Text messaging, or SMS, is a powerful but underused tool in digital marketing that can help build personal relationships and get big business results. 

With people checking their phones 58 times a day on average, it is no surprise that up to 98% of people who receive SMS marketing messages open them.

Businesses need to think strategically about SMS marketing if they want to use this to its fullest. This guide will walk you through a detailed process to master SMS marketing.

Define Your Objectives

Before you start SMS marketing, you should think about what you want to achieve. Your strategy will work better if you set clear goals. Whether your goal is to increase sales, get people excited about a new product, or make customers more loyal, clear goals will help you do both. A SMART goal is one that is clear, measurable, attainable, relevant, and has a due date.

Understand Your Audience

You can reach more people with marketing if you know who they are. Find out about the types of people, what they like, and what they do. These tips will help you write interesting messages that people will want to read. This will make sure that your SMS campaigns are useful and interesting.

Build Your List Ethically

To use SMS marketing, you need to get permission first. Give people clear and simple ways to join your list as you grow it. This is the right thing to do, and it also builds trust in you.

Craft Compelling Content

Your message needs to stand out in a box full of others. Short, clear, and to the point: write what you want to do. People are much more likely to read and respond to messages that are personalized. Use the person’s name or references to past conversations when you can.

Leverage Timing and Frequency

How well messages work can depend on when and how often they are sent. Not too early in the morning or too late at night is the best time to send a message. Read about how people are engaging to learn when to talk to your audience. To keep subscribers informed without being too much, find the right balance between how often you send emails and what you send them.  

Utilize Segmentation

People will not always be interested in what you have to say. To send specific messages, divide your list into groups based on location, behavior, or what the people on the list have bought in the past. Customizing your campaigns in this way can make them more useful and get more people to interact with them overall.

Incorporate Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

Every time you text someone, you should ask them to do something. To get people to do things like go to a website, use a coupon, or fill out a survey, you need clear calls to action (CTAs). This is how you can see how well your campaigns are doing.

Test and Optimize

You can not forget about SMS marketing when you use it. Test different parts of your campaigns often, like the timing, the content, and the way you divide your audience. By looking at the results, you can keep making your approach better.

Ensure Compliance

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in the US is an example of a law that controls SMS marketing that you should know about. To keep your business safe and your subscribers’ trust, you need to follow the rules. One example is that you need to verify your toll-free number before you start sending from it.

Leverage Technology

To streamline this approach, use tools like Textla that are useful. Textla has features that can help SMS marketing campaigns run more smoothly. These features include automation, segmentation, analytics, and compliance management. 

As a Twilio hosted SMS solution, Textla leverages Twilio’s network while offering customers out of the box ways to start texting. With this kind of technology, businesses can work better, send personalized messages to a lot of people, and find out a lot about how well their SMS marketing is doing.

Conclusion

With SMS marketing, you can talk to customers right away and in a way that you can not do any other way. But the strategy needs to think about the people it is meant for and use the right technology for it to work. Follow these  steps and use tools like Textla to get the most out of SMS marketing for your business. This will make people more interested, loyal, and successful in today’s market.

This makes it clear that SMS marketing is more than just texting. When you talk to your audience, you should find out what they want and always give them something useful. Digital marketing with SMS can work really well if you have the right plan and tools.

Published by: Raf Aspillaga