10 Effective Writing Tips for Promotional Text Messages

SMS marketing is one of the easiest ways to get your message to your target market. More and more businesses are realizing that sending promotional text messages is slowly replacing email marketing.

With a 95% open rate, there is huge potential with text-based marketing, as long as you get the copy right! This means that the importance of text message advertising is on the rise, and if you want to secure or connect to a new customer for your business, you need to know how to utilize this simple yet tricky means of promotion.

To help you grow and better advertise your business, here are 10 of our best writing tips for promotional text messages:

1. Add Your Business Name
2. Take Note of Timing
3. Be Concise
4. Include “Unsubscribe” Option
5. Check, Check, and Check Again!
6. Be Clear
7. Don’t Use Slang
8. Include Mobile Friendly Links
9. Add a Sense of Urgency
10. Don’t be Afraid to Personalize

Let’s get into each one in detail and find how you can perfect your SMS copy to generate leads and convert prospects!

1. Don’t Forget to Add Your Business Name

To begin with, always make sure you include your business name in the message. While this seems obvious for some reason or another, you may not pay enough attention to this fact and end up forgetting about it.

Unknown phone numbers are hard to trace, and even if someone is interested in the deal, you’re offering, they may decline to proceed if they don’t know who is addressing them. So always remember to include who you are, plus it’s pretty much free advertising!

2. Timing

Sending out messages just about any time of the day is not good. What is the likelihood of someone reading a message at 5 or 6 am in the morning or during working hours? When you are planning a schedule, you need to consider what time of day your potential customers are most active on their phones.

Lunch hours or after-work hours are probably the best times to send out a message, but then again, there are many things to consider while setting the time including passive vs active time. You don’t want to send out texts during high traffic hours because people usually don’t check their phones while driving…at least we hope!

3. Be as Concise as Possible

A good SMS copy has the length of a tweet, which means it contains 150 to 160 characters and no more. 150-160 characters is enough for you to communicate your message.

Additionally, keep in mind that no one wants to spend hours reading a lengthy message. So avoid talking about unnecessary things and get straight to the point, keeping it short and concise.

Keeping it short will help you make sure that you don’t annoy your customers (and save you and them valuable time).

4. Include an Unsubscribe Option

Always give your target audience a choice. This is another thing to keep in mind while sending out a promotional text message. No one likes continually receiving messages from somebody they don’t know. If customers aren’t interested in your business for some reason, they shouldn’t have to be harassed, otherwise, you risk your brand image.

So, make sure you include an unsubscribe option, which will allow people to stop receiving messages if they don’t want to. This will also save you money as less unread messages will be sent out overtime.

5. Double-check Your SMS Copy

Proofreading is important. Keep in mind that the promotional text message sent out is coming from your brand and not just from yourself. So, if the text has even slight grammatical issues, then the success rates rapidly drop because people do not trust poorly formulated SMS copies.

For one, they might think that it’s spam or at least a scammy company. To maintain the image of your business, make sure you double-check the text message for any grammatical or spelling errors.

6. Be Clear

You need to make sure that the people who receive the text message act on it. So your message as well as your call-to-action should be clear. The use of overly complicated or roundabout words and sentences will likely decrease your chances of making people act on your promotional text messages.

While sending out the message check if it has a straight narrative that tells the target audience what steps to follow to achieve a certain benefit. You can always test whether your message is clear by asking your close friends or family members to read the message you’re about to send out.

7. Don’t Use Slang

Look, no one is saying you should write in Shakespearean English, but you shouldn’t use slang either. Sometimes, like humor, a slang-heavy message just doesn’t come across and you may end up offending or alienating your audience.

People usually prefer messages that are formal but not too hyped so be careful in your choice of words to avoid both extremes.

8. Include Mobile-Friendly Links

Now this one may not seem as important as the other points in the list, but don’t judge a book by its cover. People receive promotional text messages on their mobile devices and if the link that you provide does not lead to a mobile-friendly website, some people will give up halfway through after clicking on the link and likely unsubscribe.

This is part of making your business readily available to your customers, so test out any links or URLs before sending out mass messages.

9. Add a Sense of Urgency

The offer you send out in the text message needs to appear as urgent or at least communicate a sense of urgency. If this is not the case, then the target audience might read the message and leave it for some other time and eventually forget about it.

While you should provide a timeline or expiration date for offer-based messages, don’t push your audience. Instead, make the process feel natural.

10. Personalize Your Messages

This is perhaps one of the most important points to keep in mind. By the time you are sending out your bulk messages, you should already have a solid understanding of your target audience. So, the message needs to contain something personal for those who receive it.

Here is where you need to show that you know what they need and this will convince them that they can trust your brand.

You need to take into account the various details of your demographics from age to gender, occupation, relationship status, and so on. Then it’s time to get creative and really hone in on cultural intricacies of your niche.

Promotional text messages are also valuable when it comes to the lead generation process, so the more personalized your message is, the more information you can gather to understand your customers better.

Conclusion

There you have it! These are 10 simple steps you can easily follow for effective SMS copy. Stick to these and experiment for yourself to see what works for you and your brand!

What are some of your best SMS marketing tips? Leave your thoughts in the comments.