SMS marketing is quickly emerging as one of the most efficient and cost effective methods of advertising.  With email marketing, you can never expect a very large rate of opens, but 95 percent of SMS bulk messaging is opened within 15 minutes of receipt by people who carry smart phones.  Today’s communicative world is full of your intended target audience and the best way to reach them is with text messages.  Here are 7 off the best practice principles for effective SMS marketing:

1.       Determine your target market and research a few short keywords that will easily describe your business.  Keyword research is the lifeblood of any marketing campaign and SMS is no different.  Ensuring that your message is short, to the point and targeted with the use of keywords is extremely important.

2.       Never spam.  Text messages should never be sent to anyone who does not ask for the messages.  You can obtain subscribers through various other advertising methods, and start building your list as soon as you get your business up and running.

3.       Provide instructions for easy subscription and make it even simpler to unsubscribe.  No one wants to be searching for a way to get off a text message list and to continue to receive unwanted text messages.  No business wants to be the target of numerous spam complaints, because those can give your business a bad reputation.

4.       Find reliable text marketing services that offer various text campaign services and can develop and run an effective campaign for your business.

5.       Always let your subscribers know what to expect in your SMS welcome msg.  It does not have to be long; just tell them how many times you will communicate with them and what you will say to them in your messages.  Let them know that if they sign up for your message list that you will offer them special deals not offered to anyone else.

6.       Always identify yourself in the messages that you send to your subscribers.  People want to know who is sending them a message before they open it.

7.       Reward subscribers by asking them to take action.  Give an expiration date on any special offers and ask your subscribers to show you the message they received in order to receive exclusive offers and deals.  Offer the deal in the first part of the message and then explain what they need to do to cash in on the deal.