If you work in marketing, you know the use of text messages is well on the rise. Text messaging has emerged as the hottest new marketing channel, giving you a direct line to consumers like never before. But with great power comes great responsibility. It’s essential we use this channel for good—to create meaningful, human connections with our consumers rather than making it another source of spam.

In a recent survey conducted by Facebook, more than 1 in 2 people surveyed across 15 markets consider business messaging the “modern way to communicate.” Retail Dive found that SMS produces engagement rates of 6 to 8x higher than email marketing. It’s a channel everyone should be paying attention to.

Today, we’re launching a new monthly series that will evaluate real-life examples of B2C text messaging—the good, the bad, and the ugly. So without further ado, let’s kick this thing off with our first 2 examples:
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The Do: Local spa offering an incentive

This local spa does a great job of the following:

1. Compelling: The offer they reached out with is compelling ($500 off!) and worth the customer’s time
2. Helpful: Offering to help schedule an appointment based on what’s convenient for the customer is a perfect way to include a gentle nudge towards conversion 
3. Personal: Having an actual human respond when the customer requested further information makes the experience feel personalized and genuine

The Don’t: A baby food company sending coupon

The baby food company should work on the following:

1. Too Generic: Nothing feels personal about this text conversation. It’s robotic and  scripted feeling, with no efforts to make it personal to the customer or conversational, or unique to the company’s brand.

2. Bombarding: The two text messages were sent on the same day which is far too spammy for a coupon offer. You lose customer trust if you reach out with a reminder text hours later on a non-urgent matter 

3. No Value Add: When you text customers, it’s an opportunity to be helpful or educate them about why they should care about your products and brand. These texts offer nothing about how a product they offer could make the customer’s life easier and offer no suggestions for what to use the coupon on.

Received a good or bad text yourself lately from a company that you think we should feature next month? Text us your example at +1(617)-553-6631 or email it to us with subject line “Text Example!”