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The near-universal adoption of mobile devices has transformed marketing and given modern businesses tools to engage with current and potential customers that those of past eras could only dream about. Text (SMS) blasts give you the ability to reach your audience at practically any time or place. However, like any other messaging tool, text blasts need to be used thoughtfully – at the right time, for the right audience and message.
Text blasts give your brand wide reach yet feel more personal than other messaging channels. They’re good at getting prompt attention and great for to-the-point, actionable messages.
Virtually everyone now has a mobile phone, and basic SMS text blasts work even on the most bare-bones mobile devices. This means that text blasts have an extremely wide potential reach. Everyone is carrying around a connection to your brand in their pocket.
These days, most people check their phones more often than they check their email. For many people, text messages also feel more personal, direct, and urgent than email. That adds up to higher overall open rates and text messages being opened quicker than emails.
Conciseness is always a good quality in advertising. Unless someone is a superfan of your brand, your messages won’t hold their attention for long. The short character count (usually 160 characters) of SMS blasts forces you to pare your messages down to the purest essentials. You can use this experience to refine the messaging you use in other channels.
Like any other messaging tactic, text blasts have downsides that mean they aren’t the right choice for every situation.
Text messages may be good at getting recipients’ attention, but that also means it’s easy for them to become intrusive and irritating if your customers feel like they’re being bombarded by messages that don’t provide them with value.
Another disadvantage to text blasts is that they can be relatively costly. Compared to using email blasts or social media campaigns, text blasts usually have a higher price tag, especially if your contact list is large.
To use text blasts, you have to comply with regulations like the Telephone Consumer Protection Act in the U.S. or the GDPR in Europe. This means making sure the people you send SMS blasts to have clearly opted in to receiving marketing or promotional texts from you.
Finally, the short length of text messages means that they’re simply impractical when you need to communicate any detailed information.
To get the most value for your business out of text blasts, you should try to use them for messages that play to their strengths as a messaging channel. Generally speaking, this means “high-urgency” communications that can be summed up briefly – things you customers will quickly grasp and appreciate finding out about sooner rather than later.
A great example of message well suited to text blasts is notifying your customers about limited-time discounts or promotions. They’re also good for reminding your contacts about upcoming events or appointments.
Because text messages tend to come across as more personal than email communications, they’re potentially a good tool for increasing customer engagement and gathering useful data, such as by sending out a survey to people who’ve recently purchased a product from you asking them to fill out a quick feedback survey.
Finally, text blasts are useful for all types of timely customer service-related messages, like shipping notifications or security alerts.
Some of the same qualities that make text blasts potentially so effective when they’re used wisely increase the risks associated with text blasts when they’re misused. It’s important to make sure that you’re always following best practices when deploying text blast campaigns. These best practices boil down to three words: who, what, and when.
First, there’s the issue of who you’re messaging. The most fundamental and important aspect of best practices for text blasts is opt-ins and opt-outs. Simply put, you shouldn’t be sending SMS messages to anyone unless you have the recipient’s prior consent. The other side of the coin is that even if you’re only messaging recipients who have opted in, you should always provide recipients with the option to stop receiving texts from you – although of course you’re trying not to give them a reason to use it.
Next comes the what. We’ve already talked about the types of messages that are best suited to text blasts: time-sensitive notifications or reminders and quick asks that build customer engagement and allow you to gather data. But whatever your text blast is about, it needs to provide value to the recipients. You goal is to avoid sending a text blast that makes the recipient ask, “Why did I take my phone out of my pocket for this?”
Finally, there’s the when. Just because people are more likely to open text messages quickly doesn’t mean you should take advantage to send your customers text blasts at any hour of the day or night – very few things that you’re messaging them about are that urgent. Avoid sending text blasts too late at night or too early in the morning. It’s generally best to stick to sending text blasts during normal “business hours.”
When you turn to the experts at Gragg Advertising to help you craft text message campaigns, your audience will appreciate the valuable benefits they get from opting in to your messages, and you’ll appreciate the increase in sales and customer engagement. That’s a win-win. Whether you’re trying to improve the results of your current text campaigns or add them to your marketing mix, we can help. Contact us today to find out how.
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