Seemingly simple requests, like a request to opt out of communications, can sometimes have expensive consequences. Fines for illegal text messages can range from $500 per text to $1,500. If you’re sending thousands of texts, fines can quickly become overwhelming due to non compliance.

More than that, however, is the desire to build trust between your company and your customers. Customers these days want a transparent look into your motives and methods. Asking permission before you send a text and honoring requests to stop sending texts are small ways to demonstrate transparency and care for your customer.

Michael Weinhouse, founder and co-CEO of Logical Position, wrote in a Forbes leadership article, “But as scary as the idea of transparency might seem, I know from experience that, in the long run, it’s good not only for your customers but also for your business. In addition to attracting new customers, transparency allows you to better serve your current ones, ensuring they stick with you.”

We think asking customers to opt into your messaging program will help make the world (and your business) a better place. It demonstrates the kind of respect we all want.

What Are the Rules?

In the United States, commercial text messages are governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The Federal Communications Commission established the act in 1992 to slow the stream of unwanted telemarketing calls. In the subsequent years, the TCPA has been expanded to include text messages, too.

Here is a quick guide from law firm Whitfield Bryson LLP outlining what is not allowed under the TCPA:

• Unsolicited Text Messages – businesses are not allowed to text consumers without their permission. If a consumer gives permission for texts, the first text you send to them should confirm their permission.

• Requesting Payment – businesses may not request payment or additional identifying information before revealing the actual message.

• Scrambled Messages – businesses must send readable texts. They may not scramble the message or use unintelligible audio.

• Do Not Call Registry – businesses must respect the Do Not Call registry established by the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

• Robocalling & Automated Dialing – businesses may not use robocalling to generate phone numbers or send text messages.

• Restrictions for Residential Numbers – businesses may no longer use an “established business relationship” as the basis for texting someone’s home number. That includes mobile phones that are used as home numbers.

So what should you do? Here are suggestions from Gleantap, a customer management platform created for the fitness industry:

• Receive consent before any message is sent
• Mention your company name in the first text
• Give the coupon or value proposition upfront
• Mention the frequency of messages that will be sent monthly
• Disclose possible carrier costs and fees
• Give an option to ask for help and opt out of future texts

How Can SMS-Magic Help You?

Our customers use messaging in a wide variety of applications in a wide variety of industries. No matter what industry you’re in – banking, higher education, hospitality, healthcare or others – SMS-Magic can make compliance a breeze. We’ll help you keep up with customer permissions as they opt-in (and perhaps opt-out) of your messaging campaigns.

SMS-Magic is designed to track opt-in and opt-out requests so that you send only to the customers who have specifically asked you to. Our back-end systems are structured so that we can display individual requests, and we can prove you’ve complied with customer requests. You won’t have to worry about regulators asking to see your records. We use on-going processes to collect and store information about distribution and can share it with regulators, if necessary.

Does SMS-Magic sound like the answer you’ve been looking for? We hope so!

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you why your compliance worries will disappear with SMS-Magic!

Seriously though, this article shows you how powerful SMS messages can be. One highly adventurous eagle, named Min, was outfitted with a tracker that sends SMS messages back to home base, according to Min’s geo location. What a cool way to use messaging!

The challenge? Well, Min strayed into new countries. Min burned through the entire scientific program’s SMS messaging budget in a massive SMS blast. Why the high budget burn? When Min crossed country borders, the eagle moved to a new SMS carrier, with much higher costs per message.

You see, there’s no unlimited data allowance when it comes to business messaging, or eagle messaging for that matter.

SMS Messages vary by Carrier and Country

For business, commercial scientific and other messaging, carriers charge a fee, or a message credit, for each message they deliver.

The cost of each message/credit varies from carrier to carrier and country to country. Which is how Min the eagle got into big budget troubles.

• Min flew around Kazakhstan for a while, but the SMSs didn’t send.
• When Min crossed the border into Iran, all of the backlog of SMS messages carrying geo data were sent in a massive blast.
• Simply by crossing a border, the cost of the SMS messages Min sent home more than doubled. (The price per SMS in Kazakhstan is about .30$, but each SMS from Iran cost .77+$.)

Luckily, the carrier and a GoFundMe campaign lifted Min and the team out of their budget challenge. You might not be so lucky.

The Bottom Line

Min’s story is an example of why we spend so much time working to understand our customers’ country and carrier needs. Everyone talks about regulatory compliance, but carrier compliance can cause your business some pretty big headaches as well. We want to be sure our customers don’t have a surprise, like Min. We want you to soar with messaging programs that don’t break your budget.

Download this guide, How Messaging Works, to get the important details we share with our customers. Our free gift to you!

With the Converse platform, compliance is simplified and automated to ensure that you’ve properly received and recorded consent from your prospects and customers for your SMS text messaging programs—whether for marketing, sales, or service.

A Review of the Basics of Compliance for SMS Messages

Compliance refers to the rules that guide SMS messages, what you can do, how you can do it, and things you want to avoid.

This post focuses on the US regulations. Text messaging is governed by The Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC is the primary body in the US for regulating communication by satellite, wire, radio, television, and cable, so text marketing also falls under its domain.

Text messaging compliance follows the specific rules of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA.) The TCPA is the main anti-telemarketing law in the U.S. It also applies to text messaging, since texting is viewed as a transaction like a phone call.

The fines for violating regulations can be steep – up to $1,500 for each text message if a court thinks you’ve knowingly violated the rules for compliance. So, let’s not let this happen.

4 Tips to Follow for Compliance

First: Get Consent

The FCC is concerned about controlling spam, so you need to gain permission from people before you can text them. The first thing you need to do to use business text messaging is to build a compliant opt-in list.

Here’s what you need to know:

• All contact consent should be in writing and records kept for 4 years to comply with TCPA. You must also make them aware that you will be sending them text messages in the future—before they consent.
• Consent is easily achieved digitally and recorded automatically in the Converse Intelligent Messaging Platform and captured/stored in Salesforce. This includes via website form, email, text message, a check box on a form or application, or digital document.
• Make sure that consent is optional.

Second: Decide if You Need Single or Double Opt-in

The main thing that determines this choice depends on how you receive consent. The objective is to prove that you have consent from the device owner.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Single Opt-In: If you receive consent via an SMS message from a mobile device, you have the written consent of the device owner. An example is if they text a keyword to sign up for your text messaging program.
• Double Opt-In: If you receive opt-in via other means, such as a web form, check box or paper (via a trade show, for example) then you should send a single message to the device owner to verify they’ve opted in by texting YES in reply. This is a requirement of the US wireless association (CTIA) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA).

Third: Disclose the Details

When you’re inviting prospects and customers to opt-in to your text messaging programs, you need to disclose information about the program they’re signing up for.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Provide an overview of the types of messages they should expect to receive and the message frequency (e.g. 4 messages per month). The overview can be a broad description, such as marketing and promotional messages related to your products and services. Or it could be specific and targeted to appeal to a role or to expand about a topic the person is interested in learning more about. Just remember that what you promise is what you need to deliver to stay in compliance.
• Provide links to your terms and conditions and privacy policy.
• Inform them of how they can opt out of the program.
• Inform them about possible carrier costs and fees they may incur.
• It’s wise to send a confirmation text upon opt-in that restates the program details.

Fourth, Respect Opt-Outs

One of the most important aspects of compliance for business text messaging is handling opt-outs correctly. If you don’t, your business will be at risk for penalties for spamming.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Offer an easy way to opt-out in your messages. An example is “Text STOP to end text messages.”
• Make sure you include the opt-out wording in a message at least once per month.
• When you receive an opt-out, make sure to acknowledge it with a message so the person knows you’ve received their request and acted upon it.
• Converse will automatically record and timestamp the opt-out, providing you with an audit trail, and remove the contact from messaging programs.

The Bottom Line

Compliance for SMS messages is no different than getting permission for email marketing. The Converse App for Compliant Opt-In/Opt-out comes preconfigured to allow you to comply with regulations and automates what would otherwise be a complex manual process to keep track of consent status.

You can learn more about compliance best practices in our course for text messaging.

Here’s how to get started building a compliant opt-in list for business text messaging.

Text messaging already gets a 6x response rate over emails. Which means that when you use text messaging to compel opt-ins, you’re highly likely to get more compliant opt-ins than with any other form of communication.

The question then becomes, “How do I compel my audiences to opt-in?” Here are three ideas.

1. Give them something relevant using short code in return for their opt-in to text messaging.

Offering discounts and coupons is a tried and true approach for product and service-oriented companies. You see these discounts in coupon flyers and envelopes mailed out en masse, in advertisements via direct mail, as well as in online digital ads and emailed offers.

Steps to using promotional offers to drive opt-ins:

• Have your IT admin create a Keyword Response tied to a specific promotion conversation
• Add that keyword to your short or long code in SMS-Magic Converse
• Promote that keyword and short code, along with the offer, in all of your print, digital and event marketing promotions
• Deliver the offer automatically when someone texts the keyword to that short or long code

Be sure you’re using a compliant opt-in approach to the text opt-in, before you have any type of conversation with the prospect. Also, be sure to follow-up after the opt-in is complete to actually send them the offer via text message. SMS-Magic allows you to automate offer delivery based on keyword responses.

You’ll also want to message them to let them know that you’ll be sending other offers and informational content via messaging conversations.

Here’s an example of how this works in higher education:

Your students are digital natives. Using messaging to recruit them gives you the advantage over other institutions. Here’s how you can use SMS-Magic Converse to quickly reach out to students, get their consent, and then move on to recruiting them.

1. Promote your school. A web page, promotion or email campaign uses the offer of a Virtual Event to compel a text opt-in from a student using the keyword SCHOOL. The Compliant Opt-in App manages their confirmation automatically.
2. Fulfill your promotion. Following confirmation, an automatic message delivers the event information and registration which was offered as part of the opt-in promotion, using a Single Message App.
3. Promote a student event: An Event Announcement is triggered through our Event App, offering registration for an Open House. After the student registers, a confirmation is sent, followed by a series of promotions for the event. A message in the event nurture offers the option for the student to SCHEDULE a meeting with admissions at the event, or ask to chat with someone (HELP).

2. Make it easy for new clients to contact you.

Let’s say you’re in real estate, financial services, or some other service-oriented industry. The key to getting new clients is to promote yourself and your business, right?

In every promotion, whether it be a Home for Sale sign, an advertisement, a Yellow Pages listing, or Chamber of Commerce registration, include a keyword and short or long code to make it easy for new prospects to connect with you.

• For multiple options/services, you can use different keywords with the same short or long codes to delineate which service a prospect is interested in discussing.

  For example, different houses for sale could use the numbers in their address as the keywords. In this way, you can immediately know what the prospect is interested in exploring, then trigger an automatic set of messages (after a compliant opt-in) to give them more information that’s highly relevant to their interest.

• If your business is more focused, say landscaping, you can use one keyword for all of your opt-ins.
• You can also combine the concept of a discount or offer with your business promotions. For example, offer a discount on services when someone opts-in to your conversation about relevant topics to your business.

It’s important to note, these nurturing conversations should be relevant and information-based, not self-promoting. Self-promotion is a fast way to get prospects to opt-out of your messaging conversations.

3. Include keywords in your emails or other communications.

The best communication strategy blends all your channel options. So, use your email communications to get people to opt-in to your messaging programs.

Since most people prefer messaging over any other form of communication, why not give them what they want?

Try these simple tricks to promote your text messaging opt-in:

• Customer update emails: In your next customer update email, offer special insights into a topic that’s relevant to your customer base. Use text messaging to deliver those insights. Which means the customers need to opt-in to get them.

  You can use this technique when you’re announcing new products or updates, new services, or new partnerships. If your customers want the juicy information, they’ll get it through texting. Texting is intuitive; we all text. Your customers prefer it so you’re serving them by moving to more text messaging conversations.

• Lead nurturing: In your lead nurture emails, promote a text alternative with a simple opt-in. Again, offer something special like unique information and insights, a free trial or discount coupon for everyone who successfully opts-in to your messaging conversation.

You can also include a keyword and short cord in your IVR messages so that when people call your company, they get a quick option to reach out and converse with someone, quickly, without waiting on hold.

The Bottom Line

Text messaging offers a compelling way to interactively converse with your audience. Since people read and respond to text messages far more than they do emails, gaining opt-ins to text messaging programs results in getting the consent marketers need to be able to continue to communicate with prospects and customers—especially once GDPR comes into effect.

Using the above techniques will enable you to promote your offerings and services, while you also gain the consent you need for ongoing text messaging conversations.

Email Gives Marketers a False Sense of Security

For decades, marketers have pushed out information, promotions, and messaging in a one-way format based on their timeline and what they want to say. Buyers and customers have minimal opportunity to respond in the moment, let alone take control of the conversation. Even with social media, brands aren’t responding as quickly or as well as customers would like.

Email remains the channel of choice for marketers. Marketing automation has enabled them to schedule more email to be sent on a schedule in a set-it-and-forget-it sort of way. But these emails are mainly outbound, one-way pushes of information. Response rates have plummeted to around 4%, yet marketers are still saying this channel is the most effective tool in their technology stack.

Even if response rates climb to 10% or 20%, will this be enough? It’s not likely, as more marketers are tasked to prove contribution to revenues, customer retention, and account expansion from their marketing programs.

Reliance on Mobile Means More than Responsive Content Display

SMS messages for business can change this lack of responsiveness. Yes, the technology has been around for 25 years, but it’s also the most used function on smartphones today – above email and internet. Everyone texts. Young and old, most of us find texting to be a reliable form of conversation. Many of us prefer it to any other form of communication.

Research has found that millions of customers have opted-in to text with businesses. Thirty-seven million of them in 2017. With a 90% open rate and a response rate of 45%, text messaging with your customers is certainly worth consideration.

Keywords Put Customers in Control of the Conversation with SMS Messages

A keyword is a word tied to a short code or text-enabled phone number and used for a customer to opt-in for messaging based on the promise of the keyword.

For example, you can use a keyword to invite your customers to opt-in to a loyalty program by putting this notice on your website or in a confirmation email after they’ve purchased a product:

Text “VIP” to 123456 to join our loyalty program and receive exclusive promotions and discounts.

Or, let’s say a business executive has just finished reading a blog post about some new research your company has conducted. You could have a call to action at the end of the post that invites them to text a keyword to get the full report:

Text “Research” to 123456 to get the full report.

Now consider that, if the full report is a PDF, you may want to give them the option of having it emailed to them. When they text the keyword, an automated response is triggered that allows them to download it or request the report via email.

You can use keywords to invite your prospects and customers to start conversations with you about anything relevant to them and to your business. The key is that they get to choose to do so on their schedule and at their convenience.

The expectation when texting is near-immediate responsiveness. An advanced messaging platform can help you blend automated messages with the human touch to seamlessly converse with your customers.

Let’s go back to the example of your customer texting “Research” to get the report. In a couple of days, you might trigger an automated follow-up message to continue the conversation.

Should David reply with the keyword “Question” an alert is automatically sent to Sam so he can step in and respond personally.

The Bottom Line

Keywords not only allow your customers to start messaging conversations, but they allow you to continue them. They help you identify what your customer is interested in and share information back and forth, rather than just pushing it at them as you do with email.

SMS messages are meant to be conversational. It’s intuitive and easy for your customers to use. Your conversations will be more relevant because you’re allowing your customers to control the conversation. And it’s hard to argue with the open and response rates you can get with messaging.

If you’d like to see how intelligent messaging works,
Text “DEMO”, “FirstName”, “YourCompanyEmail” to
36343 (USA),
447860017097 (UK),
61427142795 (AUS).

Smartphones are personal devices. No one wants brands to text them.

This simply isn’t true. Companies using messaging find that a solid majority of their prospects and customers want to communicate with them via text. Additionally, texting is a permissions-based form of marketing. So those who opt-in to this channel do want to hear from you. Research by Marketing Strategies International found that 66% of customers preferred communicating with brands by text over either phone or email (this rises to 68% for millennials).

This same research asked consumers if they’d feel differently about a brand when communicating via SMS messaging. Their response:

• 66% said they’d pay more for a product/service if it is supported with a mobile messaging channel
• 53% would feel more positive toward a brand that offers mobile messaging to customers
• 45% would choose one product/service over another based on mobile messaging availability

Texting and sending SMS messages is something only young people do – limiting our reach and potential effectiveness.

Wrong again. People of all ages find texting and sending SMS messages intuitive and easy. Baby boomers are the fastest segment adopting and using technology today. Parents and grandparents are adopting and learning how to use technology from their children and grandchildren. Recent KPMG research^[1] shows just how much influence this transfer of knowledge is having across generations.

Text messaging only works for B2C companies, like retailers and restaurants.

Recent research^[2] finds that 80% of business professionals text and 15% of them say that more than 50% of their texts are for business purposes. Companies across industries are finding useful applications for text messaging both internally and externally. This includes, SaaS companies, telecoms, logistics and transportation, construction, manufacturing, recruiting, real estate, professional services, financial and banking organizations, non-profits, and more.

Many of the use cases you may think of for text messaging may be transactional in nature. This includes appointment scheduling and reminders, delivery notifications, password verification, and other one-off, one-way transactions. However, Ovum’s Enterprise Messaging Survey 2017^[3] found that 23% of respondents say their use of two-way messaging has increased in the past year.

Customers want to have conversations with the brands they favor. SMS advanced messaging platforms can orchestrate those conversations with automated workflows, similar to a chat bot. The workflows can also alert a human to step into the conversation. Think about dynamic nurture flows vs. the static ones you use today with marketing automation for email. You can also prompt prospects to text you a keyword to trigger an informational exchange they initiate. Inbound marketing at its finest.

The possibilities are only limited by your imagination and how compelling you can make your 160-character SMS message, or the quality of your mobile content used in an MMS.

We don’t want to impact our prospects’ and customers’ data plan charges.

According to research firm Ovum, the big three carriers in the US have offered free voice calling and SMS with almost any phone bundle since 2010. Many other countries have fixed-fee, unlimited texting plans. T-Mobile has such plans in more than 140 countries, for example.

The Bottom Line

SMS messages are here to stay. Yes, messaging applications have massive growth in users but there are a few factors predicting a bright future for conversational text messaging in business. A report by the MEF^[4] finds that 35% of consumers trust SMS the most of all messaging platforms, likely due to its neutrality.

Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging, which describes the use of SMS by enterprises to send texts to customers, employees and partners is ubiquitous and can be used by anyone with a mobile phone, regardless of handset, operator, OS, or country. Ovum forecasts that SMS traffic will grow to 1.28 trillion messages per annum by 2019.

Isn’t it time for you to dispel the myths holding you back from the messaging channel your prospects and customers prefer?

^[2] A New Era for Mobile Unified Communications
https://www.broadsoft.com/a_new_era_for_mobile_uc_a_dbrn_associates_whitepaper

^[3] Mapping the Future of Enterprise Messaging: SMS, RCS, and Chat Bots
https://ovum.informa.com/resources/product-content/mapping-the-future-of-enterprise-messaging-sms-rcs-and-chat-bots

^[4] MEF Mobile Messaging Report 2016
https://mobileecosystemforum.com/mobile-messaging-report-2016/

The A to z of conversational messsaging

A – A2P or application-to-person communications. A2P is enabled by a messaging platform to send messages to people, not messages that are sent from one individual to another or P2P messaging—like you’d do on your smartphone with a friend. A2P is the equivalent of marketing automation for messaging, instead of email.

B – Bulk messaging. Bulk messaging is when you use a messaging platform to send one message to a large volume of contacts, leads, or customers. This message could be an announcement, alert, product update, promotion, special offer, or other type of transactional message.

C – Conversations. Two-way, interactive messaging with your prospects and customers. This can be automated and triggered by keywords as a marketing initiative or human to human through the messaging platform, as could be the case for sales or service conversations.

D – Delivery. Know that your messages arrived at their intended destination.

E – Engagement through messaging is proven to blow email out of the water with a 45% response rate vs. only 6% for email.

F – Friendly. A smartphone is considered a very personal device that’s pretty much within reach at most hours of the day. People report they can’t go much more than 5 minutes without checking their phones—even without the sound of a notification. Communications from brands who use personalization skillfully and know their customers well can create a friendly exchange that leaves them feeling valued and appreciated.

G – Growth in trusted relationships and revenues.

H – History of prospect and customer conversations. With every message sent by you or your customer recorded in their CRM record, you’ll never lose track of where you stand in the conversation. And, should someone else need to step in, they’ll be able to get up to speed quickly to continue the conversation on the prospect or customer’s terms.

I – Integration with CRM. An advanced messaging platform that’s native to your CRM means your data is automatically integrated. You won’t be dealing with the silos of data and information that you get with point solutions—or the development time it takes to try to integrate them with an API.

J – Just-In-Time (JIT) messaging. JIT messaging are transactional communications that people need right away, such as password verification codes, status updates to service issues, product alerts, event reminders, and more.

K – Keyword-triggered conversations. Invite responses by messaging enticing offers that the prospect can receive by replying with a specific keyword. Then track the activity on that keyword to monitor the success of your campaign.

L – Loyalty program engagement is a prime use for messaging. Creating that VIP experience with exclusive offers, events, product previews, and more will help you keep your customers coming back to buy repeatedly over the longer term—increasing customer lifetime value (CLV).

M – MMS messages. Include videos, pictures, documents, and other content to send richer messages that go beyond plain text.

N – Native to mobile phones. There’s no app to download and every mobile phone comes with messaging capability pre-installed. A messaging platform enables you to create consistent and continuous communications without the cost and resources to build an app on your own.

O – Opt-in for messaging. Due to compliance regulations, your audience must opt-in to receive messaging from a brand. This means your database becomes a valuable asset as a collection of people who want to hear from and interact with your messages and your brand.

P – Personalization. With analytics that mine for prospect and buyer intent, along with conversational histories, the nirvana of gaining a 360° view of your customers is finally within reach.

Q – Q&A. Surveys are a great way to learn more about your prospects and customers quickly. Ask for feedback, experience evaluations to monitor NPS, learn individual preferences, and more to increase the relevance of your messages.

R – Response rates that are unmatched with other communication channels. This is because more than 64% of consumers say they prefer messaging from a brand over other forms of communication. And those who interact with you via messaging are more likely to convert—up to 40% more of them.

S – SMS messages. Contact your prospects and customers via their most preferred communication channel to attract, engage, win, and retain more of them by messaging with them across the entire customer lifecycle.

T – Two-way communications make a conversation sing. Marketers have pushed out monologue, one-way communications for years. As your prospects and customers take more control over their relationships with brands, empowering them to drive the conversation by easily responding to your messages helps build engagement and the personalized interactions consumers crave.

U – User adoption. Messaging platforms are intuitive, easy to use and quickly understood by your marketing, sales, and service teams.

V – Validate that what you believe about your prospects and customers is true with complete conversational histories in your CRM. These insights allow you to validate what you know about a segment of your prospects as well as to learn what you need to know to take marketing from a one-to-many communication to that elusive one-to-one conversation. This increased relevance will help them choose to buy from you—repeatedly.

W – Workflow automation. You need to guide prospects to buy and stay in touch with customers to prevent churn. Workflow automation with messaging means you can create nurture programs for both pre and post purchase. But, unlike email automation, you can also build in alerts that enable a human to step into the conversation when it reaches specific milestones.

X – Xenial (hospitable) communications. Messaging enables you to build a trusted relationship by sharing relevant information that your prospects find valuable, given their context.

Y – Yield better results and conversions than you can get when you rely on email as your main communication channel.

Z – Zealous. How you’ll feel when you see the impact that incorporating messaging into your marketing, sales, and service initiatives has on business growth and customer satisfaction.

From soup to nuts—A to Z—you now have a comprehensive idea of how SMS messages can help to transform the way your company strikes up relevant and compelling conversations across the entirety of the customer lifecycle.

Following are a few of the initial best practices we share with new customers. These simple dos and don’ts will give you a head start on your own conversational text messaging programs.

Getting Started with SMS Messages

1. Follow messaging best practices for opt-ins

DO: One of the most important best practices is to confirm opt-ins before you send the first message of your text messaging program. Always be sure to get explicit consent in writing, through a web form, a Keyword text response or a document. That way you stay in compliance with the TPCA rules and regulations, avoiding a SPAM violation than will cost you $500 or more for each text message sent that’s out of compliance.

DON’T: Just go out and buy a list of mobile numbers and start sending text messages. That’s a fast way to be labeled as a Spammer and fined accordingly.

2. Build a simple text opt-in program

DO: Create an opt-in program to grow your SMS messages lists. Be sure to make it simple for people to opt-in with a keyword response to a short code. Entice them to opt-in with an offer, such as a coupon, discount or some kind of game where they can win prizes. Make it fun, exciting and most of all relevant to your audience. Advertise your opt-ins on your website, promotional materials and social media posts. Be sure to tell your opt-ins what to expect from your messaging program, for example how many messages to expect and at what frequency.

DON’T: Use misleading forms or bait and switch by compelling people to sign up for emails and then switch to text messages about another topic. If you want to offer them another type of content, send a message and ask them to opt-in to the new program.

3. Offer simple ways to opt-out of a text messaging campaign

DO: Use short codes to make opting out easy and immediate. Be sure to share the opt-out short code when your buyer first opts into your campaign. Also, remind contacts how to opt out on a regular basis, with a simple addition to another message or a stand-alone message.

DON’T: Ignore creating an opt-out process. Just as in any other form of direct marketing, you need to offer people a way to stop receiving your text messages. When someone opts-out, be sure to confirm their opt-out immediately with a message, and then honor that opt-out. Sending any messages after someone opts-out is spamming and you will be fined. Not to mention making the people you want to converse with angry.

4. Schedule your conversational text messaging campaigns at optimum times

DO: Research to find the best times for interacting with your audience in their specific country or region. The best times vary from region to region, and of course based on time zones.

DON’T: Schedule messages at annoying times, like late at night, during local dining hours or early in the morning. Just think about those telemarketers that call at the most inappropriate times. Do not be like them with your messages.

5. Use compelling Calls to Action (CTAs)

DO: Ask your audience members what they care about to learn what’s relevant to them. Then use relevant offers as your CTAs. For example, if a segment of your list likes discounts, offer them coupons. If another segment likes to be ahead of their neighbors, offer them early access to new arrivals or new services.

DON’T: Expecting people to jump into your texting program is not the way to grow your list. Offer them something of value and relevant to them. Never send out a messaging campaign without a compelling CTA and simple response option.

6. Get and stay relevant

DO: Use SMS messages to learn about your individual prospects and customers. Ask questions about what matters to them, survey them for preferences and always ask for their opinion on their experience with your organization. Use those insights to send them relevant content and offers. Focus on what they want to know, not what you want to say.

DON’T: Sending everything to everyone on your list is a quick way to get mass opt-outs. So is sending massive amounts of random content on a frequent basis. Don’t do it.

7. Set a reasonable frequency for your messages

DO: Set a reasonable schedule for your text messaging outreach. One message per week is accepted as a best practice frequency. If you have some news or an offer that needs to be sent immediately, you can do that, but only on an infrequent basis.

DON’T: More is not better in the case of text messaging. Don’t ignore your frequency and send more messages just because you’re getting great responses. You’ll ruin your momentum and increase opt-outs.

When you follow these simple best practices for conversational text messaging, you will attract and engage more prospects, move them through your pipeline more quickly and convert more sales. It’s simple and effective. Once you try it, you’ll wonder why you didn’t adopt text messaging sooner.

Let’s say you’ve gone to a trade show and come back with an Excel full of leads. Good for you! But…you’re not sure how many of these leads are qualified. You might not want to clutter up your CRM with these leads.

So you can create a CSV file and send bulk messages to your leads from the SMS-Magic portal. You can even personalize texts by using dynamic fields. Just make sure the field you want to include is in your list.

Here is an example of how SMS-Magic portal can be used for bulk text messaging.

Ramona heads a mortgage lending business, Mortgages4U. She went to the 2017 California Mortgage Lenders Expo last week. She got 1392 leads, the most she had ever got from an event. Ramona has a team of just 11 people. She wanted to be sure that they would be working on the best leads.

Ramona decided to text her leads, as text messages are 4 times more likely to be read than an email. She asked leads to text a date and time when they would want to discuss loan options. Leads who replied would naturally be interested, and her team could then start calling them right away.

Here’s the text message template she created-

Hi Jeff, Great meeting you at the Cal Mortgage Expo. When can we talk about your loan options? Reply with date & time in MM/DD/YY<TIME> format. Thanks- Ramona, Mortgages4U

Once Ramona created a CSV file of her leads with Name and Phone fields, she uploaded it on the SMS-Magic portal. It filtered out records that were blank or had alphanumeric content in the phone field.

About 10% of Ramona’s data was filtered, so she was left with 1251 leads. She sent a test message to herself first, so that she could check that everything was working as it should be. Within seconds, the text appeared on her phone.

Satisfied, Ramona sent her bulk text campaign and waited. Within minutes, she saw hundreds of replies flooding the ‘Responses tab’ in her SMS-Magic account. “Wow, I never imagined I’d get such a great response, so quickly,” Ramona thought. She excitedly began assigning leads to her team.

Like Ramona, you too can send bulk text messages and even MMSs from the SMS-Magic portal. Whether you want to send a sale alert, run a contest or share some company news, bulk texting from our portal is simple, fast and effective.

Raring to go? Jump to our bulk texting portal and try it out for yourself.