Mind the time

Research has shown that more than two-thirds of adults sleep with their mobile phones or keep it within arm’s reach. It’s a very personal relationship—one that unsolicited and unwelcome calls or messages at odd times of the day or night will disrupt. And these unwanted messages might also ruin your relationship with your customers—the same one that you’ve been working hard on building and enhancing.

The best rule of thumb is to send text marketing messages during the same time period that you would usually reach out to or transact with the people you do business with: during operating or office hours.

Don’t text too early or too late. Some people do go out of their way to read early morning or late night texts thinking that these are important messages from either home or work, or from family and friends. Let’s face it—while your texts may seem important, it’s not that important to get up from bed at 6 in the morning for, is it?

Watch your language

While the 160-character limit that a standard single text message provides a copywriting challenge, it’s no excuse to use shortened text lingo that only high school students would understand (even if your target subscribers are high school students!). You want to sound smart and professional—something you would not appear to be when you use text slang.

Choose your content carefully

You want to sound interesting; and you want your subscribers to look forward to your texts. While it’s good practice to send bulk SMS marketing messages on a periodic basis, do not send them just because you think you need to. Quality trumps quantity all the time.

Disclose costs

Many businesses choose SMS marketing because it allows customers to respond to their marketing communications by texting back. But these replies may incur your customers costs. Be honest and fair by disclosing the costs involved whenever they reply to you or text in to a special short code.

Provide a way out

One of your SMS marketing goals is to build and maintain your opt in subscriber list. While it’s tempting to keep everyone in your opt in list, it is a dishonest marketing strategy to bar them from opting out. Your customers should be given a choice. Always provide an option out in each SMS you provide. An example would be to indicate a short code they can use to text in a short message that will cancel their SMS subscription.