SMS marketing is marketers’ best-kept secret in the eCommerce field. It is a way to reach consumers that offers a dozen of benefits, including speed, convenience for consumers, and increased conversion and retention for the brand.

If you’re at the beginning of your journey with SMS marketing, you probably had no idea that these benefits are for real. But, the truth is that open rates for text messages are actually five times higher than those of email. What’s more, convenience comes from the fact that it only takes about 90 seconds for somebody to reply to a marketing SMS message. Besides that, 79% of consumers also report being willing to engage with businesses through SMS to receive customer service.

That being said, it’s clear that your decision to start an SMS marketing campaign is the right one. But, the question remains, “how do I start an SMS marketing campaign?”. Don’t worry! We have all the tips you need to build your successful SMS marketing campaign.

Get a clear idea of your goals

First things first, as with any other type of marketing strategy, you need to start by defining your goals.

Knowing your goals is a crucial step to crafting an effective marketing campaign. Think about it: if you don’t have a clear idea of what you want to achieve through your marketing efforts, how can you determine if they were effective or not? You can’t because there are no results to track.

So, make sure that you first determine what you want to achieve through your SMS marketing campaign. You may want to increase traffic on your website. Or, you may want to attract more customers to your physical store. Or, your goal may be to spread the word to as many consumers as possible about your latest product/ service. Whatever your goal may be, make sure you are aware of it.

Understand your audience

The next step for building an effective bulk text campaign is to know your audience inside out.

Understanding everything about your audience is crucial to be able to craft your message right so that it attracts and engages the people who will read it. Depending on your goals and the type of people you want to attract, there will be certain characteristics that it would be best if you knew right from the beginning.

You should research and find out as many insights as possible about your audience, including demographics, like age, gender, location, preferences, buying behaviors, values, needs, and expectations.

Next, use all the data you gather to create a buyer persona, which is the ideal buyer for your company. Afterward, you will be able to craft a message that will address this ideal buyer and have the power to catch their attention, attract them, engage, and, eventually, sell.

Craft your message right

One of the most critical steps for an effective SMS marketing campaign is to create the right text message to send.

Based on your campaign’s goals and the characteristics you’ve identified about your audience, it is time to craft a message that will raise interest in the recipient and convince them to do what you want them to. There are a few best practices for when you’re crafting a message for your bulk SMS campaign, including:

Keep your message short, about 160 characters short.
Make sure to mention your brand name.
Don’t use too industry-specific terms.
Be relevant and clear.
Avoid being too “salesy” or too formal
Check your text message for typos. Twice!
Include a direct call-to-action (more about that next)

Keep all these best practices in mind and add a personal touch to your message so that you will stand out from the crowd and be remembered.

Include CTAs

As promised, it’s also essential to discuss including CTAs in your message.

As the name suggests, call-to-action phrases are those words that invite the readers of your message to do a specific action you want them to do after reading your message. The CTAs you include in your texts must be in line with your goals. For example, if you want your audience to visit your website, your CTA would be something like “Visit our website.” If you’d want them to come to your store to find out more about your offer, your CTA would sound something like, “Visit us at X address to find out more info.”

Whatever it is you want your audience to do after interacting with your message, be sure to tell them loud and clear. Otherwise, your recipients will remain confused about what they should do next after reading your text.

Update your consumer database

Another crucial thing to do when running an SMS marketing campaign is to make sure you have an up-to-date consumer database. Otherwise, you’ll be wasting your resources like time, money, and effort to send text messages to people who will never receive or read them.

Use a hlr lookup service to check if the phone numbers and other consumer data you have are still relevant. This way, you’ll be sure that all the phone numbers you send your message to will receive and interact with your words.

Send your texts at the right time

Good timing is another factor that can make the difference between high or low engagement rates. You want your texts to be more than just received. You want them to be opened, read, and convince the reader to take specific actions. For this to be achieved, you need to send your text messages at the right time.

Data shows that the best time to send your marketing texts is between 12:00 and 15:00 during weekdays. It would be best if you could respect that. But, if this doesn’t work for your brand, at least try to respect the minimum timing rules like:

Avoiding sending your texts too early or too late.
Avoiding sending your texts during peak hours.
Avoiding sending your marketing SMS texts during weekends.

Be consistent

Last but not least, consistency is another essential factor that contributes to a successful SMS marketing campaign. The more you reach out to people with relevant and valuable messages, the stronger their relationship with your brand will become.