Best SMS Marketing Agency | SMS Marketing for Agencies [2024]

The fantastic read rates of SMS…

The effective response potential…

The ability to be confident that your messages are actually seen…

All handled for you.

So you can enjoy all the benefits—without the time and hassle of needing to micromanage everything for you.

That’s what an SMS marketing agency can do for you.

Get a free SMS marketing platform trial now and ask about one-on-one SMS marketing coaching—so that you can see for yourself how an SMS marketing agency can give you that marketing boost you’re looking for… without the hassle.

Or read on to find out more about the best SMS marketing agencies—and how you can select the best one for your business.

(Bonus! If you’re a marketing agency considering adding SMS marketing to your list of offerings, there’s a section below specifically for you too.)

What’s the best SMS marketing agency?

Let’s jump right into the big question you’re probably wondering…

“What’s the best SMS marketing agency?”

The interesting thing is that there aren’t a lot of agencies out there that have any sort of specialization in SMS. That’s despite the thousands of digital advertising agencies that exist.

As such, it’s difficult to locate information on how effective agencies are at managing SMS marketing specifically.

So your best bet may be to go with an actual SMS messaging platform that offers one-on-one coaching to walk you through the best strategies for your business.

But if you do decide that you want to go with an actual service, one agency that seems to stand out the most is DOE Media, a digital marketing company with a perfect Google review score. (And that’s not an easy feat, trust us!)

List of SMS marketing agencies

If you want to explore more SMS marketing agencies, here are some you could investigate.

(Note that we do not personally vouch for any of these agencies.)

1. DOE Media

DOE Media is a digital marketing agency that has a perfect Google review score over a period of 2 years (which isn’t long but it’s not brand new either!).

A perfect score without any detractors is a solid indication that they’re doing something right. The company was even mentioned in the Inc. 5000 list.

SMS marketing is one of their specific offerings out of several other digital marketing offerings. And although it’s difficult to find customers talking about their SMS marketing services in particular, customers overall seem quite happy with the results they’re getting from DOE Media’s work.

2. Thrive

Thrive is a robust marketing agency that includes SMS marketing as a part of its services.

As with DOE Media (and most SMS marketing agency services), there isn’t much info online specifically about the performance of their SMS marketing services. But Thrive has a decent online presence with enough reviews to determine that it is a legitimate marketing agency that has been a positive force for many clients.

Note that SMS marketing is only a small piece of Thrive’s numerous digital marketing offerings. This could be both an asset and a detriment—it could be a case of convenience because you can bundle your digital marketing services together. Or it could be a case of spreading services out too thin without really specializing in the service you’re needing help with.

3. MuteSix

MuteSix is a performance marketing company that has been around for several years—and has even been the victim of a phishing scam. (So if you receive any outreach from someone claiming to be from them, make sure it’s really them before you give them any info!)

MuteSix has stuck around and developed an online presence and, similar to Thrive, offers SMS marketing services as one of their several offerings. Unlike Thrive, however, their offerings are much more limited in scope, which could be a good thing if it means they have more resources to devote to perfecting the SMS marketing aspect of their services.

4. Snow Agency

Snow Agency is another digital marketing agency that pops up when investigating SMS marketing agencies.

While Snow Agency has been around for a few years, which is a good sign (they’re not brand new to the game), reviews online regarding their services in general are mixed—and their online presence is not terribly robust.

Some people express appreciation for growth in their business as a result of Snow Agency, while others are not as happy with their experience.

5. Mobile Text Alerts

OK, this is kind of cheating.

We’re not really an SMS marketing agency and we can’t handle all of your SMS marketing for you.

However, we are an SMS platform, so we have a lot of experience (10 years) with SMS marketing. Our team members can give you one-on-one coaching and ideas on the best ways to go about your SMS marketing efforts so that you can be equipped with the knowledge you need in order to see the best results.

Which means you don’t have to rely on (and pay for) an agency—which is definitely a plus!

What does an SMS marketing agency do? (How can they help?)

One thing we should clear up is this…

There’s actually no such thing as a pure “SMS marketing agency.” As far as we’re aware (and as you can see from the list of agencies above), no agency specializes specifically in SMS marketing.

That being said, there are certainly agencies that offer SMS marketing services. So what can these SMS marketing agencies actually do? Why should you use them?

1. Develop strategy

An SMS marketing agency can help you figure out the best SMS strategy to help you meet your desired goals.

This can be anything from big-picture strategy to granular, week-by-week strategy.

An agency can help you ask yourselves the right questions so that you can make better decisions about an SMS marketing plan—rather than just fumbling around aimlessly.

2. Execute strategy

Not only can an agency help you develop a strategy, an agency can help you execute that strategy.

Depending on the scope of your agreement with the agency, they may actually be able to do the manual work of carrying out your plan.

3. Adhere to compliance rules

For those worried about not following all the right compliance guidelines, an agency can help you navigate through those waters.

Note that in the modern SMS marketing climate, compliance isn’t typically so much about staying within the rules of the law. (The current laws aren’t too strict in regards to SMS.)

Rather, today’s SMS compliance is primarily about staying within mobile carrier compliance so that you can get the best message delivery possible.

4. Analyze results

Once your SMS marketing strategy has been executed, you need to analyze the results so that you can measure the success (or lack thereof) of your efforts.

An agency can help you analyze those results and make determinations based on the data you see.

5. Optimize efforts

After analyzing results, an agency can help you make optimizations to your marketing campaigns based on the analysis.

They can help you determine what elements could be optimized and the best potential ways to optimize them. That way, you can see better success from your efforts and continue to learn and grow.

6. Improve other marketing areas

As mentioned, agencies don’t necessarily specialize in SMS marketing. Their services include a whole range of digital marketing services.

So hiring an SMS marketing agency means you also have access to improve other areas of your digital marketing, such as email, SEO, CRO, and paid ads.

Should you use an SMS marketing agency?

Possibly the biggest question regarding SMS marketing is should you use them?

Based on our past experience with agencies in general, here’s what I would say…

Agencies are not a magic bullet. Generally, it’s better if your own employees can do the work if possible, because your own employees will have more skin in the game, more accountability—and often aren’t even that much more expensive.

With an agency, you likely won’t get the huge return you’re looking for. And you’ll still have to do a lot of work meeting up with them and keeping up with their performance.

That being said, if you have realistic expectations, an agency could be a helpful asset to your business, particularly if you don’t want to go through the hassle of hiring an employee to do the work.

An agency gives you more freedom to cut them loose if things aren’t working out, without having to worry about the awkward headache of firing an underperforming employee.

An agency could also allow you to work on digital marketing efforts you don’t have expertise in on a temporary basis while you try to find or train employees to do that work.

The bottom line is that there’s no straight answer for every business.

If you can do the work in-house, do it. But don’t rule out the possibility of hiring an SMS marketing agency.

What differentiates SMS marketing agencies?

So what would actually make SMS marketing agencies different from each other?

What questions could you ask to help you decide what would make one agency better than the other for your business?

While we don’t have experience with SMS marketing agencies, we do have a lot of experience with SMS marketing in general, so some good differentiators you may want to look out for would include:

• Do they understand the in’s and out’s of SMS marketing compliance?
• Are they able to help you navigate use cases that fall within SHAFT (Sex, Hate, Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco) and other “forbidden” categories (loans, insurance, etc.)?
• What SMS marketing tool do they use?
• Do they have any use cases or examples of past clients who were successful with SMS marketing?
• How hands-on and available are they to help with questions or concerns you may have?
• How informed will they keep you about progress?
• What do online reviewers say about them?
• How friendly and helpful are their representatives?
• Are they easy to work with?

How to choose an SMS marketing agency

Now, let’s say you’ve decided that you want to go ahead and try an SMS marketing agency.

How do you actually choose one?

Here are some criteria to keep in mind…

1. Consider differentiators (see “What differentiates SMS marketing agencies?” above)
2. Consider cost—you don’t want to go “cheap” or else you’ll get cheap results, but you also don’t want to overpay
3. Consider online reviews, but be cautious about them—reviews are not always reliable (they could be written by competitors, by the company themselves, by people with a chip on their shoulder, or even by AI)
4. Consider whether you enjoy interacting with them in your initial contacts
5. Consider level of experience after questioning about their differentiators

Since there actually aren’t a ton of options to choose from, your decision shouldn’t be too overwhelming.

How to incorporate SMS marketing for marketing agencies

Now perhaps you’re actually a marketing agency representative yourself—such as an owner or a marketer within the agency. And perhaps you’re considering adding SMS marketing to your list of digital marketing offerings.

That’s a great idea since the market for SMS marketing management isn’t too saturated! So offering this as a option will make your service more valuable since you’ll be able to offer something useful to your clients.

So how do you incorporate SMS marketing into your agency’s services?

1. Get some training

Get some training in the in’s and out’s of SMS marketing. That way, even if you hire someone with SMS marketing experience to work this aspect of your business for you, you can be more informed about everything that’s going on.

You want to be knowledgeable about the types of offerings your service provides.

2. Partner with a solid SMS marketing platform

Your service will be even more valuable if you partner up with a solid SMS marketing company.

This kind of partnership will allow you to not only provide consultation services but also execution services, with your clients not having to lift a finger.

Even if you don’t do the execution of the services yourself, you can point your clients in the right direction, and that can save them time and hassle of having to research SMS platforms for themselves.

(Plus, partnering with an SMS platform can be directly financially beneficial for you because you can get a referral or affiliate payout for every new client you bring in.)

3. Make sure your team is in the know

If needed, hire someone with SMS marketing experience—someone who knows the facets of SMS compliance and knows how to implement SMS marketing strategies.

The trickiest thing about SMS marketing is keeping up with all the rules, so you want to make sure your team is on top of that.

4. Establish a way to determine ROI

Another tricky aspect of SMS marketing is that the available reporting isn’t as robust as some other marketing methods.

Yet your clients will want to feel confident that they’re getting results. So you need to make sure that you can reassure them.

Take full advantage of the analytics available to SMS (delivery rates, click rates, unsubscribe rates, response rates). And try to find a way to tie them to your client’s success metrics, so that you can determine ROI for your client.

FAQ

What is an SMS marketing agency?

Although there aren’t really “SMS marketing agencies” proper (meaning, agencies that specialize in SMS marketing only or primarily), there are digital marketing agencies that offer SMS marketing as one of their services.

Therefore, a definition of an SMS marketing agency could be an agency that provides SMS marketing services, including planning and/or execution of SMS marketing initiatives.

What about an email and SMS marketing agency?

Digital marketing agencies that offer SMS marketing services will typically also offer email marketing services. So if you’re looking for a service that covers both, you’ll be able to find several. (See “List of SMS marketing agencies” above.)

Navigating the SMS marketing agency landscape…

As we’ve seen, there’s a lot to consider when it comes to SMS marketing agencies.

Some key takeaways include…

1. It’s generally best to have your marketing work done in-house when possible—you can even use an SMS marketing platform that gives you free coaching
2. Agencies can be useful, and there’s not a lot of competition for SMS marketing agencies, so there aren’t an overwhelming number of choices for you
3. DOE Media stands out as an SMS marketing agency you should check out
4. Choose a service that understands the field of SMS marketing and can help you develop and execute effective strategies
5. Marketing agencies looking to add SMS services should invest in training and partner with reliable SMS platforms

Interested in trying out SMS for yourself? Get a free trial now and see how it works.