8 Biggest Mistakes to Avoid When Creating an SMS Marketing Plan

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Creating an effective SMS marketing plan doesn’t have to be intimidating. This 7-step guide will help you create a successful strategy that connects with customers, boosts sales, and increases ROI.

Not segmenting your customers

Segmenting your customers is an essential part of creating an effective SMS marketing plan. Without it, you’ll send the same message to everyone, which won’t provide any meaningful engagement or conversions. By segmenting your customers based on their interests and preferences, targeted content is created that appeals directly to them and encourages action. You should also make sure to tailor different campaigns and offers to each customer segment that you create

Not taking advantage of automation

Automation can make creating and running your SMS marketing campaigns much simpler by taking out the manual work required. With automation, you’re able to set up personalized campaigns that respond to customer actions in real time. Customers will have a cohesive experience across multiple platforms. From automated welcome messages to messaging sequences for nurturing leads, take advantage of automation to save time and your customers will have their needs met quickly and effectively

Not focusing your message on a specific purpose and desired outcome

Every message you send should contain a purpose as to why it was sent. You need to be able to communicate your desired outcome clearly and concisely so that customers actually receive the message. When creating your messages, think about what you want the customer to do with them and how it can benefit them. Make sure each message serves a goal that’s going to ultimately serve your business.

Creating texts too long for the character count limit

Creating an SMS message should always be brief and to the point. Many devices only show about 50 characters in the preview of a text, so keep your messages concise to communicate your desired outcome. You’ll want to focus on one specific call-to-action for each text message you create, so if it’s longer than the character limit, consider breaking it up into multiple texts. Another way is to rewrite the content to fit into the maximum number of characters.

Not A/B testing messages

A/B testing is an essential part of any successful marketing plan, and this is especially true for SMS campaigns. The goal of A/B testing is to identify the message that resonates most with your target audience. Test different messaging, offers, and CTA’s to determine which one drives higher open rates and conversions for your business. Keep testing until you find the sweet spot – the perfect combination of message, offer and CTA that works best for your customer base.

Failing to personalize messages

Personalized messages will be much more effective than generic ones. When sending out SMS messages to customers, be sure to include their name or other personal details in the message. This will make it much more likely that they’ll read and engage with your message. Additionally, optimize your messages for mobile devices by keeping them short and sweet. Mobile users are typically scanning and skimming text, so make sure your message is easy to read and understand at a glance.

Not optimizing messages for a range of devices and operating systems

It’s essential that your SMS messages are readable across all phones, tablets and computers. If not, customers may find the message difficult to read on some devices or even unreadable altogether on others, thus wasting potential leads. Ensure you test and optimize the SMS content for each device before your campaign goes live so you know that any device can view the content properly.

Ignoring the rules around text frequency and scheduling

Unless customers opt-in to receive more frequent marketing messages, it’s not a good idea to bombard them with text messages. Many countries have rules and regulations around the frequency of text messages and how often they can be sent. Be sure to check with your local and national legislation to ensure your SMS plan complies with all applicable laws.