Best Practices for Automating SMS Marketing Campaigns

There’s no better place to run your marketing campaigns today than phones.

That’s why SMS marketing campaigns rely on text messages to advertise and reach out to customers. Texting helps you get noticed quickly and gives you a better return on your marketing efforts and investments.

While there are many ways you can run an automated SMS marketing campaign, there are only a few of them that provide exceptional results. In this article, we'll uncover the best practices you should follow for automating SMS marketing campaigns so that you can get the best returns on your investments.

So let’s get started by looking at how SMS marketing automation works.

How does SMS marketing automation work?

SMS marketing automation relies on automated tools and various external triggers to send marketing SMS to customers. The triggers can be scheduled or action-based (sending SMS whenever a customer performs some action). Below is an overview of how the entire SMS marketing automation process works for businesses.

1. Customer onboarding for marketing

The first step in this process is to onboard customers for SMS marketing. During this step, you'll get the customer’s contact number and consent to include them in your future SMS marketing campaigns. To onboard customers for your SMS marketing, you can create keywords that customers can send to a specific number to get onboarded. Apart from that, you can have a website form, or get the consent and data during customer signup on your platform.

2. Trigger-based automation starts

Once the customer has consented to your SMS marketing campaign, you can set predefined triggers that kick off new messages and automation for the customer.

The triggers can be based on new user signups, carts, orders, or the beginning of new sales on the website, etc. These are some of the common trigger-based automations, but you can create many more of them based on whatever goals you have.

Running automations based on triggers provides you the ability to give a personalized experience to each customer, and win their trust. You can also have better control of when the messages are delivered when using trigger based automations.

Trigger-based automation can also be helpful to analyze the effectiveness of the platforms that you are using, and fix issues immediately when the triggers start failing.

You can manage all of this via an SMS platform that has bulit-in automation flow-building capabilities, or by using an SMS API.

3. CRM integration and system APIs

After setting up the trigger conditions, you can take the data connections from the triggered software and build out the workflows you’re wanting to create. You can either connect your SMS platform/API to your other software, or you can use changes in the data points within your SMS database as a starting point to build out the flows.

4. Message personalization

The last step in automation is to personalize messages and send them to customers. In this step, you can build workflows that create a personalized message for each customer based on the triggers and their engagement with your platform.

An SMS is typically opened within 5 minutes from delivery and has a 55% read rate and 100% view rate, so creating personalized messages can effectively boost your customer engagement.

Having examined about how SMS marketing automation works, let’s take a look at the best practices that you should follow while implementing your own SMS marketing automation.

How do you get started with SMS marketing automation?

Automating text messaging campaigns can play a major role in enhancing the mode of communication in any business. With the help of the recommendation of the best practices, you’ll be able to attract, convert the audience and enhance client loyalty.

1. Build a targeted contact list

You should get a high-quality and verified contact list that has interacted with your brand and is eager to keep in touch with you. It's fairly easy to run marketing campaigns when you have targeted contact lists and can reach out to them.

A targeted contact list helps you identify the right set of people for a specific campaign type and ensures higher returns on marketing efforts and spending.

Targeted contact lists include people who have shown some sort of interest in your services or products. These are the people who can be future customers if you engage with them correctly! So you should always build a targeted contact list that includes people who are actually interested in your services.

2. Segment your audience

To make your SMS marketing campaign perform better, you need to segment your audience. This includes separating audiences based on geography, interests, and other demographics.

Most SMS platforms and APIs have audience segmenting tools built-in.

By segmenting, you can create targeted marketing content that resonates with your specific target audience, and they can engage with it.

3. Choose the right service provider

Your SMS service provider is as important as the efforts you put into the marketing campaign’s design and execution. You should use a service provider that has a solid reputation for message delivery.

If you use a substandard SMS service provider, or one that doesn't understand mobile carrier regulations (which can sometimes be complex), you may face low delivery rates, and this can be an issue as you won’t be able to reach your audience.

4. Do A/B testing

As with anything else in marketing, A/B testing your SMS is an effective way to test your marketing campaigns and their performance.

A/B testing your SMS (just like you would your emails) helps you find the right type of messages for each target audience and assists you in increasing the returns of your marketing efforts.

5. Comply with regulations

When running an SMS marketing campaign, you need to ensure that you are not causing any trouble to your brand by violating regulations. If you don’t follow mobile carrier regulations, you’ll face message delivery issues. This, of course, impacts your brand negatively - and results in churn.

Every contact on your list should have opted in; otherwise, this can cause compliance issues. You’ll also need to go through the necessary registration requirements, which your SMS service should walk you through step-by-step.

What are good platforms for SMS marketing automation?

Using the right SMS marketing automation Platform, brands are able to plan their campaigns, target the right audiences and even determine the type of messages that should be sent to the audiences.

1. Mobile Text Alerts

Mobile text alerts is a SMS platform that can be used for a wide variety of SMS campaigns. You can send alerts, integrate your CRM software, and also send marketing text messages for your campaigns from a single platform. With the built-i reporting solutions, you can also do a deep dive of your marketing efforts and better understand what works for your brand by tracking key metrics.

2. Twilio

Twilio provides API-based solutions for SMS marketing, which covers a wide range of use cases like sending alerts, product updates, OTPs, etc.

3. SimpleTexting

SimpleTexting is an SMS marketing platform designed for small businesses, and it offers cost-effective solutions for SMS marketing, like pre-built templates, auto-replies, and message scheduling.

4. TextMagic

TextMagic is an easy-to-use and cost-effective SMS marketing platform. It provides a simple web UI to send and schedule SMS campaigns for a starting price of $0.049 per sent text message.

5. Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a one-stop marketing platform that provides SMS marketing services in addition to email campaigns. It supports personalized SMS messages, automation, and in-depth analytics.

5. Moosend

Moosend is a general-purpose email marketing platform with SMS marketing features. It enables you to craft automated SMS flows, segment contacts, and monitor campaign performance with ease.

6. Avochato

Avochato is a customer engagement-focused messaging platform via SMS. It provides native integration with CRMs, enabling companies to automate SMS replies, handle conversations, and optimize communication.

Get started with SMS marketing automation

Mobile marketing, specifically in the form of SMS marketing campaigns is arguably one of the most effective approaches for engaging customers, selling, and boosting customer loyalty. Through techniques such as personalization, audience segmentation, A/B tests and correct timing of delivery, businesses can achieve the best results when carrying out their SMS campaigns.

Furthermore, understanding the regulation requirements and selecting a suitable SMS service provider will also add more effectiveness to the campaign.

SMS marketing has been forever effective, and it’s not going to change in the near future. If you’re thinking of automating your SMS marketing campaigns, then you should definitely try out Mobile Text Alerts, which is an advanced business texting solution that just works - so you can enjoy the benefits of SMS without having to micromanage things.

Get your free Mobile Text Alerts trial now!

FAQ

How do you market through SMS?

Marketing through SMS is similar to other marketing channels. You can use an SMS platform or API to create compelling content with a strong call to action and send it to a targeted contact list that has similar preferences.

Is automating SMS marketing campaigns expensive?

No, automating SMS marketing campaigns doesn't have to be expensive. The ROI in the long run will offset costs.

Does SMS marketing provide better returns than email marketing?

SMS marketing is not intended as a replacement for email marketing but as a supplement. Comparing it to email isn’t the best way to look at it, because they are different mediums. SMS costs more per message than email but has a higher open rate and so can result in more engagement—which is why it can yield a positive return in its own right.

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Author Bio - Jigar Agrawal

Jigar Agrawal is a Digital Marketing Manager at eSparkBiz Technologies. He is passionate about anything related to marketing and trending technologies. He wants to leverage the world of technology and social media, where every day there is a chance of new possibilities and innovation.