If done right, text message marketing can be a simple way to expand your reach and get more people to champion your business. However, to fully capitalise on this marketing channel, it’s important to create effective messages that encourage potential customers to take action. By employing the following six tips, you can ensure that you create effective and compelling messages that will help you meet your marketing goals.
Develop Compelling Calls to Action
Your messages should always include a call to action. According to Ginny Soskey at HubSpot, the best calls to action include active language, convey a sense of urgency, clearly correlate to your company, and are prominent.
Although she is talking specifically about webpages, many of her suggestions are relevant to text message campaigns as well. Your message should not just provide information, it should also compel your users to act, whether it encourages them to opt-in to a campaign, redeem a special offer, or otherwise interact with your company.
Create Messages with Value
Another important aspect of effective text marketing messages is creating value for your customers with your communications. Before sending out a message, you should always ask what value it provides to your mobile audience. The value should be immediately understood upon reading the text message.
It’s important to avoid sending too many texts that have the same offers, deals, or information about your company as your website or email campaigns. According to a recent article in Entreprenuer magazine, texting is a more immediate communication medium, so it is the perfect avenue for sending special offers in real-time.
Short and Simple Messages
SMS carriers limit each text to 160 characters. It’s a good idea to avoid going over the 160-character limit, as data and messaging rates may apply for some of your customers. Therefore, the best approach for an effective message is one that is short and sweet. You want to relay your message in the fewest characters as possible. If you need to include more information, add a link to your website or blog for your customers to click.
Choose Wording Carefully
Since you are limited in space, it’s important to choose your words carefully. Although you are sending a text message, you should try to avoid abbreviations and slang. According to Marketing Profs, using text speak or abbreviations may make you come across as unprofessional, plus some customers may not understand your message.
Choose the right words so your message is clear but concise.
It’s also important to be sure that you are very clear about your message or offer. Any limitations to an offer, such as time or minimum amount of money spent, should be clearly stated in the message.
Sign your Message
When determining your message length, always include room for a signature line. You want to be sure that your recipients know exactly from whom the message comes. Otherwise, it could lead to confusion, including customers believing the message came from a competitor. You may choose to set your senderID as your business name in which case sign off you message with your name to add a personal touch.
Write for the Right Audience
In order to write an effective text marketing message, you should always keep your audience in mind. The message should be written for your customers, not your peers.
Research your audience so you know the most effective types of messages.
By knowing the likes, dislikes, and behaviour patterns of your target demographic, you can create the right type of message to motivate more of the recipients to take action.
Effective text message marketing is about creating compelling and valuable messages for your mobile audience. Much of your work will be trial and error, since every situation is unique, so monitoring the results of each campaign can help you build a more effective text marketing strategy as you go along. However, before you begin, always ensure that you keep in mind these simple tips for creating effective messages. If you are ready to get started, try FireText for free.