a great option when you want to go the extra mile and make your campaigns particularly engaging. 

The added capabilities of MMS messaging that lets you include images, videos, GIFs, etc. enables you to format your message so that it’s consistent with the look and feel of your brand. 

You can do this by including your logo and utilizing your brand’s color scheme.

Because of this, MMS can also deliver significantly better results than SMS. 

Compared to SMS, MMS:

• Has a 15% higher click-through rate
• Is 20% less likely to result in someone unsubscribing
• Is 4 times more likely to be shared on social media 

While these are some impressive numbers, the downside is that MMS is also more expensive to send. 

So unless you’re lucky enough to enjoy a generous marketing budget, it’s typically best to reserve MMS for the following types of messages:

Once-off automated campaigns

Automated messages are great in that they let you target the right customer with the right message at the right time. 

And because they’re so highly targeted, you’re not constantly sending out the same automated message to lots of customers. 

Take abandoned cart campaigns for instance. 

This is a type of automated message that only sends when a customer has placed items in their cart but has not finished the checkout process.  

Because these customers have displayed a clear purchase intent, quickly targeting them with a message to entice them to come back and complete their purchase is a great way to boost sales.

And because you won’t be sending large amounts of abandoned cart messages, when the situation arises you’ll want to increase the chances of conversion as much as you can by opting for MMS over SMS. 

This is exactly what Homesick has done in their abandoned cart campaign below. 

And it’s not just abandoned carts that are the only automations where it can be worth going the extra mile with MMS. 

Win-back messages targeting once loyal customers who’ve stopped purchasing from your store and a good cross/upsell post-purchase campaign can all make the extra cost of MMS worthwhile. 

Significant sales events

The extra cost of MMS can also be worth it any time you hold a significant sale. 

We’re not talking about a simple 10% off for the long weekend type of sale though. 

Think more like a jewelry store coming up to Valentine’s Day. 

Valentine’s Day is likely going to be the biggest sales event of the year for jewelers. And because it’s also when lots of people will be looking to purchase jewelry, the extra cost of MMS is likely going to be worth the performance boost it gives the campaign. 

Conclusion

Both SMS and MMS are highly effective at reaching your customers quickly and directly with both enjoying phenomenal open rates.

They are also very similar in that they both work over cellular networks to deliver messages directly to people’s phones without the need for internet access. 

At the end of the day, the key difference is that MMS gives you more options when it comes to the type of content you can send and how long your message is. 

The tradeoff is that MMS is also more expensive to send. 

That’s why we recommend reserving MMS for more lucrative opportunities so that the performance boost MMS gives is worth the extra cost. 

Meanwhile, SMS makes for a much more cost-effective way of reaching a large number of customers at once and for simple, short transactional messages. 

Whichever option you choose for your marketing, be sure to check out our comprehensive guide to SMS marketing. 

And before you send your customers either an SMS or MMS, you’ll of course also need to have their consent. 

The post MMS vs SMS: When to Use Each in Your Marketing appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

But just because merchants are keen to send their customers SMS messages, it doesn’t necessarily mean that customers want to receive them. 

Just like with email marketing, there are rules and regulations that govern when and who you can target with SMS messages. 

So in short, yes, you do need your customer’s consent to send them a marketing SMS. 

But there is some nuance around this. 

For example, what about sending SMS for informational purposes only? What exactly constitutes consent to receive an SMS message? If a customer has already consented to receive marketing emails, is it okay to send them an SMS campaign? 

We’ve created this short guide to help answer these questions. 

What counts as consent to receive SMS?

In most countries, including the United States and most of Europe, you need express consent to send customers an SMS. 

This means that your customer needs to have explicitly agreed to receive SMS from you. 

In other words, just because they’ve signed up to your email list or provided you with their mobile phone number, you cannot just assume they have also agreed to receive SMS. 

Instead, they need to have filled out a form that makes it clear that you intend to use the phone number they provide to send SMS messages, including marketing ones, to. 

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in the United States applies this requirement to SMS messages sent for informational purposes only as well. 

So this means you also need someone’s express consent to send them SMS messages purely for informational purposes. Not just for marketing purposes. 

Does this mean you should require double opt-in?

Double opt-in is the process of requiring customers to take two steps before signing up to your marketing list. 

For SMS marketing, this would involve sending your customers a confirmation text message after they sign up to receive your SMS campaigns to confirm that they indeed want to receive them. Similar to the example below.

This prevents people from signing others up for your SMS marketing without their consent. 

While double opt-in is not absolutely necessary, in the European Union it can be a good idea to enable it to clearly demonstrate compliance with the GDPR. 

What about in Australia?

Compared to a lot of the rest of the world, Australia has a more liberal interpretation of what counts as consent. 

According to the Spam Act 2003, in addition to consent being expressly provided, businesses in Australia may also infer consent from a customer’s conduct and “existing business or other relationships”. 

Basically, this means that you can send SMS campaigns to customers, even though they have not necessarily expressly consented to receive them, as long as it’s reasonable to infer they’ve consented to receive them based on how they’ve interacted with your business in the past.

If that sounds incredibly vague, that’s because it is. Unfortunately, there’s no clear-cut definition of exactly what constitutes consent in Australia. Depending on your business this could mean you could infer consent based on a customer having an account with you. You could also infer that a customer wants to receive marketing communication from you if they have subscribed to marketing updates on other modes of communication like email.  These points are not legal advice and you should consider asking a lawyer if you plan to use inferred consent.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has also put together a more detailed explanation that you can view here.

Remember that customers can withdraw consent

Getting the appropriate consent from your customers is an essential first step to complete before you can start sending them campaigns. 

But it’s important to remember that customers can withdraw their consent at any time. Or to put it another way, they have the right to unsubscribe from your SMS marketing. 

To make it possible for customers to exercise their right to unsubscribe, you need to include an option for your customers to unsubscribe in your SMS campaigns. 

The automated SMS campaign below from Who Gives A Crap does a good job of including an unsubscribe option. 

As you can see, all someone needs to do to opt out of receiving future text messages from Who Gives A Crap is simply to reply ‘STOP’ to the message. 

You can also include an unsubscribe link instead like the example below does.

Consent isn’t just about legal compliance

Making sure you’re only sending messages to customers who have opted in to receiving them isn’t only important from a legal perspective. 

It’s also incredibly important in terms of maintaining a positive relationship with your customers. 

If you start spamming customers with SMS marketing messages they don’t want to receive, you risk annoying them to the point that they will spend their money elsewhere.

This is something to keep in mind even if you do have their consent. 

Just because a customer has agreed to receive SMS messages, it doesn’t mean they will be happy to receive them every day. 

Especially when SMS is a much more personal and immediate channel compared to social media and email marketing. 

To learn more about striking the right balance between getting the most out of SMS marketing and not texting your customers too much, check out our comprehensive SMS guide here.

Conclusion

SMS consent is an extremely important and necessary part of SMS compliance. 

You need to have a customer’s permission to send them SMS campaigns or messages, not just from a legal perspective but also to maintain a positive relationship with them. 

Unfortunately, there’s not a single definition of what constitutes consent that’s applicable in every jurisdiction. So if you are concerned about SMS compliance, it can be worthwhile seeking actual legal advice (which this article is not). 

But don’t forget: customers can also withdraw consent at any time.

The post SMS Consent: Do You Need a Customer’s Consent to Send SMS? appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

While SMS has been around since the early 90s, recently it has become an increasingly popular marketing tool for businesses. Especially for online merchants. 

This popularity comes down to SMS’ unique ability to reach customers quickly and directly with short, important messages at a time when other channels like social media are saturated. 

By being able to cut through the noise, SMS marketing can deliver incredibly impressive results. 

For example, SMS enjoys an open rate of 98% (compared to roughly 20% for email) and more than 60% of customers read an SMS marketing campaign within 5 minutes.

So unlike other channels, you can be sure when you send an SMS campaign, your customers will receive your message loud and clear. 

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. 

As you may well know from personal experience, SMS also carries an increased risk of annoying your customers compared to other channels. So if you’re thinking about running some SMS campaigns, it’s important you know what you’re doing. 

That’s why we’ve put together this comprehensive guide. 

Below you’ll find everything you need to know about running a successful SMS marketing campaign from who you should target and when to how to structure your messages.

But first, let’s take a look at exactly what SMS marketing is. 

What is SMS marketing?

To put it simply, SMS marketing (also known as text message marketing) is the sending of promotional and transactional text messages directly to the mobile phones of customers. 

So in the same way that email marketing is simply the use of email to send marketing messages, SMS marketing is the use of text messages to send marketing messages. 

Below is an example of this in action in the form of a Black Friday campaign from Emotiva.  

And just like with email marketing, SMS marketing is not a case of manually sending individual customers text messages but rather relies heavily on automations and mass texting. 

So just as you can (and should) set up automated email campaigns such as when a customer makes a purchase or abandons a cart (for example), you can also set up automated SMS campaigns to send following particular events. 

The same is true with mass text messages. You can send your customers the same SMS campaign in a similar way to how you can send an email newsletter to your entire email list. 

That said, there are some key differences between email and SMS marketing that you should always keep in mind. 

Differences between email and SMS marketing

As you might’ve noticed from the example above, one of the key differences between SMS and email is the size of the messages. 

SMS messages are incredibly short and are usually limited to just 160 characters. That’s not much space to include important elements like your business name, message, call-to-action, and unsubscribe link. 

This means you have to be very precise and clear about what message you want to send. 

Another difference is cost. Sending SMS messages costs significantly more than sending the same number of emails. 

The other big, and arguably more important, difference between SMS and email is the personal nature of the channel. 

Just think about how you use email. Chances are you primarily use it for work, sending documents and keeping up to date with different brands and organizations. 

Now think about how you use text messages. If you’re like most people, you’d use SMS primarily as a way to send personal messages with family and friends. 

This makes SMS a much more personal and intimate means of communication than email. 

The takeaway message from this is that customers have a lower tolerance for receiving multiple SMS messages from brands like your own than they have for emails. This means that SMS requires a lighter touch and you should be more selective about when you send an SMS campaign. 

The last thing you want to do is harm the relationship with your customers by misusing SMS as a marketing channel. 

The good news is that by following the SMS best practices listed below, you’ll avoid this from happening. 

SMS marketing best practices

SMS is an incredibly powerful marketing tool.

This means that when it’s used well, it has the power to drastically increase your sales, customer engagement along with many other of your business objectives. 

The reverse is also true though. If it’s misused, it has the potential to damage your customer relationships and end up costing you sales and business. 

That’s why it’s important to keep the following best practices in mind. 

Only send SMS campaigns if you have permission 

This is an important one. Nobody wants to receive unsolicited marketing messages, especially not in such a personal form as with SMS.

So before you even send your first SMS campaign, be sure that you have the necessary permission from your customers. 

While the exact legalities of this vary from country to country, a good place to start is to think of collecting SMS consent in the same way as collecting email consent. 

This means it’s a good idea to update your signup forms to mention that you’ll be sending both email and SMS marketing messages. Just as in the example below. 

In most countries, just because someone signups for your email newsletter it does not mean they are also subscribed to your SMS communication. They need to explicitly subscribe to each one in your signup flow.

Honor unsubscribe requests

Just like with email marketing, it’s important to give your customers a way to opt-out of receiving your SMS campaigns. 

And when a customer decides to opt-out, you should honor their request and no longer send them any more SMS campaigns. 

Identify yourself

Context is everything when it comes to SMS marketing. 

Imagine how you would react if you received a text message from an unknown number that tells you to click on a strange-looking link to save $10. If you’re like most people, you’d just ignore or delete the message.

To help prevent this from happening to your campaigns, it’s important to ensure that your customers know you’re the one sending the messages. 

And the most basic and easiest way to do this is to include your brand’s name in the message. 

Preferably at the start of the message like in the example below from Bones Coffee Company. 

Optimize your SMS messages

Beyond including your brand’s name in the campaign, there are several other things you can include to optimize your SMS message to improve its performance. 

Personalize your messages with your customer’s name

One of the most important things you can include in your campaign is your customer’s name. 

This is the most basic form of campaign personalization which we know can drastically improve read rates and conversions. 

Along with including your brand’s name, it also helps identify you as a legitimate sender and not a spammer. 

Include a call-to-action

A call-to-action is simply what behavior or action you want your customer to do after receiving and reading your text message. 

For example, in the campaign below the call-to-action is to “click the link below” where the customer will be able to purchase a Hardcore Bundle. 

The last thing you want after your customers receive your SMS campaign is for them not to know what to do next. 

The more clearly you can spell out how they can redeem your offer or take advantage of a sale, the greater your conversion rate will be and the more sales you’ll make. 

Include an unsubscribe link

As previously mentioned, it’s important to only send SMS campaigns to customers who are interested in receiving them.

And just like with email marketing, some customers will naturally become disinterested over time and want to opt-out of receiving future campaigns.

That’s why it’s important to include a way for customers to unsubscribe from your SMS marketing in your campaigns. Just like in the example below.

You’ll notice that in this example, the unsubscribe option is not actually a link. 

Instead, for customers to unsubscribe all they have to do with reply STOP to the message. This is a more than acceptable alternative to an unsubscribe link as it still gives people an easy way to unsubscribe. 

Send the right types of messages 

Realizing more sales and positive results from your SMS marketing is not just about optimizing your messages. You need to be sending the right messages to begin with. 

And it’s not just the right messages, but also targeting the right customers at the right time.

As with email, there are two ways to achieve this: with manual campaigns and with automations. 

Bulk text messages

Manual SMS campaigns work in much the same way as email newsletters – you create your message and then send it to all the recipients at the same time. 

This can be to either all your customers or a particular segment of them. 

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that SMS and email are two different channels. And beyond SMS messages being short and sharp, your customers will grow tired of constant SMS updates very quickly. 

So while you should be sending a regular email newsletter, we do not recommend sending regular SMS messages. 

Instead, bulk SMS campaigns should be reserved for significant sale events (like Black Friday) and not sent every time you have a new item in stock or have a similar minor announcement.

That said, targeted manual SMS campaigns can work for less significant updates if the people receiving them are genuinely interested in the news. 

An example of this would be if you’ve created a segment of customers interested in a particular product category (let’s say vintage vinyl records). If a shipment of particularly interesting vintage vinyl records arrives, then you might want to consider letting these customers know through an SMS campaign.

SMS automations

Just like with email marketing, the true power of SMS marketing lies in its ability to be largely automated. 

And by setting up the right automations, you’ll be able to easily send the right message to the right customer at the right time. 

But as with manual campaigns, you don’t want to set up as many SMS automations as you do email automations. 

You should reserve SMS automations for when your customer displays high purchase intent or when it’s really worthwhile automating an SMS campaign. 

For example, while a welcome series is an absolutely essential email automation, you don’t necessarily need to have an additional welcome SMS message. 

Whereas an automation targeting customers who are right at the purchase threshold, such as abandoned cart campaigns, can be served well by SMS automations. Just like in the example below from Brooklinen. 

At the other end of the customer lifecycle, it can also be useful to send previous customers who are no longer purchasing from your store or engaging with emails a win-back SMS campaign. 

So, in general, we recommend keeping your SMS automation to the following campaigns:

• Abandoned carts
• Browse abandonment 
• Win-back

Don’t send too many SMS messages

Just to reiterate, in case it’s not already clear, you should not spam your customers with too many SMS messages. 

Unlike the optimal email frequency, most customers do not want to receive as many text messages as they do emails. 

So there’s no need to send a weekly SMS newsletter or regular sale campaigns. 

And by reserving SMS for significant announcements or sale events, your campaigns will have more impact when you send them. 

Reconsider using any SMS slang

SMS slang comes from the days of old mobile keypads that were designed for numbers instead of text. To help speed up sending messages, abbreviations such as OTW, NVM, TTYL, LOL, etc. were commonly used. 

Considering that your SMS messages are limited to 160 characters, you might be tempted to use some of this SMS slang to save space. 

But unless your brand is one of the very few that has a very youthful or trendy vibe that can put this off, do not give in to the temptation to use SMS slang. 

At best, you will come across as unprofessional and lacking in credibility. At worst, your customers may not understand what the abbreviations mean and will just be confused by your message.

Conclusion

With SMS being able to reach customers incredibly quickly and directly, it’s no wonder that it’s an increasingly popular digital marketing channel.

It’s also not surprising that plenty of online merchants have already found success with running SMS campaigns. 

By following the above best practices, you’ll also be able to find success with SMS marketing. 

Just remember that SMS requires a slightly different approach with a lighter touch than with your email marketing.

If you keep that in mind and think carefully about what kind of messages your customers will want to receive, you’ll avoid the potential pitfalls and instead be well on your way to success.

The post The Ultimate SMS Marketing Guide for Merchants in 2021 appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.