Published: Jun 28, 2017
Last update: Jun 27, 2022
Ecommerce Marketing Retail SMS Marketing SMS services

SMS Marketing: The steps to launching an SMS campaign from scratch

sms marketing campaign
SMS Marketing: The steps to launching an SMS campaign from scratch
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If your company wants to start an SMS campaign, take a look at the following steps. One of the principal mistakes you can make with this type of action is to jump in without understanding how it will fit with your company.

It may be difficult to believe with the presence of messaging applications like Whatsapp, or the existence of social networks with such wide a reach as Facebook or Instagram nowadays, but SMS campaigns remain a hugely influential resource within the field of marketing.

The steps to launching an SMS campaign from scratch.

The numbers speak for themselves. Recent studies in the United States have shown that just 65% of the population own a smartphone, yet a total of 6 billion text messages are sent per day over North America, and almost 9 trillion around the world on a daily basis.

One of the main advantages of SMS messaging is that 100% of mobile phones are able to send and receive them.

Brands start marketing campaigns using SMS as surveys indicate that a text message is read in just three minutes after being received. In fact, the well-known brand Coca Cola invests 70% of its budget in mobile phones for these types of actions.

How to start an SMS marketing campaign?

If your company wants to start an SMS campaign, take a look at the following steps.

One of the principal mistakes you can make with this type of action is to jump in without understanding how it will fit with your company.

It’s important to check the roadmap of your company strategy in advance and understand what your marketing goals are. Detailing specific goals and ensuring they are understood by all departments will help your campaign to succeed.

You must also understand your target audience. As customers, we are always complaining about the amount of spam we receive. A message is usually considered spam because its sender hasn’t done enough market research into their target audience.

If you segment your audience and ensure to send messages that interest them, you’ll engage them. Collect data that will allow you to divide and classify your customers, and adapt every SMS to each segment.

Timing is also crucial. Sending an SMS at different times of the day can make your campaign a success or doom it to failure. For this reason, you’ll have to experiment a little to pinpoint the exact times your target audience is most receptive.

Receiving a message after buying a product on a Saturday, might get different results to sending the message on a Monday. It’s all about testing and analyzing the results.

Correct message structure

The most important part of an SMS campaign is the message and its structure.

Experts recommend that you should never exceed 160 characters, and get to the point of the message quickly. Appeal to your customers’ emotions. Making them feel that if they don’t buy this product immediately it will slip away from their grasp is also an effective strategy. In fact, Inditex, one of the leading clothes brands in the world, uses these types of tactics with a high level of success.

You’ll also need to sweat the small stuff – look out for the little details that will make the experience better from your customers’ point of view. Don’t shorten any URLs of websites for ease, it makes them look ugly.

Treat your SMS customers as if they are privileged. They have to feel joy when they receive one of your text messages, so it’s important to measure carefully how many you send to each consumer and record the amount of time elapsed between them.

This further cements the importance of segmenting your customers and taking advantage of all the opportunities that this step offers. Combining this with making sure your messages aren’t ignored as spam are key to having success with your SMS marketing campaign. Although text messaging might seem of little use with Whatsapp and a number of other smartphone applications, this method continues to be an effective marketing strategy that shouldn’t be overlooked.