SMS Campaigns: The Ultimate Guide to Text Marketing

If you’re looking for a way to boost audience engagement, increase brand awareness, and increase your sales, it’s time to invest in SMS campaigns.

Mobile-first marketing strategies have grown increasingly prominent in recent years, as consumers grow increasingly attached to their mobile devices. The average American, for instance, checks their phone around 144 times a day.

An SMS marketing strategy gives you a unique way to share valuable business messages with customers wherever they are, boosting audience engagement.

But how exactly do you use texting campaigns effectively while optimizing the return on your marketing investment? Read on for everything you need to know.

What are Text Marketing Campaigns?

Text marketing campaigns or “SMS campaigns,” are promotional strategies which involve sharing short messages with customers through the short messaging service (SMS).

Your SMS marketing strategy can include everything from personalized product recommendations to SMS appointment reminders, and alerts about your latest products and services. Although SMS marketing limits how much content you can share with customers, you can still achieve amazing results by sending helpful, targeted texts to everyone in your contact list.

Plus, unlike most marketing methods, SMS advertising benefits form naturally high engagement rates. In fact, the open rate for SMS messages is around 98%. That means you’re almost guaranteed to be able to connect with your customers through text!

SMS Text Campaign Examples

Notably, an SMS campaign doesn’t have to exclusively focus on showcasing new products, or prompting customers to make a purchase. The best campaigns are all about nurturing and engaging your customers. You might use transactional SMS to keep your audience informed with order confirmations and tracking details.

You can use conversational text messaging to ask questions, or request feedback from your customers, to guide future marketing decisions. Plus, you can take advantage of mass text messaging services and segmentation to alert your customers about upcoming sales and promotions.

Here are a few common examples of the types of texts used in SMS campaigns:

Welcome Messages

Welcome messages are a great way to start building a relationship with your target audience. You can schedule SMS messages to reach your audience as soon as they fill out a contact form on your website, and give them insight into everything they can expect as a customer of your brand.

Promotional SMS Messages

Promotional messages are all about drawing attention to your latest products, your best deals, and the solutions you can offer your customers. An effective SMS blast service should allow you to segment your audience into specific groups so you can tailor campaigns to different interests.

You’ll also be able to create different promotional campaigns for various events. For instance, you could create a collection of SMS messages to drive attention to an upcoming sale, or use texts to recapture customers who might not have purchased anything from your company for a while.

Transactional SMS Messages

While transactional SMS messages don’t focus on promoting your products or increasing sales, they still help you to nurture customers and strengthen their relationships with your brand. Simple messages, such as order confirmation notes or details about a delivery ensure you can keep your customers informed, engaged, and up-to-date.

As long as you’re following compliance rules (check the tips in this TCPA compliance guide), you can even add promotions to some transactional texts. For instance, you might encourage a customer to book their next appointment with you immediately in exchange for a discount.

SMS Alerts

Alerts are another form of “informative” messages to include in your SMS campaigns. You can use them to tell your customers about exciting news or events taking place at your company. Or you could use alerts as a way to boost transparent communication with your audience.

Using AI-powered SMS strategies to send instant messages to customers when there’s a delay in your shipping process, or an issue with your product can help boost their trust in your brand.

Appointment Reminder Texts

Finally, appointment reminders are a common part of many SMS marketing campaign strategies for service-based companies. Coaches, clinics, and consultants use simple A2P messaging solutions to remind customers of upcoming events and bookings.

Using reminders in your SMS campaigns is a good way to reduce your company’s risk of losing money and facing disruptions because customers simply forget to turn up for an appointment.

The Benefits of SMS Campaigns for Businesses

There are a couple of downsides to SMS campaigns for business promotion and audience engagement. You’ll need to make sure you’re using the right software to access the best results, and comply with standards like 10DLC rules and TCPA regulations.

However, the right SMS campaign can deliver incredible results too. Studies show that around 85% of customers prefer texts to phone calls, and 90% read the texts they receive in 3 minutes.

On top of that, SMS campaigns deliver benefits like:

• Time-sensitive interactions: Provided you’re maintaining a strong SMS delivery rate, text campaigns give you an excellent way to instantly connect with your target audience. They’re great for time-sensitive campaigns like limited-time promotions, when you need to capture a customer’s attention quickly.
• Simplicity: With a tool like Clerk Chat, an SMS campaign is incredibly easy to create. You can use basic templates to create consistent messages, and you don’t have to worry about filling your content with lengthy paragraphs and images.
• Personalization: Since the best SMS marketing tools come with features that allow you to segment your audience, it’s easy to create highly personalized campaign strategies. SMS allows you to design campaigns that connect emotionally with your audience.
• Omnichannel marketing: With SMS integrations you can combine your SMS marketing campaign with promotional strategies on other channels, like email and social media. An omnichannel strategy helps you reach, engage, and convert more customers.
• Valuable insights: The information you gather about your SMS campaigns, and the feedback you collect from customers can help you better understand your target audience. The more you learn, the more you can optimize your marketing return on investment.

How to Create an SMS Marketing Campaign

Creating effective SMS campaigns doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does require an investment in the right strategy, research, and technology. If you’re planning on starting your own texting campaign, here are the steps you’ll need to follow.

Step 1: Define your Goals

Determine what you want to accomplish with your SMS campaigns before you start creating anything. Do you want to improve customer experience and increase loyalty among your existing customers? Are you trying to increase traffic to your website, or boost conversion rates?

Knowing what you want to accomplish will help you to define the ideal SMS workflow for your specific needs. Plus, it will ensure you have an idea of which metrics and KPIs you should be monitoring as you implement your strategy.

Step 2: Build your Contact List

One of the major challenges of SMS marketing is that you need to actually collect consent from your customers to contact them with promotional messages, before you start designing your campaigns.

As you can see from our TCPA compliance checklist, acquiring permission to contact your customers is crucial to ensuring you don’t face any serious legal fines. Plus, it ensures you’re investing time and effort in communicating with customers that actually want to hear from you.

To start building your contact list, explore your SMS lead generation options. You might use website forms, in-store signup options, and social media to collect contact details. Think about how you can encourage signups by offering access to incentives (like discount codes), or sharing the benefits of subscribing with your customers (like gaining early access to sales).

Step 3: Choose your SMS Marketing Platform

Next, you’ll need an SMS marketing platform that allows you to build effective, branded campaigns with SMS templates, automate message delivery, and track marketing results. Aside from looking for crucial features like workflow automation capabilities, make sure you also focus on:

• Integrations: Ideally, your SMS campaign platform should integrate with the other tools you use for marketing, communication, automation, analytics, and customer relationship management (CRM) software.
• Ease of use: A great SMS marketing platform like Clerk Chat will make it easy for all of your employees to create and implement campaigns. Look for a tool that offers user-friendly features, like customizable reports and AI tools.
• Compliance: Ensure your platform can help you adhere to texting compliance standards. Look for end-to-end encryption, access controls for users, and integrations with record-keeping and archiving tools.

It’s also worth considering advanced feature options. For instance, Clerk Chat offers access to AI tools for intelligent two-way messaging campaigns, as well segmentation and reporting tools to help you optimize your results.

Step 4: Craft your SMS Campaigns

After you’ve chosen the ideal software for your campaigns, you can start getting to work on your messages. A good point to keep in mind is that the best texting campaigns are always personalized to the specific customers you want to reach.

Split your contact list into groups based on their previous purchasing histories, demographics, and behavioral data, so you can design more engaging, personalized campaigns. An effective segmentation strategy should ensure you know which messages to send to your customers and at which times to drive the best results.

Once you have your segments, craft your messages with a focus on:

• Conciseness: Keep your messages short, sweet, and easy to understand.
• Action: Use a clear and compelling call to action to push your customers through the purchasing journey, and encourage them to take the next step.
• Compliance: Ensure your messages include any essential data, such as your business name, phone number, and opt-in and opt-out details.

Step 5: Send Your Campaigns, and Learn from the Results

With all the steps above complete, you’re ready to launch your texting campaign. Give your messages a quick final review to ensure that you’re using compelling wording and adhering to compliance regulations, like 10DLC registration requirements.

After you send your messages out into the world, use the analytical and reporting tools in your marketing platform to track their performance.

Monitor key metrics like delivery rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, and conversion rate. You can also consider sending surveys to customers, or using social listening tools to learn more about how they feel about your brand and SMS campaigns.

Invest in using A/B and split testing strategies to examine the impact that small changes to your wording or texting schedule can have on your results.

Tips for Stronger Text Messaging Campaigns

Now you have all the insights you need to start working on your own SMS campaigns. Still, before you jump in, there are a few extra tips you should be keeping in mind:

• The right software is key: Choosing the best SMS marketing software is the best way to make your marketing campaigns more effective and efficient. Choose a tool like Clerk Chat to ensure you can stay compliant with industry standards, optimize brand awareness, and automate crucial text messaging strategies with ease.
• Avoid complexity: As tempting as it might be to include GIFs, images, and long paragraphs in your campaigns, remember to keep things simple. Customers don’t expect to see a lot of content in a text from a company, so keep your messages short and sweet.
• Stay compliant: Learn as much as you can about SMS campaign marketing mandates and rules, like CAN-SPAM text messages and TCPA regulations. Ensure your customers can easily opt-out of receiving messages from you at any time.
• Get the timing right: Make sure you’re scheduling your campaigns to arrive when customers are most likely to be interacting with their smartphones. This will boost your engagement and conversion rates, and help you stay compliant with industry standards.
• Focus on action: Always give customers something to do “next” when they receive your messages. This could be simply checking out an order receipt, visiting your website, or hitting reply if they want to ask your team a question.

Create the Ultimate Texting Campaign with Clerk Chat

SMS campaigns are taking the world by storm, offering companies a phenomenal way to engage and convert their audience at scale. With the right strategy, you can boost your revenue, improve customer loyalty, and differentiate yourself from the competition.

Of course, the path to success starts with the right technology. At Clerk Chat, we offer solutions that help you to implement powerful, results-driven marketing campaigns.

Our collection of SMS templates, automation tools, reporting features, and AI-powered systems will ensure you can take your customer communications to the next level, and unlock greater ROI from your marketing strategies.

Reach out to Clerk Chat today to learn more about our SMS marketing platform, or contact us for a free demo to test it out for yourself!