Text Message Marketing Best Practices
Understanding what text message marketing is, and how you might best put it to get more sales for your business.
Like with email marketing, text message marketing is a matter of simply having a prospect’s mobile phone number in a database and having permission to text them from your business.
There are a number of different software that can accomplish this for you and I’ll go over that shortly, but first I want to point out why you may want to consider text message marketing as well as some of my favorite ways to get people to “opt-in” to receive messages from you and a couple of my favorite ways to use it.
Text marketing is great because most people have their phone in their pocket or very close to them at all times, as I write this my phone is about 8” away from my left hand, and guess what, if it makes that familiar Ding sound, my curiosity will take my attention and I’ll have to delay my typing to see who’s texting me and what they want to share.
That said, it’s a powerful way to reach people almost instantly and because of that, I don’t think it should be overused. Although, you’ll have to be the judge of how often people will allow you to text them.
Also, people can opt-out of getting messages from you, so overdoing it could cause them to leave. I’ll tell you my favorite way to message people in a minute. It works like gangbusters!
First, we need people to opt-in.
Getting people to actually opt-in for your messages is required by law and above that, in my opinion, it’s just the right thing to do.
If you’re like me you’ve received unauthorized text messages to your phone and it feels like an invasion of privacy. I won’t tell you exactly how I respond back to some of the more aggravating ones.
Let’s just say, most of them don’t text back!
Anyway, there are a number of offers you can make to get people to opt-in.
Here are a few:
- Text to receive a discount
- Text to get a first visit offer
- Text for updates
- Text for specials
- Text for a freebie
You get the idea, and if you already have an email list, you can email the people on it and tell them about your new text list and ask them to join.
Saying something like “Hey, join my text list so I can send you marketing messages” probably won’t work, but naming your list can help.
We somewhat recently had a customer who got on the text message marketing bandwagon with us and we emailed his list and just told them we were adding a new VIP text list where we’d be announcing specials and important info.
It worked, of their 2500 person email list, about 800 of them joined the text list (I have to provide a disclaimer here. These results are not typical and are in no way a promise that yours will be the same).
Okay, so now they’re on your text message marketing list, how can you best utilize it?
Ready, let’s go.
My absolute favorite way to use this is when you’re having a slow day. And I do recommend offering some sort of an incentive to bring people in. Remember, they’re going to receive this message almost instantly, so here’s how it works.
Slow day or slow couple of hours creep up and you send a text message,
- For the next two hours, we’re offering 25% off of [insert your product here].
- If you have a restaurant, this could be a free dessert with a meal.
- Hair salon, a percentage off, or a bundled offer.
- Retail store, a percentage off or bundled offer.
- Service business, two spots open claim yours now.
- Chiropractor, 25% off a massage or adjustment.
Of course, these are examples and the offer is up to you and any special offer will do.
What’s important is to keep it time-sensitive, like our first example where we said it’s for the next two hours. This will get customers in your business or calling fast, and turn your slow time into a profitable one.
I don’t personally like using text message marketing when just sending an update or a regular offer, but I find them very effective at turning a slow day or time around.
Did I mention it’s amazingly inexpensive too?
If you’d like to talk about possibly implementing text message marketing into your business, let’s chat. Click here to contact me.