A BEGINNER’S GUIDETO

TEXT MESSAGE MARKETING

We’ve been in the text message marketing industry for over half a decade. During that time we’ve learned a lot about what makes a text message marketing campaign successful, and we want to use that knowledge to help make you successful.

We know text message marketing works. It’s one of the most effective tools marketers can use to grow an active customer base and drive sales. As an example, one of our customers recently launched a text-to-win campaign which drew 30,000 responses in 30 days, with 81% of entrants choosing to opt-in to get further marketing messages post-entry. That’s adding more than 800 subscribers each day to your marketing list!

SMS means success. And we want to see that success happen for you.But you need a starting point.

Our customers have asked us a lot of good questions about text message marketing over the years we’ve been in business -- questions on best practices, federal regulations, and even simple how-tos and tips on list building. In response, we’ve assembled our collective knowledge into this helpful guide. Enjoy!

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INDEX

What is SMS marketing?

How does it work?When is it most effective?

How much does it cost?

Rules of the road

What you need to know before getting started with SMS

Picking an SMS partner

A list of things to think about when deciding on an SMS service

Building your list

Creative ways to expand your reach and advertise your

program

Creating a campaign

SMS copywriting tipsPicking the best time to send

Measuring success

Delivery rates, opens, clicks and other ways to measure

SMS marketing results

Building your mojo

Establishing a frequencyGrowing your program

Tracking trends

8Advanced tips and tricks

Collecting dataTargeting locations

Personalization

INTRO TO SMS MARKETING

Getting to know the landscape

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What is SMS marketing?

At its core, SMS marketing is sending text-message advertisements to consumers. When industry best p ra c t i c e s a re f o l l owe d , S M S marketing is one of the simplest and most effective ways for businesses to communicate with customers. It can be a powerful tool for driving sales and deepening relationships with a motivated customer base.

How do companies use SMS marketing? When is it most

effective?Companies began using SMS to send short, timely messages to customers in the early 2000s. It started with cell phone carriers, who use texts to customers billing and service updates. Today, companies around the world use SMS marketing to send customer alerts, updates, coupons and discounts, as well as to collect valuable customer information.

On average, text messages are read within four minutes ° of their receipt, so SMS campaigns are most effective w h e n t h e m e s s a g e s y o u communicate are immediate, useful to the customer, and carry a clear call-to-action.

How does text-message marketing work? How much

does it cost?Text marketing messages originate from a short code, a five- or six-digit number companies must use to communicate advertising messages to customers via SMS. Leasing and provisioning your own short code can be time-consuming (60-90 days to set up) and expensive ($500-$1500 per month). For this reason, many small businesses use an SMS marketing provider to gain access to shared short codes. This makes text messaging affordable and accessible for businesses of all sizes.

Companies offering text-marketing services on a shared short code usually charge either a small per-message fee or a flat monthly rate.

° Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_marketing#SMS_marketing

How does text differ from email?Text-message marketing is much like email marketing in that businesses can use a service to send bulk, one-time messages to their subscribers, create autoresponders and drip campaigns, separate customers into lists, and personalize content. But text-message marketing differs from email marketing in a number of ways.

1Text-message marketing is more closely regulated than email marketing. List advertisements and opt-in confirmations, for example, must contain certain language in order to be in compliance or marketers risk fines. So it is important to keep up to date with best practices and adhere to them always. (We’ll cover these regulations a little later.)

Text-marketing messages are limited to 160 plain-text characters and do not contain images. The only way to include visuals is to link to mobile-optimized landing pages with more information.

Text messaging costs more to send, but offers open and response rates that are dramatically higher than email (90% for SMS ° vs. 48% for the highest average industry open rate for email˘).

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° Source: http://designtaxi.com/news/31968/Conversational-Advertising-Emergent-Trend-in-Mobile-Advertising/˘ Source: h"p://mailchimp.com/resources/research/email-­‐marke3ng-­‐benchmarks-­‐by-­‐industry/

RULES OF THE ROADThings to know before getting

started

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About the Mobile Marketing AssociationThe Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the global nonprofit organization responsible for establishing mobile marketing best practices and standards. The MMA works jointly with the CTIA (the wireless communications industry’s trade association) to enforce these standards. CTIA violations usually result in a warning and a reminder to fix noncompliant aspects of your SMS campaign. But continued violations can result in the suspension of your campaign or revocation of your short code. In addition to these industry players, governments also create and enforce laws, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the U.S., that regulate the content and requirements for text-message marketing.

Welcome to the Zippy Car Wash Coupon Club! Msg&data rates may apply. 4 msgs/mo. Text HELP for info, STOP to quit.

Basic rules for keeping in compliance

Include the phrase “message and data rates may apply” in your keyword advertising and initial SMS welcome message (this can be abbreviated as msg & data rates may apply”)

Include your business or program name, intended frequency of messaging, and HELP and STOP (opt-out) options in your keyword advertising and your SMS welcome message

Include a link to your terms and conditions (or those of your SMS provider) in all keyword advertising and in your welcome message for contests and promotions

Always identify your business or program name when communicating via SMS

PICKING AN SMS PARTNER

What to look for when selecting your text message

marketing platform

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Be able to send SMS messages to all mobile carriers.There are many carriers in the U.S. and Canada, and not all services work with all carriers. Your SMS partner should work with a tier 1 aggregator, which typically has access to all mobile carriers with reliable deliverability.

Be aggregator agnostic.Your SMS provider should have relationships with multiple aggregators, since this can significantly streamline the process of transferring short codes from other vendors. This is important if you plan to commission your own short code.

Provide support in provisioning new short codes.It typically takes 8-12 weeks to get a short code ready for use. Your provider should be familiar with the process and that have the relationships to make it quick and painless, especially if you’re on a timeline to launch a new marketing campaign.

Support the use of multiple shared short codes.If you want to separate your text marketing campaigns for different brands, having different short codes can help you accomplish this. Mobile partners that support a handful of shared short codes give you this option.

Have a thorough knowledge of industry rules and regulations.The MMA offers guidelines for text-message marketing that all reputable providers follow. It’s critical that your provider has an in-depth understanding of these policies to ensure your campaigns or short codes do not get interrupted or shut down by carriers.

YOUR MOBILE MARKETING PARTNER SHOULD:

Support autoresponders and timed messages in addition to one-time messaging.In addition to outgoing messaging, your mobile partner should support autoresponders, which automate the process of providing information in response to a text. Your provider should also support timed messages, which allow you to send subscribers automated, one-time or multi-message text campaigns at preset intervals after they opt-in.

Support the collection of customer data via text message.You can gain keen insights into your customer base by collecting information from them via text, whether it’s by asking for demographic information or by collecting customer sentiment through a poll. Your mobile partner should support this functionality, so you can use this data to improve future marketing efforts.

Allow you to customize the content and sequence of the messages you send when people opt in or out of your lists.Regulations do require that customers receive both opt-in and opt-out confirmations with some mandated language. But you should also retain the ability to control the tone of these messages to match your company’s branding.

Support personalization or “merge tags.”Merge tags are the bit of code you can insert into a mass message to personalize it for each recipient. As long as you have the information properly stored in your SMS platform database, you can include all kinds of personalized information, from a customer’s first name to their last date of purchase. Provide tools to help with support and troubleshooting.Sometimes customers will have questions or concerns about text messages they receive from your company. Having the ability to search your message database by phone number, short code or message content makes it easy to address these customer concerns.

BUILDING YOUR LISTAdvertising your program and growing your subscriber base

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Once you’ve found a partner to work with, it’s time to start building your text-marketing list.

Picking a keyword

Building your database starts with picking the keyword users will text to your short code to join your list.

Make it easy to remember and spell so that customers can easily recall and enter it.

Avoid using special or confusing characters. For example, a lowercase “L” can look very much like an uppercase “I” or the numeral 1 in certain fonts.

Keep it short. One-word keywords are best.

Avoid homonyms, those tricky words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings. They might work in a print campaign, but in a radio call-to-action you’ll end up confusing potential subscribers. (“Did he say to text ‘walk’ or text ‘wok’?”)

Some things to consider when picking your keyword:

Promote your list

Advertising your keyword is as simple as this phrase:Text {{KEYWORD}} to {{SHORT CODE}} to {{your call-to-action}}

Text DANCE to 839863 for more information and a schedule of upcoming Dance Academy events.

Text COFFEE to 75309 to sign up for exclusive ACME BROTHERS COFFEE text alerts and coupons.

Text KITCHEN to 75309 for an instant 20% off your Renee Bennett order and to sign up for future deals.

In-store signageProduct packagingTransit and print advertisingSocial mediaEmailBusiness cardsTable tents, menus

Direct mailBillboardsReceiptsBranded fleetsShaved into the side of your hairTelevision and radio ads

Just as with an email list, there are hundreds of places you can advertise a call to action (CTA) to join your list, including:

An important note on one-time versus recurring message campaigns:Campaigns set up as sweepstakes, autoresponders, surveys and polls are all considered one-time communications. Customers texting your business for these purposes are not considered SMS subscribers unless you explicitly ask them to opt in to your marketing list. Therefore, since you have not obtained permission to communicate with them on a regular basis, you can’t do so without risking fines. If you want to add mobile numbers to a marketing list you’ll use on a recurring basis, you must use all appropriate opt-in language or ask subscribers to confirm (double opt-in) by responding on their mobile device. One-time communications should still contain the phrase “message and data rates may apply” on all advertisements.

Maintain complianceWherever you advertise your keyword, you must stay in compliance with MMA best practices. Your call-to-action must include a description of the program (e.g., “Doughnut Lover’s Club”), the phrase “message and data rates may apply,” the intended frequency of messaging, and opt-out and HELP instructions.

Text KITCHEN to 75309 for an instant 20% off your Renee Bennett order and to sign up for future deals.3-4 texts/month. Message and data rates may apply. Text HELP for info and STOP to quit.

When collecting SMS contacts:

Publish compliance language in your keyword advertising and welcome messages

Encourage users to utilize the single opt-in option by texting your keyword to join (single opt-in) or

Use a web-based system that collects mobile numbers and automates a confirmation message to their mobile device (double opt-in)

Collect mobile numbers on paper or verbally as most SMS providers will not allow you to create subscriptions for SMS contacts who don’t opt in digitally

Contact mobile numbers collected as part of a sweepstakes or with an autoresponder (this is considered one-time messaging) unless they have explicitly opted in to your list per MMA guidelines

DO

DON’T

CREATING A CAMPAIGNCopywriting tips and when

to send

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Writing your text-message copy

SMS messages are limited to 160 characters. Brevity and clarity are critical in SMS marketing, but each message should still include:

Your company or campaign name somewhere in the body of your text to properly identify yourself, especially if you are on a shared short code

A clear and relevant call-to-action (how can subscribers act on this information now?)

Outbound links if more information is necessary (it helps to use a URL shortener)

Remember to text subscribers no more frequently than you said you would upon opt-in. Texting more often violates MMA guidelines and can put your short code at risk.

ACME SPORTS: 50% off this weekend! Use code 12345 to redeem.

50% off this weekend at ACME SPORTS. Use code 12345 to redeem.

50% off this weekend! Use code 12345 to redeem. -- ACME SPORTS

THREE WAYS TO INCLUDE YOUR COMPANY NAME IN EACH TEXT

Picking the best time to send

The optimal time of day to text your subscribers depends on your particular business or industry. Fast-food restaurants might try to catch people at dinner time on the way home from work, for example. Before you send, ask yourself: When am I likely to reach people at the time they’re making a purchase decision about my product?

You should not send text messages while the majority of your subscribers will be asleep. As a general rule, you should send them between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. And, note that depending on the size of your SMS list and your SMS provider’s throughput rates, it might take a few hours for your message to be deployed to your full subscriber base.

MEASURING SUCCESSAnalyzing the results of your

text campaigns

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Analyzing results

Now that you’ve sent your campaign, how can you determine whether or not it was successful? Let’s take a look at the basic metrics for SMS campaigns.

LIST HEALTH INDICATORSDelivery rates vary across industry and depending on list size, but as a general rule:

DELIVERY RATEUnlike email, with SMS you may not have an immediate picture of delivery. Some larger carriers provide delivery receipts right away. Others take longer to report back — sometimes overnight. Only after all carriers have reported back will your SMS provider be able to report fully accurate stats on delivery rates.

Keep in mind that delivery rates indicate only that a text message was delivered. They do not indicate that a text was opened or read.

Low delivery rates indicate poor list health and can be an indication that subscribers on your list may not have opted in. Sending too many times to a list with low delivery rates can compromise your short code privileges and may result in its revocation or suspension.

99-100% - Golden

98-99% - Great

94-97% - Good

90-93% - Acceptable

80-89% - Warning

Under 80% - Red flag

OPEN RATESCarriers do not report open rates for SMS messages, though it’s a commonly held industry belief that 90% of SMS recipients read their text messages within three minutes. °

CLICKSClicks can be measured at the campaign level when you include trackable short URLs in the content of your text message. After your campaign is sent, you can refer back to your short URL metrics see how many people clicked your link. (The short URLs you link to in an SMS message should always link to a mobile-optimized website. And, if you want to keep your short URL tracking limited to a particular text, don’t publish that unique short URL anywhere else.)

COUPON REDEMPTIONS AND SWEEPSTAKES ENTRIESIf you’re sending a coupon or promoting a sweepstakes via text, you can track engagement using your coupon redemption rates or by tracking the number of sweepstakes entries you’ve received.

° Source: http://designtaxi.com/news/31968/Conversational-Advertising-Emergent-Trend-in-Mobile-Advertising/

A special note on offers and promo codesIf you’re a retailer, text is a great way to promote offer codes that can be tracked at the point of sale. Text-message of f ers can be d e l i v e r e d i m m e d i a t e l y , personalized with unique offer c o d e s f o r e a c h i n d i v i d u a l recipient, and configured with dynamic expiration dates so you h ave u l t i m a t e c o n t ro l ove r redemption. However, there are several things to consider when deciding which kind of SMS offer to distribute.

WEB OR TEXT-BASED COUPONS?With SMS you can send plain text offers (personalized or generic coupon codes), or you can include a short URL linking to a mobile-optimized coupon including images and even scannable barcodes. So you can include whichever kind of offer integrates best with your POS system. With either type of offer, you have the option of controlling view limits and expiration dates based on individual open dates and times.

TRAIN YOUR STAFF ON REDEMPTIONYour point-of-sale staff should be aware of your text message alerts and coupon offers, and know how to redeem them before you launch a text message coupon campaign. It also helps to ask your staff to subscribe to the same text alerts customers receive so they’ll be able to anticipate offers and ask any questions before customers begin the redemption process.

INCLUDE REDEMPTION INSTRUCT-IONS IN THE BODY OF THE TEXT

You can include special staff queues in the body of your text message offers (“Offer only valid on large size coffee SKU #454516”) to help clarify your offers and speed the redemption process.

BUILDING YOUR MOJOFinding what works for you

and capitalizing on it

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Establishing cadence

You’ll want to establish and stick to a frequency in your SMS campaign from the outset. This is important for customer anticipation and satisfaction. You don’t want to contact them too much, or so infrequently that they’re confused when they do receive an SMS message from you. It’s also important because the MMA requires that businesses state their intended frequency at the time customers opt in to your mobile marketing list.

INDUSTRY CONTENT FREQUENCY

Restaurants and Bars Updates on food specials and coupons

3-4 times/week

Media outlets Breaking news alerts 2-3 times/week

Government Service updates and alerts

1-2 times/month

Health and fitness Notes on membership specials

10-12 times/year

Non-profit Program and fundraising updates

10-12 times/year

Retail and sales Alerts and coupons 1-2 times/month

Sports Team updates/injury reports

2-3 times/week, or scores at the end of each quarter/game

What is the optimal frequency for a mobile marketing campaign? That depends on your type of business. Here are some very general examples of frequency in different industries. Again, your frequency depends not just on your industry, but on your overall communication strategy.

The ultimate answer to how frequently you should send your SMS messages is that it depends on your audience. Always measure and test your campaigns to note the impact of a change in frequency. Where you can, compare to others in the industry by networking and exchanging notes at conferences and social networking sites like LinkedIn and Quora.

Troubleshooting issues

You’ve advertised your list in a way that doesn’t accurately represent the provided contentIf customers aren’t getting the kind of information or messages they expected when they opted in, they’re likely to unsubscribe.

You dramatically increased the frequency of your messaging in a short time periodAre you sending messages more frequently to promote an event or boost sales? Customers expect to be contacted only as frequently as stated at the time of their opt-in. Straying from that initial frequency can lead to mistrust, annoyance and opt-outs.

You had a higher-than-usual increase in subscribers over the same time periodYou might, at times, experience a dramatic uptick in the amount of subscriptions after an event or advertising campaign. If this is the case, and afterward you see a higher-than-average drop-off rate, it’s usually not something to worry about (unless you’re guilty of #1, above).

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DELIVERY RATE DROP-OFFS

If your SMS subscribers are opted-in properly and you’re experiencing steady, organic list growth, you shouldn’t see a dramatic decrease in your delivery rates. A drop in delivery rates might indicate a problem with your provider. It’s important to keep monitoring your delivery rates to make sure you’re not experiencing any technical issues with sending.

Occasionally you may see a spike in the amount of people leaving your list over a given period. Here are three potential causes:

HIGHER-THAN-AVERAGE CHURN RATES

LISTENING TO FEEDBACK FROM YOUR CUSTOMERSNothing gives you more insight into your campaign health than getting actual feedback from customers. You can gather feedback via forums, social media, email, and even by sending SMS surveys to get an idea of what customers like best and least about your SMS campaigns and what they’d like to receive in the future.

LEARN FROM YOUR INDUSTRY PEERSAs the list of companies incorporating SMS into their marketing efforts grows, so does the pool of information — both official and anecdotal — on what it means to be a successful SMS marketer. You can use sites like Quora to search for questions and answers related to text-message marketing campaigns (e.g., “What’s an average coupon redemption rate for video rental services sending SMS coupons?”). SMS marketers populate a long list of groups on LinkedIn, where they share information, statistics, success stories and more.

YOUR MOST SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGNEvery few months, take a moment to review metrics that indicate standout campaigns. Perhaps you had higher-than-usual coupon redemption or a stellar response rate on a particular message. Keep notes on which campaigns were most successful, and try to identify what made that campaign stand out. Was it the time you sent it? Did it contain useful content? Standout campaigns should be noted and their success used as an indication of how to communicate with customers in the future.

Tracking successes

LIST GROWTH OVER TIMEYour SMS partner should be able to provide you with a comprehensive report that shows your list growth over a specific time period. Hopefully, you’ll see what all marketers like to see when viewing your list trends: a steady line heading up and to the right. But you're most likely to see plateaus and dips as subscriber levels fluctuate.

Keep close track of your marketing efforts and analyze those fluctuations against your marketing activity. If you see a list plateau, you might be able to match that to a period when you spent less on advertising. Or you might correlate a dramatic increase with the month you advertised your SMS program on your product packaging. A subscriber drop-off could reflect a change in the content or frequency of your messaging.

ADVANCED TIPSAND TRICKS

Powerful tools at your fingertips

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Targeting locations

If you’re operating a multiple-location business you may want to give customers the ability to subscribe only to a certain location’s updates, and that’s possible with a good SMS platform. Locations can be targeted by zip code during a customer’s subscription prompt, suggested to the user based on their proximity to their preferred location. SMS even allows customers to “work” through a list of suggested locations by replying Y or N until they reach the location they’d like to subscribe to.

Personalization

As with email, you can use merge data tags in your text messages to personalize content. This means you can include information like a customer’s first name, date of last purchase, favorite menu item, or whatever data you’ve collected to make your SMS messages feel more personal and relevant.

Collecting data

Unlike email, SMS isn’t designed to give customers a direct way to respond to your business after a message is deployed. This doesn’t mean you can’t set up a conversation between your company and the customer using text, or collect information from your recipients, however. Text d o e s o f f e r s o m e t wo - way communication options.

This capability varies with your SMS provider, but look for providers that offer surveys, polls and data collection via text. This means your SMS communication system can be configured to ask questions of an audience and anticipate certain responses. Those responses can then be recorded and collected in a database for use in future campaigns.

Triggered and timed messaging

It’s possible to set up a series of timed messages with SMS. Timed messages start deploying at the time a subscriber joins your list, and are triggered on the schedule you specify. They allow you to “set and forget” campaigns that run automatically using a series of messages that are communicated over a period of time, from a few days to a full year or more.

Marketers use SMS timed messages for a number of reasons:

• Educational programs• Sending lists• Creating reminders• Communicating instructions or tips after a purchase

Keep in mind that timed messages aren’t subscriptions in the sense that you don’t control when each customer gets which message. A new subscriber to your timed message list might be receiving message one while on the same day an older subscriber is receiving his eighth message.

AutorespondersAutoresponders are put in place to offer one-time messages with quick tips and information. Marketers use them to communicate everything from store hours to nutritional information about menu items. Autoresponders are deployed on a one-to-one basis the moment a customer texts a keyword to a short code. Autoresponders are not used to build marketing lists, as you shouldn’t use any contact information collected from autoresponders for recurring marketing campaigns.

Coupons and promo codes

Text-message marketing is a great way to incentivize immediate purchase decisions. What better way to do than with a discount code or a coupon? According to the MMA, mobile coupons get 10 times the redemption rate of traditional coupons. °

You can deploy coupons and discount codes in a number of different ways using text.

° Source:  h"p://blog.sitewire.com/2010/06/21/20-­‐sta3s3cs-­‐you-­‐need-­‐to-­‐know-­‐about-­‐mobile-­‐marke3ng/

Uploading a .csv with a list of unique discount codes to be deployed to individual subscribers

Creating a generic discount code that can be used by anyone receiving the text

Using a short URL to link to a landing page that contains a web coupon

Well, that’s about it.We hope that you’ve found this to be a helpful read and can walk away with some actionable next steps. From our standpoint, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Our plan is to update this guide regularly, so if you have any feedback or suggestions please send them our way.

Drop us a line.

hello@signalhq.com @signal