Retailer magic: SMS strategies for Black Friday | On Demand Sign up for our webinar
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. So the key is to keep trying new things until you achieve your objective: whether that is to improve customer conversion, increase sales, or engender greater stakeholder engagement. By creating the perfect Web SMS.
So how can you improve the quality of your Web SMS? We have looked at the most successful campaigns from our customers, identified the key components of success, and summarised them into a best practice guide.
Sending text that contain a message such as 'TXT BK 4 GR8 DEALS!' is unprofessional and sends the wrong image about your company. Always use proper language and grammar otherwise people might not be able to understand the message, and if they do they probably won't take you seriously!
You need to be clear about what you want them to do, and how you want them to do it. For example if you want them to visit your website, simply put 'Visit us online now www.VoodooSMS.com. Or if you want them to call you, 'Call Now on +44 (0)1484 599 311' To make sure the recipient acts upon the text, you should also explain the benefits
Make use of our Dynamic messages which allow you to insert elect the field that you wish to be dynamic in your contact list (e.g. first name, customer account number, unique voucher code etc.), and your Web SMS can then send customer-specific messages to each of your contacts. It means your campaign has a more personalised approach, and is more relevant to your customer.
This one seems obvious, but we have seen many SMS messages sent without them actually clearly stating who they are. The Voodoo SMS platform enables the sender to enter a maximum 11 alphanumeric characters in the Sender ID field, and this can be a great way to develop brand identity in your campaigns. It can be a powerful marketing tool to have the text message appearing to come from your company name.
A text message is only 160 characters so you need to keep it simple, concise and clear. A text message is a lot more effective if you stick to the point, tell them the benefits/advantages and have a clear call to action.
Sending your text message at the right time can be pretty important, you don't want to be waking people up at night, or disturbing them first thing in the morning. We have found the most effective time to send an SMS campaign is at lunchtime between 12 - 2pm and also late afternoon when people are coming to the end of their workday. These are just guidelines and can vary from business to business. With our scheduling feature you can choose a day and a time you want your SMS to be sent out so it is convenient for you as well.
They say that with certain pieces of advertising you only have you have 3 seconds to grab their attention. With a text message you will normally have their attention as soon as they hear their phone go off, but in order to keep their attention you need to make sure that your message contains an 'Attention Grabber' We have found that starting your message with one or two capitalised words such as 'TODAY ONLY' or 'BIG NEWS' works really well.
Sending text messages to old or inactive numbers means you are wasting money. Our state of the art platform will automatically exclude all duplicate numbers, and in addition, after a Web SMS you will be notified the results of successful delivery and inactive numbers. This means you can exclude these numbers from future sends, saving you money and increasing your delivery percentage.
Measure the effectiveness and results of your mobile marketing campaigns and services, so you can improve on them. What was the response rate? What was the ROI? Try sending messages with a range of offers at different times of day or days of the week, or send texts to different groups of customers to find out what works best for your business.
The last thing you will want to do is annoy your customers so it is important to give them the option to opt out if they so wish. This will also reduce your costs and increase your response rate as you won't be sending text messages to people that aren't interested in them.