Text Marketing Best Practices

Consent

People have to give their consent to receive SMS marketing text alerts. Not only is this done to prevent breaking laws and incurring fines and penalties, but it also ensures that only clients who are interested in your product or services are receiving the message. This keeps your brand name strong, as it eliminates the backlash of annoyed customers bombarded with your business’ ads unwillingly.

Consent can be given through the texting of a keyword to your business shortcode in order to agree to receive promotional text messages. Although you do not need consent for transaction messages, such as appointment reminders or noncommercial messages, you still need to have consent before contacting them through text message.

Opt-out

You also need to allow your subscribers the ability to opt-out of your text messaging list, usually by texting the word “STOP” to end the subscription. By allowing your customers the freedom to either receive or not receive your text messages, your company is seen in a better light than it would be if it decided to be infringing on the personal space of the customer.

Disclaimers

Clients must also be aware of the fact that it might cost them to receive text messages, even though they have an unlimited text message plan. This is required by the CTIA, but also a way to ensure that your clients do not get angered if they unwillingly and unknowingly get charged extra fees on their phone bill.

Frequency

In the practice of not alienating or annoying your potential customers and subscribers, the amount of text message advertisements being sent should be limited to no more than 2-4 per month. This amount also needs to be explicitly explained to the subscribers to avoid infringing on your company’s terms and agreements for your text message marketing conditions.

Timing

The Text Message Alerts should also only be sent during normal business hours, which can avoid annoying 1 AM texts that subscribers can’t even respond to in a timely manner. The entire focus of text message marketing is to ensure that customers are alerted when there are special deals or events your business is offering exclusively to their subscribers; this trust can be easily broken the moment the subscriber feels annoyed or that they have their privacy infringed upon.

Content

Companies must also make sure that every text is meaningful, concise, and clear enough to get the message across. Ensure that all SMS marketing text alerts are not written in “text lingo”, which makes your business and your offers look less appealing and less professional.

Identification

Include your company’s name to ensure that new customers will know who you are. You should include your event name, address, contact information, and links to your messages as well.

Overall, this new era of technological advancement is a gift that cannot be taken lightly and should be treated with respect. Make sure that you get your point across in your text messages clearly, professionally, with timing and efficiency, instead of too frequently, unprofessionally, without consent, and against the terms and conditions of your agreements. By following all the codes and conduct, your company can reap the reward instead of paying the penalties.

A perfect text marketing message must contain:

Business name (State Diner)
location (NY, NY)
offer (free dessert)
requirement (a free dessert with the purchase of an entree)
expiry if any (expires on 04/27)
Coupon redemption instructions
Reply STOP to cancel.
Msg & data rates may apply.

Sometimes, a 160-character SMS is not enough to fit all the information. In that case, use MMS marketing is a perfect way to deliver coupons.

UNSTOP Keywords

UNSTOP keyword allows users to opt back at any time to receive messages from you. TXTImpact platform by default handles UNSTOP keywords for all campaigns.

The keyword is not case sensitive and triggers an opt-in only when sent as a single word, with no punctuation or leading spaces (any trailing spaces are trimmed).

Examples of valid opt-ins: "UNSTOP" "Unstop" "unstop" "UNStop".

A generic standard message will be returned to a user and informs them that they can now receive text messages from this number.

Avoid Public or shared domain shorteners

Each program should be associated with a single business's web domain. We recommend using a full domain or a
branded short URL.

In mass text messages or individual one-to-one messages, you shouldn't use publically or shared domain URL shorteners.
The carriers may block messages containing the following common URL shorteners:

bit.ly
goo.gl
tinyurl.com
Tiny.cc
lc.chat
is.gd
soo.gd
s2r.co
Clicky.me
budurl.com
bc.vc

TXTImpact offers common URL shorteners which can be used with caution. The best practice is to use your own domain for short links as well. Speak to the sales team if you want to use your own domain for short links.

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