10 Common SMS Marketing Campaign Mistakes To Avoid

Text message marketing has revived during the last several years with the growth of smartphone users worldwide. In 2019, the number of people using a smartphone in the US only is estimated to reach 248.68 million. SMS marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies that can help you retain your customers. However, it can also make you lose a lot of your subscribers if you keep making some basic mistakes. In this post, we’ll introduce you to the top 10 fatal SMS marketing mistakes, which can cost you your reputation.

   1. Wrong Audience

Knowing your customers and understanding their needs is the number one priority of all businesses. You can’t create effective SMS campaigns if you don’t know your audience. Do market research and analyze your target audience to understand their preferences and know their wants and needs. Create a strategy that is appropriate and effective for your audience. Consider age, gender, location, concerns, and behavior. Based on all the characteristics of your target audience, create a text marketing campaign that would be the most appealing to the people you send it to.

   2. Sending the Same Message More Than Once

One of the features of SMS messages that make it so effective is that text marketing often creates a sense of urgency. When the person knows that a specific offer is available exclusively for a limited time only, there will be higher chances of an increase in sales. However, when you keep sending the same message, again and again, people won’t react to the offers with so much enthusiasm. Moreover, they will get bored and simply opt-out. That’s why it’s essential to keep your text marketing campaigns unique and creative.

   3. Sending Messages at a Wrong Time

Timing is extremely important for bulk text messaging services. Remember that with text messaging, your subscribers can easily opt-out of receiving messages from you. So you don’t want to create any situation where the customer would want to unsubscribe. Make sure to follow all the timing rules of SMS marketing:

• Don’t text too early, before the person had his cup of coffee, or too late when the customer is already asleep.

• Avoid sending messages during peak hours when people are overwhelmed with other activities.

• Don’t send messages during weekends due to a high unsubscribe rate.

   

   

   4. Irrelevant Frequency

You want to find an optimal frequency for sending messages. If you send too many messages and start annoying your customers, they won’t wait too long before unsubscribing. Being annoyingly frequent is one of the main SMS marketing campaign mistakes. In such cases, even if people don’t opt-out, they will simply disregard your texts and you will end up sending a lot of invaluable messages. However, you don’t want to be too rare with messages either, as people will forget that they subscribed to you and might think that they got a spam message. So, depending on your industry and subscribers, you need to find the best and most optimal frequency for your business.

   5. Not Using a Clear Language

When it comes to language use, you want to be as specific and clear as possible. Avoid using too industry-specific words that can be hard for customers to understand. So keep in mind that you are creating the message for people and not a business community, and avoid using language that is too complex. However, that doesn’t mean that you should use acronyms or slang. To keep up with your brand image, use professional language, avoiding too complex terms and language.

   6. Generic Content

Effective SMS campaigns are always created for a specific audience. Hence, being too generic in your content can result in a low engagement level. People want to feel a personalized approach. And this can be achieved even with bulk text messaging. Divide your audience into different segments based on their gender, age or other features and create customized messages for each group. This will help avoid creating generic content.

   7. Not Double-Checking the Message

Never ever forget to double-check your content before sending out the message. Never rush into sending the text before checking your message for any grammar or spelling mistakes and errors. You’ll be amazed to find out how many people can opt-out from receiving text promotions from you because of the mistakes in your texts. Spelling and grammar mistake can seriously damage your brand image, so make sure to always double-check the content. And don't forget to include all the relevant information like contact details.

   8. Confusing and Lengthy Procedures

Your texts must be clear and easy to follow-up not only in terms of the language but also in terms of the call to actions and other procedures that are in the text campaign. For example, the subscription process can sometimes be too complicated requiring a QR Code. If the opt-in process is too complex and requires the customer to send multiple messages or try more than once to subscribe, then there’s a high chance that the person will be demotivated to continue.

   9. Sending Texts Without Permission

Sending messages without permission can not only be annoying but also it can be an illegal act. This can be a very common SMS marketing campaign mistake. You can always follow some tips which can help you manage your SMS unsubscribe rate, but don’t get involved in any illegal acts. You can significantly disrupt the image of your business and it can take years before you’re able to improve your brand reputation again.

   10. Using an Unreliable SMS Partner

You need to be very cautious when choosing your SMS service provider company. The market is now full of different service providers, however, not all of them are reliable enough. Carefully analyze the market and look at the reviews available online to see what feedback people leave to each company. You want to choose a company that is trustworthy like Textedly. Our customers love us for the simple interface, superior customer service, effective features, and the great value for an affordable price. Textedly was ranked as a high performer in its service for 3 consecutive seasons of Spring, Summer, and Fall 2018.

We offer you to try out our free demo to reveal the wonders that text marketing can do to your business!