We live in a texting world. Just as conversations between friends and family have transitioned increasingly to text, sales campaigns are making the shift too. It’s not hard to see why, with 90% of text messages being read within three seconds of delivery. But before you repurpose your latest email campaign as a text promotion, consider these six components that are crucial to text communication:
1. Brief Messaging
Brevity is key in text marketing. The standard SMS message length is 160 characters. Twilio explains that “when you send an SMS message over 160 characters the message will be split.” If your promotion is divided across multiple messages, you’re figuratively (and somewhat literally) cutting your odds of landing the sale in half. Mind the limit and keep your texts short, effective and engaging.
2. Keyword Call-to-Action
A successful text campaign should reduce potential friction points by establishing keyword CTAs: single word replies that opt the recipient into the promotion. For example, a cycling group class discount could be claimed by replying “SPIN” or 10 sessions of PT purchased by replying “10PACK.”
3. Personalized Messaging
Make things personal. Insert merge tags into your promotional messages to individualize every text sent. Merge tags are placeholders for values that change per recipient, like first name, city of residence or membership ID. When the campaign is sent, merge tags pull the corresponding data for each recipient. Texts written as “{{recipient-first}}, we miss you” change to “Ashley, we miss you” or “Jon, we miss you.”
4. Segmented Audiences
Not every promotion is right for every prospect or member. Boost your close rates by targeting the right audience. Segmentation is the practice of dividing your recipient list by important factors with the goal of isolating the perfect pool of buyers for the promotion. Audiences can be segmented by age range, gender, membership status, their stage in the sales process, and so much more.
5. Appropriate Send Times
By and large, Americans keep their smartphone close at hand, which likely accounts for the 98% open rate of text messages. This is both an opportunity and a risk. Imagine being deep and blissfully asleep when the silence is broken by the obnoxious “ding” of a text from your gym. The best practice is to keep text campaigns confined to normal business hours to avoid angry recipients or a sharp uptick in opt-outs.
6. Clear Opt-Out Options
Compliance is key. Due to text marketing’s relatively new emergence in sales, there is still some legal gray area, and several high-profile fitness franchises have been named in class-action lawsuits regarding text communication practices. Mitigate your risk by ensuring your text campaigns feature opt-out functionality with every text. Running your campaigns through CRM software enables recipients to reply “STOP” to opt-out of future communication. This is vital to protect your business and respect your recipients’ privacy.
By Club OS. Gain a better understanding of your prospects before sending your next text campaign. Download our free Buyer Persona Templates.
