SMS Marketing can bring you more loyalty, more clients and more money, but it does not work magically. You must make it right to see these results. Below we give you 5 things to avoid in order to get better results from your bulk sms strategy.
Sending too many messages will bring you negative results instead of positive. You need to find the balance between notifying your customers and bugging your customers with your messages. If you have an event coming up for example, send your customers a text message3-5 days ahead so they can schedule their time and another one the afternoon of the previous day or the morning time of the same day. If your discount period has started, send them a message one day before the discount period starts and another message 1-2 days before the discount period ends.
How do you feel about a company which sends you their text message at 7 in the morning when you are still in bed? Or when you receive the text message at 10 in the evening? Not good. Things you don't like others doing to you as a consumer, do not do them for your customers. Respect their privacy. SMS marketing campaigns are best sent during working hours. Only when absolutely necessary you can send outside of business hours. You also need to know that when you send to many thousands of sms contacts, the whole sms campaign will need some time to go, so calculate the time so the last of recipients will not receive your sms very late.
There are 2 types of SMS gateways. The international route sms and the direct route sms. International route sms gets blocked by the mobile operators many times as the cost of sending it to the end recipient is higher than the cost that they buy it. So, they block it so as not to lose money. Direct route sms is the type of sms that guarantees the highest delivery possible for your sms campaign.
Text messages in sms campaigns must be as short and to the point as possible. You are not writing an essay. Don't waste the time of your recipient. We all already do many things wasting our time. You need to understand and respect that the recipient's time is limited. The shorter your message is, the better it is. As long as you make your point across of course. Saying this, you should opt to maintaining a professional tone with your customers. You don't want to be seem in a rush. Lastly, do not over abuse informal abbreviations. Use "no problem" instead of "np". Use "you" instead of "u". Only include abbreviations if they are widely popular and of course not offensive to the recipient.
Before launching your sms campaign, always have a test group in your SMS Marketing Platform with your number and at least 2 more numbers. Send the bulk sms to your test group first to make sure you are sending exactly what you need to send. No mispellings, no wrong dates, times, discounts or locations. If your sms message contains links, click on them to make sure they take you to the right page.
Following the above rules of thumb will increase the long-term success of your SMS Marketing strategy.