Text message marketing can be a highly engaging and effective form of communication between you and your customers when used correctly. A well-constructed SMS strategy is vital for success and it’s worth taking the time and effort to do it right. Poorly worded, lengthy messages can deter your customer, and oftentimes result in your customers opting out of your messaging entirely. Investing in a thoughtful strategy and quality messaging will boost engagement and lead to increases in customer retention and conversion. 

Today, we are sharing the April installment of our Do’s and Don’ts of business text message marketing series, so that you can run your most successful campaign yet.

The Do: An Online Beauty Company Offering Promotions

This Online Beauty Company does a great job with messages that are….

1. Direct: Customers want you to get straight to the point. While this company added an engaging hook to catch their customer’s attention (who doesn’t love the perfect coffee?! ☕️), they got straight to the point in offering them a promotional code, and followed up once with the customer before the code expired. Keeping your content short, sweet, and beneficial to the customer is the number one priority in text message marketing.
2. Engaging: With SMS marketing being increasingly popular in our digital world, it is more important than ever to make your messaging engaging. The company did a great job of breaking up what could be a lengthy message into 2 pieces –a colorful image/interesting quote and the promotional offer–increasing readability and adding delight. Including variety in the types of messaging you send to your customers is vital in keeping them engaged.
3. Aesthetically Pleasing: The aesthetics of messaging isn’t always the first thing we think about with SMS campaigns, but it makes all the difference when customers are quickly glancing over their messages. The format of the text is easy to follow, and the promotional code stands out within the message because it’s the only word in capital letters. Keeping your messages simple and short is best practice– with text messaging, less is often more!

The Don’t: A Blood Bank Trying to Get A Donation

This Blood Bank could improve by sending texts that are…

1. Shorter: The lengthiness of this message automatically deters the customer from reading it. Getting rid of the unnecessary details and getting straight to the point is more likely to engage a customer than sending a long message with excessive information.
2. Positive: The inclusion of negative information, without a positive twist, is more often than not going to push a customer away. The mention of ‘canceling drive throughs’ and the fact that they ‘cannot take any walk-ins’ are details that could be shared later, after the person has expressed interest, and only implies donating will be difficult. Communicating excessive negative details off the bat can push a potential customer away that may have been willing to work through difficulties if information was shared correctly.
3. Better Formatted: The poor formatting of this message makes it more likely that a customer would glance over the message and abandon reading it. An example of a way to make the formatting more appealing would be to list out the locations in different lines rather than put them all in one sentence. A well formatted message is easier on the eyes, meaning it’s more likely to be read!

Have you received a good or bad text from a company that you think we should feature next month? Text us your example at (617) 553-6631!

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