SMS marketing can be one of the most powerful tools in an organization’s arsenal and as such, should be treated with respect. Remember what Spiderman said ‘With great power comes great responsibility’. The direct communication channel between you as a business and your customer’s mobile phone can be the best marketing tool you have. However you must always recognise how personal people’s phones are too them and if you don’t follow the SMS Marketing rules, you will lose the customer and hurt your brand.

We have been in the SMS Marketing business for 6 years and have grown from start up to over 20,000 customers, we’ve learned a few things along the way and thought we’d put together a few tips on what NOT to do with mobile and SMS Marketing.

Do Not Send Messages to People Without Permission

Never, ever send SPAM messages to people who have not opted-in to receive your text messages. Firstly and most importantly, it is illegal and carries stiff penalties. Secondly it will hurt your brand and people will stop using your service. You must also have an easy way for your customers to opt out of receiving messages from your service. Any good service provider will have this.

Do Not Send Messages Unless Your Offer will be of interest to your customers

Send only relevant marketing offers, promotions or information to your customers. Do not bombard them with useless offers. We have seen constant solid returns from many of our customers who send one SMS Marketing campaign per month.

Get straight to the point

Short clear and concise messages work best. We have found that marketing messages under 160 characters works best. The consumer gets the message and has it read in seconds.

Use a quality SMS Marketing service

A good quality SMS Marketing service with direct connections to the mobile operators will provide the best delivery statistics for your company. It is very cost effective to use SMS Marketing and the better the delivery rate, the more your customer reach you are getting.

Well known and highly reputable providers will provide detailed delivery reports which gives breakdowns of which numbers were reached and which may have had issues, simultaneously allowing you to edit cumbersome and out-of-date contact lists so that you are left with only viable phone numbers. If unutilized, your campaigns could potentially waste precious credits sending messages to unreachable numbers.

SMS marketing is a valuable tool for businesses, but it’s important to keep best practices in mind in order to deliver timely, relevant, and useful messages. Keep the above advice in mind to avoid annoying customers (and potential customers!) and make the most out of your SMS services.

I hope you found this helpful in any way and thank you for taking the time to read our blog. We love the feedback we receive from everyone and it is our customers and blog readers who drive the innovation in our SMS Marketing service.

Thanks,
John