Text message marketing campaigns can be fantastically effective for several reasons:

• Quick and easy to prepare and send
• One of the lowest cost forms of direct marketing
• Response rates can be measured
• They have unbeatable delivery and open (i.e., read by recipients) rates

However, the very benefits offered by text message marketing also mean they have to be used with care.  Below are some highly effective tips to consider before you send your first text message marketing campaign.

Get a clear opt-in

Most people consider their mobile phone to be an extension of their personal space. This makes a text message very intrusive. Make sure your sign-up process is clear and unambiguous. Tell people that they will receive marketing texts from your business, what they’ll be about and roughly how frequently.

Avoid subscriber fatigue

Because they’re so potentially intrusive, most customers have a lower patience threshold when it comes to receiving marketing text messages. Use them sparingly, and only when you have something genuinely valuable for the customer. Treat each campaign as if it’s your last, and your business survival depends on it.

Track response rates

This means you can adjust campaigns to suit what your customers actually want. It involves having customers treat a text message as a coupon, e.g., to benefit from a 2 for 1 deal they have to display the text in-store. You can either just record the total number of vouchers redeemed, or you can identify every individual coupon redeemed using a merge field. The merge field would be a unique ID that you assign to each individual mobile phone number. This would be automatically displayed in the body of every single text message. A bit more work, but a great way to add segmentation to your marketing list.

Record unsubscribes

Every text message must give customers the option to opt out, quickly and easily. If you don’t have your text message and customer database systems automatically joined up, you’ll have to record unsubscribes manually. One low cost option is to set up a mobile phone number to receive just unsubscribe messages. Or, your text delivery service may be able to help set you up with an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed to a web page or email address of your choice. Either way, you must remember to manually update your customer records.

Have you launched your first text message campaign?  What other text messaging tips can you share with readers?

Guest Author: After many years of business experience, George Drever has learned the hard way what does and doesn’t work when building a profitable marketing list and creating compelling email and text message campaigns.  He strongly believes an opted-in customer database is the most under-used asset in business.  His consultancy website helps small businesses avoid the same steep learning curve he encountered in getting the most out of direct marketing.