The world of business marketing has changed drastically in the past few decades with the introduction of the Internet. Suddenly, businesses were encouraged to create a website and use email to reach their customers and allow their customers to reach them.

Then social media platforms arrived — it started with one or two, and now there seems to be a new one popping up every year or so.

Small businesses can have a hard time competing with the marketing campaigns that established companies with large marketing budgets are able to accomplish through content marketing, email, and social media.

However, there are some technologies that help to level the playing field — SMS marketing is an effective way to reach a lot of people on a small budget.

It has also proven to be one of the most successful ways to get your marketing message in front of customers. In fact, 90% of your customers who opt into your text message marketing campaigns will read your message within 3 minutes.

As yet there’s no other form of marketing that can reach your customer with the same speed.

12 text marketing optimization techniques

If you want your SMS marketing to be effective, the first (and most important) step is making sure you write an effective message.

To do that, include the following things:

1. Include your business name

This might seem like an obvious thing to do, but it’s easy to forget. You don’t want your customer to have to struggle to figure out where the text came from. Include your name in the message itself, or alter the sender name to show as your business name.

2. Use your customer’s name

Chances are your customer will know that you aren’t sending separate text messages out to every single one of your customers, but it’s still important to personalize the message with their name. People love to hear their names, and it makes them like you more as well.

3. Grab their attention

You need to start off with a bang so they want to know why it is you’re contacting them.

4. Make it valuable

Don’t waste your customer’s time contacting them if you don’t have something that’s going to add value to their life. That’s one of the fastest ways to aggravate a customer. Think about it — when your phone alerts you that you have a text, would you be frustrated if there was no real purpose for the message?

5. Spell out the details

You need to be clear and concise when you message your customers. Tell them exactly what they need to know and leave the rest out.

6. Don’t forget to use power words

Use words that are either going to play on an emotion of the customer or motivate them into action. For example, when you include the word “free,” people take action because they perceive that they’re getting something of great value (compared to the cost)

7. Use CAPITALS

If there’s a word you really want to emphasize, don’t be afraid to highlight it. But, be careful not to overdo it with capitalization — it quickly becomes ineffective or has the opposite effect of what you’re going for.

8. Include a call-to-action (CTA)

Text message marketing might not seem like traditional marketing, but some of the rules of traditional marketing still apply. You need to include a call-to-action at the end of your message. Tell your customer what they need to do to make the most of your message.

9. Shorten your URL

You don’t want to waste precious space with your long URL. Using a tool like Bitly.com can help you include your link without taking up as much space.

10. Tell the customer how to opt out

Always include a way for your customer to stop receiving your messages.

11. Make it relevant

Only send an offer or message to a customer if it applies to them. Don’t waste their time with messages that aren’t relevant or targeted to them. Split your customer list into groups so it’s easier to send relevant messages out to your list, and use a buyer persona for each group to ensure you’re properly targeting your messages.

12. Make it urgent

Your message should convey a sense of urgency to your customer. It needs to motivate them to act quickly.

Make your SMS marketing efforts count

These tips may seem simple but many of them are overlooked for SMS marketing campaigns. When you're using such a personal marketing channel, you can’t afford to make mistakes and these small optimization techniques can help improve your conversion rate and get that much more out of your messaging efforts.

Contact us

If you want to know more about SMS marketing, when it will be available and how it can be applied to your business, then contact us directly here.