Learn 9 SMS best practices to implement when you’re first getting started.
This article highlights the dos and don’ts of SMS marketing, helping you avoid common pitfalls and learn the answers to common questions.
What are the SMS best practices?Here are the general best practices:
For SMS, you must always get permission for SMS before you send. If you don’t, it could mean thousands of dollars in fines.
You always want to make sure someone has agreed to get marketing text messages from your brand. Simply agreeing to email, general marketing, or even one-time transactional SMS isn’t enough. To learn more, see this article on collecting SMS subscribers and what counts as consent.
Make your content relevant, valuable, and uniqueThis is easy to say, but what does it mean? Open each section for details.
Keep SMS messages shortHave you ever gotten a novel disguising itself as a text? It can feel overwhelming, even if it’s from a close friend or family member.
Data backs this up, showing that shorter messages (i.e., under 160 characters) tend to perform better than longer-form messages. Keep SMS messages short and concise. If you want to send a lot of information, we recommend using another channel, such as email.
Send SMS regularly and add varietyAs a best practice, send SMS 1 to 2 times a week. You want to build a relationship with your subscribers so that they know what or when to expect messages from you.
That send, the ideal sending frequency may be different depending on your brand or industry. For example, if your customers sign up to get reminders to take their medication, sending daily is acceptable. On the other hand, if your business specializes in luxury items (e.g., jewelry or furniture), you may want to send less frequently or to a more targeted segment, such as your VIPs.
In addition, vary the type of messages you send so that you continue to provide value to subscribers. For instance, the table breaks down the types of messages you may send, how many, and who the audience should be over 1 month.
Type of messageHow many to send in 1 monthAudienceImportant announcements (e.g., promotions, new releases, or holiday)2Anyone who triggers your:
When people don’t know who’s texting them, they’re more wary about the messages and less likely to click on any links. Further, many countries require you to indicate your brand in SMS so that customers know who you are.
Mentioning your company or organization in every text is also a part of SMS compliance.
There are several options for indicating your brand:
To make it easy for recipients, we also recommend sending anyone in the US or Canada a virtual contact card, which allows them to easily save your number.
In addition, you can add to your brand recognition with custom keywords. For instance, if your company is “New York Pizza Pies,” you can have people opt in by texting the keyword “NYpizza.”
Avoid text-speakWhile this may seem contradictory to the previous section, this is simply to make sure your audience still understands your message.
Unless you know your audience will understand, try to avoid using too many abbreviations.
Also, even if you know your audience will understand, it’s a best practice to not overdo it. Using 1 (or maybe 2) is fine, but any more than that and it can make your message hard to understand.
Include a link as a CTASMS is immediate, direct, and almost always has a higher click and conversion rate than email.
It never hurts to include a link in your text messages. Not only does this make it easier for interested recipients to reach your site, but tracking your click rate is a key step to evaluating your SMS performance. Without it, you won’t know which messages your audience responds well to or how to improve your SMS marketing efforts going forward.
Some tips are to:
If you’re using Klaviyo, you not only need a link to track clicks and conversions, but also use the Klaviyo link shortener. Do not use a third-party link shortener, as it will likely break the link.
Make it easy to opt outAnother SMS best practice (and also compliance rule) is allowing recipients to unsubscribe at any time.
You don’t want to waste sends on someone who doesn’t want to hear from you. Further, if you send to someone who wants to opt out but can’t, they may report you.
There are a couple of ways to allow customers to opt out:
In most cases, having an unsubscribe keyword is the best option. However, branded sender IDs (only available in the UK and Australia) cannot receive messages, making the keyword impossible to use. In that case, you can add an opt-out link to allow your customers to unsubscribe.
Test using MMS and emojisIt's important to test how MMS and emojis perform for your audience. Generally, these messages cost more to send, but don't yield significantly better results. In fact, text messages that don't contain media or emojis tend to perform just as well, or even better, than messages that do.
However, this may not be true across all brands and industries, so try testing MMS and emojis to see if they work for your audience.
Stay compliantThere are more laws regulating what businesses can and cannot do with SMS. While this can seem intimidating at first, it’s simple to obey these rules.
Note that we don’t go into detail about each rule mentioned here; for more, check out the Basics of SMS compliance.
We already went over 3 foundational rules over SMS compliance:
Other compliance rules include:
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