SMS marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies. Many businesses use text messages in their routine marketing strategy campaign. But to make sure the strategy is effective, you must use it the right way. Often, businesses make too many mistakes in their SMS drip campaigns that do not get them the results they are hoping for.
This is why they must learn what these mistakes are so that they learn the best ways to avoid them.
Common SMS Marketing Mistakes
Let’s take a look at all the common SMS marketing mistakes that can be detrimental to your marketing campaign:
1. Missing Call to Action
A call to action pushes customers to act on what you want them to do. The whole purpose of SMS marketing is to push your customers into making a decision and performing an action that benefits your company.
If you fail to include an effective CTA in your messages, your message has gone to waste. Once you build a desire in your audience by sending them a message, you must also tell them what they need to do next.
Be sure that the CTA is direct and you don’t confuse your audience. Your CTA must direct what you want your audience to do.
Try out some Frequently Used CTAs in Text Messages:
- Click Here to Discover More.
- Earn more with (……)
- Go to (……)
- Subscribe for Free Today!
- Don’t Miss it!
2. Repetitive Messages
When you send a text message, you must make sure that you are adding value to the lives of your customer. This means that when you send them repetitive messages that have the same offer, your potential customers will lose interest. This is why you must come up with new messages, if not offers, every time you send your customers a message.
Stay fresh with your Text Message marketing so that your customers do not lose interest and are open to what you are offering them.
3. More Messages than Necessary
Sending too many messages may seem like a good idea to stay in the eyes of your customers, but that is not the best possible idea. If your customers keep receiving messages from you, they might start thinking you are bothering them.
You must stay in the eyes of your customers, but you shouldn’t annoy them as they might start viewing your company in a bad light.
Texting daily is not the best approach if you want your customers to be interested in the services and products you offer.
4. Disregard for Business Hours
Do you hate it when your phone rings out of nowhere while having a quiet dinner with your family?
Nobody likes to be contacted after working hours, even if it is just a text message. You need to respect the individual lives your customers lead, and you shouldn’t disturb them then.
Your customers will not appreciate it, and you will also get a bad reputation. This is why it is very important to ensure that you have high regard for business hours and only message during those timings. Schedule your messages in advance, so you don’t have to worry about not sending the messages on time.
5. Robotic Texts
Marketing in today’s world is all about standing out. You need to personalize your approach to the SMS drip campaign and let your personality shine through. Sending generic messages might not be the best approach for your business.
To ensure that your business does well, you need to remove the element of generic messages and add something that might be unique for your audiences.
Use your SMS broadcast to initiate a conversation, and you can do that with the help of a personalized message.
6. Shorter URLs
URLs take a lot of space, more than you can spare on a text message. With that in mind, you must always shorten your URLs so that you have ample space to type your message. With an SMS, you are limited to 160 characters; a long URL can take up a big chunk.
Moreover, to avoid your customers looking at your message as spam, you need to shorten URLs. Short URLs have a higher clickability rate, and this way, you will have more clicks on your website.
7. Longer List
You cannot just keep messaging the same people over and over again. You need to work on your SMS list and grow it.
You need to acquire more and more members to send out messages. The longer your list gets, the better it is for your business as you will be marketing to more and more people.
To increase your customer list, you can offer incentives to your customers that they might receive after they subscribe to you. This will motivate many customers to subscribe to your messages and expand your list.
8. Less Pushy
Your primary focus is to increase sales, but you must make sure that your customers are not under the impression that you are continuously trying to sell them something or the other.
Be very smart with your messages and make sure that you grab the attention of your audience, not by trying to sell them something but by speaking to them. Be as conversational in your messages as you can so that your audience does not get the wrong impression.
9. Overlooking Holidays
Timing is of utmost importance when it comes to sending messages that we already discussed earlier. You need to give some breathing space to your target audience and avoid reaching them, especially during Holidays. If you overlook Holidays your target audience will put you in avoid or no reply list and you yourself will kill your chance to get a response.
10. Neglecting Compliance Guidelines
Last but not the least, missing out on compliance guidelines can be the biggest mistake rather you can say the biggest blunder ever you can do in SMS marketing. The recent compliance guidelines say that the 10 DLC registration is necessary to run any A2P SMS campaign. You should certainly get the idea of it and strictly follow it.
Conclusion:
On the surface, SMS marketing is simple, but there is a lot that can go wrong. Businesses should make sure that they follow the right marketing strategy to ensure that they make the most of it. These marketing mistakes can help you learn and devise a strong SMS marketing strategy.
