For a business, there is nothing better than an effective SMS campaign, but in order to send out an effective SMS campaign, there are some things you must take into consideration.

Before you begin to plan your campaign, you must realise that every business is different so some features we have to offer may not be suitable or necessary for your business. But it’s not just every businesses that are different, every customer is different, this is something you must think about carefully before planning your campaign.

Know your customer

You will probably have a pretty good understanding on who your average customers are. But if you don’t, it’s important that you know exactly who you are targeting and what they are looking for. It’s a good idea to group your customers accordingly, maybe by their age or gender. By doing this you can send out gender or age specific campaigns, and already have the contacts sorted. This will help you send your customer a message that will interest them, and connect with them more.

Who you are

You’ve probably already thought about this, but it’s a common mistake that businesses make. We have seen many SMS campaigns being sent out without the business actually stating who they are. We suggest that you double check that you have entered the business name, this way the customer can clearly see who the message is from.

Attention grabber

Your SMS campaign has to catch the attention of your customer, there is no point spending time on a campaign if the message is going to be boring. Now, by using SMS you are already at an advantage as the phone will probably be either in the hand of or next to the customer. We have found that using capital letters at the beginning of the message, for example, ‘GREAT OFFER’ ‘NEW PRODUCT’, will straightaway grab the customers attention and make them want to read on.

Call to action

When sending out a message to your customers, you usually send it because you want them to do something, such as to visit your site or to call your shop. So you must have a clear call to action. Add something like ‘visit our website for more information’, if the customer is interested they will want to find out more.

Timing

Timing is vital when it comes to SMS campaigns, it can make or break whether your customer will purchase from you or not. Especially if you are sending out messages to people in different countries. We suggest that you group your customers by countries, this way you can send the campaign out to different countries at a suitable time. No one wants to receive a text message at 04:00am, so make sure your campaigns go out at a time that people will be on their phones. We have found that lunch time between 12-2 works well and also the late afternoon/early evening between 4-7.

These are just a few tips that will make your campaign as good as it can be. Now it’s up to you to ‘wow’ your customers into purchasing from you! Good luck!