How to Send Mass Text Messages and Choose the Right Service

Want a convenient, flexible, and intuitive way to communicate with countless customers and stakeholders quickly? Then, it’s time to learn how to send mass text messages.

When communicating with your audience quickly and efficiently is a priority, messaging offers the ultimate solution. It ensures you can reach millions of people worldwide, instantly, wherever they are. You don’t even have to worry about people having access to the internet (like you would with email or social media messaging).

Smartphones are everywhere, and increasingly, consumers say they actually prefer to receive texts from companies, over emails or phone calls.

The only problem? Your standard smartphone isn’t designed to send out mass text messages. If you want to send messages to hundreds (or thousands) of users at once, without relying on group texting, or exposing yourself to various issues, you’ll need the right technology.

Here’s your guide to sending mass text messages, the easy way.

What is a Mass Text? Defining Mass Texting

A “mass text,” otherwise known as bulk SMS, a campaign, or a one-to-many broadcast, is a text sent to multiple (typically more than 10) users at once. In other words, sending a mass text means that you write a message once, and then use software to send that message to hundreds of users instantly.

Mass or broadcast text messages aren’t typically sent directly from your regular phone. They rely on a specialized platform that allows you to communicate with countless users simultaneously. These “mass texting service” platforms work similarly to professional email newsletter tools, like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, or MailJet.

Group Text vs Mass Text: What’s the Difference?

Although they might seem similar, there are big differences between mass texts vs group texts. Mass texting and group texting are both ways of reaching multiple people at once. However, when you send a group text, your message ends up as part of a “group chat.”

Everyone in your contact list is connected by the initial text, and they can see every response in the exchange. This creates problems when you want to minimize confusion and compliance issues when using SMS to communicate with your customers.

When you send out mass text messages, on the other hand, you use a mass texting service to deliver thousands of messages at once, but every text opens up a new “private” conversation.

Mass texting solutions allow you to personalize messages for individual users (using dynamic form fields to include a user’s first name or specific details). They also ensure you can hold individual conversations with each customer who might respond to your message.

Want to send a quick update to all your customers about a flash sale? Or maybe remind patients about their appointments? Use SMS, WhatsApp, or RCS for mass texting.

Schedule a demo

The Use Cases for Mass Texting

In virtually every industry, companies use mass texting for a range of different purposes. You can use mass texting software to send promotional text messages to customers at scale, share alerts and news with subscribers, gather feedback, and so much more. Some of the main use cases include:

• Promotional messages: With mass text, companies can instantly distribute messages about new products, sales, discounts, and even upcoming launches with countless customers.

• Event invites: Bulk SMS is a great way to invite huge numbers of people to an upcoming event in seconds. You can even add a link to a mobile RSVP form to your message.
• Sharing information: Enterprise text messaging solutions make it easy to share information with customers about technical issues, achievements, news, and industry trends.
• Sending reminders: With a mass texting platform, you can easily send texts to multiple contacts, reminding them of upcoming appointments, events, and meetings.
• Gathering feedback: Mass texts give companies a quick and easy way to request reviews, feedback, or testimonials from customers about products and customer service experiences.
• Emergency alerts: With mass texts, companies can send instant alerts about safety problems, weather issues, and more to anyone in seconds.
• Staff notifications: Bulk SMS messages also give you a great way to keep staff members in the loop with relevant company news, policy changes, and schedules.

The Benefits of Sending Mass Text Messages for Businesses

Ultimately, learning how to send mass text messages means you can unlock a quick, convenient, and efficient way to improve business communications. Whether you’re upgrading your customer communication strategy, marketing campaigns, or internal communications, mass texting delivers benefits like:

Incredible Reach

Not everyone has an email address, or an account on every social media platform. Even if your customers do, they’re not going to be connected to the internet at all times. SMS ensures you can reach a wider audience, anywhere.

High Open and Response Rates

Mass texts don’t just reach a lot of people, they generate engagement too. In fact, SMS achieves average open rates of around 98% - much higher than email. On top of that, when customers receive and open your message, they’re more likely to respond, click on a link, or take an additional action than they would with other forms of communication.

Cost-Effective Communication

Sending text messages, particularly with the best SMS platforms, is extremely cost effective. You can send thousands of texts without spending a fortune. Plus, SMS delivers a fantastic return on investment too. Since SMS has an average conversion rate of 25% to 45%, you have an excellent opportunity to recoup your initial investment with increased revenue and conversions.

Instant, Efficient Communication

With mass texting campaigns, companies can reach thousands of people with a single message. That’s much more efficient than having to write dozens of different emails or messages separately. You can even use intelligent SMS software to schedule messages to reach audiences at specific times, and enable automatic text-based responses to consumer actions. For instance, you might create a workflow that sends a message to a customer automatically when they abandon their shopping cart.

Versatility

One of the biggest benefits of sending mass text messages is that SMS is extremely versatile. If you’re using SMS marketing for ecommerce, for instance, you can send messages to customers about new products or services, notify them when a product is back in stock, or remind them about an abandoned cart. You can use messages to gather feedback from customers, keep employees informed, or even distribute emergency alerts too. The options are endless.

How to Send out Mass Texts for Businesses

Since standard phones aren’t designed for mass texting, figuring out how to send mass text messages, as a business, can seem complicated. However, it’s actually a lot easier than you might think. Here’s how you can start sending mass text messages to your audience.

Step 1: Choose a Mass Texting Service

First, you’ll need a service that actually allows you to send mass texts. These services should allow you to not only send large numbers of messages, but also customize and personalize your texting strategy.

Step 2: Choose Your Business Number

Next, you need a specific business number. We recommend investing in 10DLC brand registration here, to ensure you get the best results from your bulk texting strategy. Selecting a specific number for mass texting helps to ensure that all of your conversations with customers happen through the same, consistent number, improving interactions with your audience.

Step 3: Build your Contact List

Before you can start sending mass texts, you’ll need a list of contacts. It’s important to obtain explicit permission from anyone on this list to actually contact them via text before you send any messages to adhere to TCPA regulations and other industry guidelines.

Consider using opt-in forms and lead magnets to encourage customers to share their numbers with you. Additionally, when you have your list of contacts, make sure you segment them based on factors like their behaviors, location, and preferences, so you can send more personalized messages.

Step 4: Create the Message

Once you have your list of contacts, you’re ready to start creating your messages. The best mass texting platforms, like Clerk Chat, will give you a range of text messaging templates you can choose from for different use cases, like promotional texts or alerts. Use these templates to maintain consistency in your messaging strategy.

Want to send a quick update to all your customers about a flash sale? Or maybe remind patients about their appointments? Use SMS, WhatsApp, or RCS for mass texting.

Schedule a demo

Remember to keep your messages short and sweet, include a call to action if necessary, and always personalize texts whenever possible, to make them more relevant to your audience.

Step 5: Send Your Texts and Review the Results

After you’ve created your text, you should be able to either send it immediately or schedule the message to be delivered at a specific time. Once the message is sent, make sure you pay attention to any replies from your audience, particularly if you’re investing in SMS customer service.

You may even want to experiment with AI tools that make it easy to automate responses to common customer queries and streamline two-way messaging. Over time, pay attention to the results of your messaging campaigns, watching opt-in and opt-out rates, open rates, engagement levels, and conversions, so you can adjust your strategy based on your data.

How to Send a Mass Text: The Top Bulk Texting Tools

Learning how to send mass text messages is simple enough. But getting the best results from your strategy, and ensuring you can adhere to compliance rules and maintain the trust of your target audience, starts with choosing the right texting service.

Here are some of the top bulk and A2P texting platforms you can consider for your mass messaging strategy.

1. Clerk Chat: The Ultimate Mass Texting Service

Clerk Chat makes it easy to start sending mass text messages with convenient templates, flexible scheduling options, and even AI tools to help enhance content creation, but it also comes packed with unique features that help businesses optimize their communication strategy.

With Clerk Chat, you can send automated messages through SMS, WhatsApp, and RCS easily, and monitor everything from within a unified inbox (phone number). The platform enables two-way text messaging, so you can respond to customers instantly when they have queries. Plus, there’s a customizable AI assistant that can respond to messages for you.

Clerk Chat even integrates with the tools businesses already use, from archiving solutions, to help you adhere to text message compliance requirements, to CRMs and collaboration apps like Microsoft Teams. Plus, it gives you insightful analytics and reports you can use to improve your mass texting strategy over time.

2. SimpleTexting

Simple texting is a straightforward SMS platform that makes it easy for companies to set up contact lists, and send bulk messages to customers in an instant. Just like Clerk Chat, SimpleTexting allows users to choose from a wide range of business numbers and segment audiences into groups for more personalized text messaging campaigns.

The solution also integrates with a wide range of different apps and tools, and even allows companies to send out different types of texts, like surveys and feedback requests. Plus, it enables two-way messaging, picture messaging, and comes with valuable reporting and analytics tools.

The biggest downside to SimpleTexting is that sending individual messages can be complex, and there are fewer integrations available for archiving and compliance tools. Additionally, the AI features are somewhat limited, although you can use AI to create message templates.

3. TextMagic

TextMagic is an intuitive small business SMS platform, with flexible pay-as-you-go pricing options for growing companies. With this platform, you don’t have to worry about learning how to mass text, the process of sending automated messages to hundreds or even thousands of customers at once is simple and straightforward.

Notably, you do need to go through a process of registering your company with the “Campaign Registry” before you can start sending marketing messages through TextMagic. However, this does help to ensure that you’ll remain compliant with anti-spam laws.

TextMagic also integrates with other communication channels, like chat platforms and emails, so you can take an omnichannel approach to communicating with audiences. Plus, it offers a range of business number options, including 10DLC texting solutions and virtual numbers.

The automation features on this platform are a little basic to those you’d get from a vendor like Clerk Chat, however, making it harder to trigger text responses to specific user actions.

4. EZ Texting

EZ Texting is another great option if you’re ready to start sending mass texts to customers and stakeholders. It offers both group texting and bulk messaging, as well as support for automated SMS and MMS messaging campaigns, similar to Clerk Chat.

This platform is very easy to use, with step-by-step guidance and tool tips built into the platform to help you get your campaigns up and running. The company also offers excellent onboarding support and resources to beginners in the SMS landscape.

While EZ Texting does integrate with some other business tools, such as CRMs and archiving solutions, it has fewer integrations to offer than alternative platforms. It’s also lacking a lot of advanced features you would get from something like Clerk Chat, such as an AI assistant, number porting capabilities, and advanced automation workflows.

EZ Texting can be a little expensive for smaller businesses too, with pricing options starting at around $20 per month, and extra fees for additional services.

5. Textedly

If you’re looking for an easy and convenient way to send personalized mass text messages to customers, Textedly is a good option. It supports group and mass texting, text scheduling, and automation workflows (though to a slightly limited extent). It also allows for two-way texting for customer service and conversational marketing.

Textedly supports unlimited contacts and SMS keywords, and even allows for picture-based messaging for multimedia texts. Plus, it has integrated AI solutions, like a ChatGPT service that can help create content for your messaging campaigns.

Unfortunately, Textedly doesn’t offer a lot of integration options for CRMs and other business platforms, and it doesn’t give companies a “Bring Your Own Carrier” function. You’ll also have fewer options for segmenting your contacts on Textedly than you would with a solution like Clerk Chat, and won’t be able to set up 10DLC registration automatically.

How to Choose the Best Mass Texting Platform

Choosing the right platform or service to help you send out mass text messages can be complicated. There are a lot of different options to choose from, each with their own distinct pros and cons. Here are a few of the things you should be keeping in mind when you compare your options:

• Intuitive features: The best mass texting solution should come with intuitive tools for contact list management, segmentation, personalization, and scheduling. It should give you access to intuitive tools that enhance automated text messaging for businesses, like AI assistants and templates. Plus, it should enable access to reporting and analytical tools, so you can track and improve the results of your campaigns.
• Multiple messaging options: Aside from allowing you to send thousands of messages at once, your SMS platform should offer other texting options too. It should allow you to create multi-step scheduled campaigns and support two-way texting for customer service purposes. Bonus points if the system also has an AI tool for automatic text replies.
• Integrations: The best SMS platforms should work seamlessly with the tools you already use. They should allow you to text customers from a computer through integrations with solutions like Microsoft Teams, and offer a web-based shared inbox. They should also work alongside your CRM tools, archiving apps, and other critical software.
• Value for money: Pricing matters. It’s important for the SMS service you choose to be affordable – even if you’re running a small business with a limited budget. Make sure you get excellent value for your money.
• Scalability: The best mass texting platform should be able to adapt and scale with your business. Make sure you can send unlimited texts to unlimited contacts, and even add new numbers into the mix for global texting when necessary.

How to Send Mass Text Messages the Right Way: Top Tips

At this point, you should have a good idea of how to send mass texts for business purposes, and how you can choose the right platform for your needs. However, we do have a few additional tips to share, to ensure you can get the most out of your texting strategy.

• Pick the right phone number: There are a few phone number types approved for mass texting. Make sure you do your research and find the one that makes the most sense for your business and your SMS marketing needs.
• Prioritize security and compliance: Make sure you can adhere to regulations like the TCPA. Always obtain consent before texting customers, and make sure they can easily opt-out of receiving your messages. Encrypt and protect the data you collect from your contacts, and never spam your audience with irrelevant messages.
• Personalize your messages: Personalized mass text messages will always deliver better results. When possible, add your customer’s first name and other details to a message to make it more relevant to them. Segment your audience and tailor your campaigns to their needs, preferences, and pain points.
• Keep it simple: Text messages should be short and straightforward. Get straight to the point and avoid overwhelming customers with too much information. If you include a call to action in your messages, make sure you only add one.
• Get creative: Experiment with multimedia elements like images, links, and mobile landing messages to make your messages more engaging. You might even create messaging templates that include emojis to showcase your brand’s personality.
• Remember timing: Don’t send messages at unsocial hours. Not only is this important for compliance purposes, but it’s also crucial to retaining your audience, earning their loyalty, and improving your click-through and conversion rates.
• Measure your results: Use the reporting tools built into platforms like Clerk Chat to track which messaging campaigns are getting the best results. Experiment with different content, sending frequencies, and times to optimize the ROI of your campaigns.

Start Sending Mass Texts with Clerk Chat

Learning how to send mass text messages doesn’t have to be complicated. All you really need is the right software, a contact list, and an effective strategy for communicating with your audience. The key to success is choosing a platform that can help you optimize your mass texting strategy.

Clerk Chat’s comprehensive platform makes sending mass text messages simple. You can create dynamic cohorts and segment your audience for more personalized campaigns, use AI to create and enhance templates and respond to customer queries, and even track your results with in-depth reports.

Plus, Clerk Chat’s end-to-end approach to security and compliance means that you don’t have to worry about falling victim to regulatory issues and fines. On top of all that, because Clerk Chat integrates with your existing tools and platforms, you can easily align the platform with your CRM systems, collaboration tools, archiving apps and more.

Discover the easy and efficient way to send out mass text messages. Contact Clerk Chat today.