Before embarking on any new marketing strategy, it is imperative that you and your team are very clear on the do’s and don’ts of the medium that you are using. That goes double for Text Message Marketing.
Given the fact that text message marketing is uncharted territory for many marketers in 2020, it is critical to the growth and reputation of your business that you familiarize yourself with the ins and outs of this innovative tool before planning any major campaigns.
To that end, this article will detail some of the most critical mistakes your business might already be making in your text message marketing- as well as how to remedy them.
Is Your Business Making These Critical Text Message Marketing Mistakes?
- Not asking for permission.
This is arguably the most critical and potentially expensive mistake your business can make in text message marketing, hence its position in the number one spot!
According to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), businesses must have express written consent to contact customers via text with any marketing messages. Failure to comply can result in fines per unlawful message. Furthermore, it could damage the reputation of your business with annoyed customers.
Be sure to include opt-in instructions on every available channel to allow interested customers to subscribe before using anyone’s contact information for the purpose of text message marketing.
- Poor communication with team members.
This mistake applies to pretty much any aspect of your business and especially in the context of marketing efforts.
Consider the fact that many marketing tools serve different functions: increasing brand awareness, generating/engaging leads, increasing sales, etc. If the branding of your business is not uniform across channels and campaigns, it will make accomplishing any and all marketing goals quite the challenge.
When embarking on a text message marketing campaign, there are a few things that you need to clarify with your team:
- Branding (brand colors, fonts, tone of voice, use of logos, etc.)
- Time-sensitive and specific goals
- Resources and plans
Have a meeting with your team to speak about the details listed above. Then, keep all of the information organized and in a location that is accessible to relevant staff members.
Not only will this aid in achieving your campaign goal(s), but it will also help greatly in increasing brand awareness. Think of a brand that you know and love. You can probably see their logo or an ad and recognize the brand immediately. That is because of their consistency across channels and campaigns. And that is the level of recognition that you should strive for with your business!
- Not connecting with new subscribers right away.
When a customer subscribes to your business’ text message marketing, make sure that you are sending them a ‘welcome’ message right away. Failure to do so will potentially lead to a high ‘unsubscribe’ rate.
If new subscribers don’t receive their first text from your business for several days or weeks, they very well may forget why they signed up in the first place, leading them to opt-out right away. However, you certainly can’t have a staff member sitting around and waiting for new subscribers to welcome!
Instead, automate this process! Set up your business texting platform so that when a customer subscribes, they automatically receive a welcome message- without any additional human intervention.
- Sending texts at inappropriate times.
The general rule for the timing of text message marketing is to stick to regular business hours. However, this is not necessarily a hard-and-fast rule.
The timing of your text message marketing also depends on your business’ ability to predict when customers are most likely to be making a buying decision. And although it is probably rare that customers will be making a buying decision late at night, for instance, it is not altogether impossible. It just depends on your business.
Inaccurately predicting when your text message marketing will have the greatest conversion rate could prove to be a drag on your efforts. Don’t be afraid to play around and experiment a bit. Consider running some A/B testing where the only variable is the time of day in which marketing messages are being sent. Gather your results, and try to replicate them.
Once you have the ideal timing of your text message marketing nailed down, you will find that your efforts were well worth it!
- Not including links.
What is the goal of your text message marketing campaign? It is most likely to direct your subscribers’ attention back to your business and/or website in some capacity. Therefore, you need to make it as easy as possible for customers to perform your desired action.
Include a link back to your website, product pages, social media, etc. Of course, this will depend on what exactly your call to action is (more on that later). However, how can you include web links and stay within your 160-character text limit?
Try using a link shortener! Link shorteners are quite well-named since they do exactly what it sounds like: take your lengthy URL and turn it into a more compact, aesthetically-pleasing link.
It’s rather easy to locate free versions of this tool across the internet, so which one you use is entirely based on your own preference. Not only will a link shortener help you to stay within the character limit of most texts, but it will be much easier on the eyes of your subscribers.
- Forgetting a CTA.
Each of your marketing messages must, must, must have a call to action! You need to tell customers exactly what you want them to do once they have finished reading your message.
This is even true for non-promotional messaging. For instance, maybe you are alerting text subscribers about a new blog post on your website. The purpose of the message is not necessarily to ‘make a sale’ but rather for those customers to read the blog post in full (and hopefully spend a little extra time on your site). Tell them that!
You never want to come off as sounding ‘pushy’ or ‘too sales-y,’ but you do need to tell customers what they should do next. Quickly let them know exactly what value they will receive from performing your desired action and why they need to do it right away.
Final thoughts:
Even though we spent this entire article outlining ‘best practices’ for your business’ text message marketing efforts, don’t let that scare you away from innovation! Some of the best marketing happens when a business takes norms and expectations and subverts them completely!
Now, it is important to be smart and careful; after all, the reputation of your business could very well be on the line with one distasteful campaign. Brainstorm fresh ideas with your team regularly to make your business’ text message marketing stand out from the crowd! For more tips and tricks for nailing text message marketing, check out the rest of our blog!
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