3 Ways AI Can Maximize Your SMS Marketing Strategy

Artificial intelligence (AI) enables machines to simulate human intelligence. In turn, AI software can solve complex problems, make decisions and learn over time, just like a real person. By 2030, AI is expected to raise U.S. GDP by 21%, and 97% of business owners already believe ChatGPT can benefit their businesses. 

When it comes to marketing, AI solutions like ChatGPT can help companies craft and optimize their SMS marketing strategies with ease. 

So, if you’re wondering how to use AI for marketing, keep reading. 

What Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a conversational AI model that can answer questions, assist with tasks, compose marketing copy and write computer code. It was trained on an extensive data set of web pages, articles and books.

ChatGPT has amassed immense popularity since its launch in November 2022, acquiring one million users within five days of its release. Marketers have started using it to write for emails, blog articles, web pages and SMS campaigns.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how AI can make SMS marketing easier and more cost-effective.

1. AI Can Streamline Audience Segmentation and User Persona Creation

Segmentation is the key to successful SMS marketing campaigns. You can segment your SMS recipient lists based factors, such as:

• Age
• Location
• Purchase history
• User behavior
• Interests
• Preferences

AI algorithms can analyze vast customer data sets and identify these subgroups in seconds, saving your team the trouble of running the statistical analysis.

AI can also craft accurate user personas for each segment of your target audience, using real-world data to inform their details. These personas can guide your marketing strategy and help you craft marketing messages that resonate with each user persona’s top needs and desires.

2. AI Can Produce Compelling SMS Templates

SMS templates are pre-written text messages you can personalize and send in bulk to specific audience segments. Just as AI can help you identify these segments, it can also compose messages tailored to their user personas and include placeholders for personalized information, such as recipients’ names or unique promotion codes.

AI creates engaging SMS templates, thanks to its use of:

• Natural language processing (NLP) – NLP allows AI tools to understand human language and nuanced sentiments. It does so by analyzing past SMS interactions that were successful and mimicking their tone, language and style.
• Contextual awareness – AI stands out for its ability to factor in context. For instance, AI can learn to send welcome offers to new customers and reserve loyalty discounts for those with more extensive purchase histories.
• A/B testing optimizations – A/B testing is a process of sending two versions of a message to an audience and seeing which one performs better. Through A/B testing, AI can determine which words, phrases, promotions and CTAs lead to the greatest engagement and highest response rates. After that, it can optimize all messages going forward to incorporate these insights. 

As you can see, AI can do an impressive amount of work on your behalf. You simply need to provide AI tools, like ChatGPT, with the right prompts. 

SMS Template Prompt Examples

Here are some examples of prompts you can feed to ChatGPT while working on your next SMS marketing campaign:

• “Summarize the following information into a one-to-two sentence SMS message: [Add your message’s information here] and tell the user to download the [your company] app.”
• “Write a one-to-two sentence SMS message to a user who’s in the consideration stage of their buyer’s journey using this information: [Information].”
• “Write a one-to-two sentence SMS message welcoming a new customer to our loyalty program and offering them 10% on their next purchase.”
• “Condense this marketing email into a one-to-two sentence SMS message: [your latest marketing email] and encourage the user to shop our online sale.”

While ChatGPT can spit out rapid-fire messages in a few clicks, skilled writers never settle for their first drafts. As a result, you should always review ChatGPT’s writing and make revisions as needed. 

Luckily, you can outsource this step of the process to ChatGPT as well. Here are some prompts you can use to have AI implement your desired revisions:

• “Make this SMS message more concise.”
• “Rewrite this SMS message for a Gen X audience.”
• “Remove any mentions of product names in this SMS message.” 

3. AI Can Conceptualize a Series of SMS Messages 

Most successful SMS campaigns include a series of SMS messages. You can use these series to persuade customers to make additional purchases or to inspire prospective buyers to revisit their abandoned carts.

AI can help you construct a series of messages by:

• Researching and identifying what types of emails to include in the series. 
• Suggesting compelling promotions and CTAs for each one. 
• Generating persuasive SMS message templates.
• Personalizing messages so they contain the most relevant customer data. 
• Determining the best times to send messages to optimize open rates and conversions, while factoring in customers’ time zones. 

In other words, AI can complete an otherwise time-consuming and resource-heavy project with unparalleled efficiency.

Benefits and Limitations of Using AI as Part of Your SMS Strategy

Some benefits of employing ChatGPT and other free AI tools are that they allow you to:

• Speed up your research
• Automate data analysis
• Generate compelling marketing copy
• Employ easy personalization
• Cut costs

While AI has many advantages, it’s not without its limitations. ChatGPT and other AI solutions are:

• Still computer-based technologies – While AI is astonishingly sophisticated these days, it hasn’t outpaced humans just yet. As a result, it may misinterpret context, miss conversational nuances and make grammatical errors from time to time.
• Outdated – ChatGPT’s training data set only included information from September 2021 and before. As a result, it may not be capable of producing accurate responses to queries about events that took place past this time (unless you feed it this data manually).
• Not skilled at multitasking – AI does best when it focuses on one task at a time. Asking AI to perform multiple tasks simultaneously can lead to more inaccuracies and inefficiencies.

By understanding these limitations, you can leverage AI effectively and reap the rewards of its many benefits. 

Supercharge Your SMS Marketing With AI

From segmenting your recipients to crafting personalized messages, AI can do wonders for your SMS strategy. Now, you just need the right SMS platform to manage your campaign.

Textedly provides simple SMS and MMS solutions for businesses, like yours. It’s affordable, versatile and easy to use. 

Ready to elevate your SMS marketing campaign with AI? Try Textedly for free today.