SMS for business marketing

I was just reading through some of the questions asked on Yahoo Answers, and saw a really good question that I thought was something really valid, how do I write a marketing SMS to customers?

Well there's no set format in my book, just some rules or guidelines if you prefer and it's something that I get asked by our customers all of the time.

SMS is not like email - you simply do not have the room on the page to muck about and be fancy pants with it all. Know what you want to say, say it and be direct! If it's something like a new product that is being launched and there is more to it than can be explained in a single sentance, then point them in a direction that they can see.

At the very least this will encourage a positive movement towards sales - and as I always say, every company in the world is a sales company, and without it there is no trading and effectively no company :)

So if you have no room to move, or give any real teeth cutting information (and it costs) then why would you even bother I hear you saying? Easy...

Cable and Wireless a while a go did a study and found that less than 20% of people who receive an email read them, whilst over 80% of people read their SMS messages.


Working through this, if we said that of the people who read their respective messages 20% of them went on to purchase something then if you sent 100 emails to customers, 20 or 20% of them read the email, and 4 of them went on to buy - that's a response rate overall of 4%.

In truth, anyone that has done email marketing before will know that's actually exceptional, and by no means in the norm.

However, if you sent 100 SMS messages, then at least 80 people or 80% read them, and again 20% of that represents an overall response rate of 16%!


That works out to be a 400% improvement over email!


One question I'll throw back to you... How many times do you receive a SMS message and ignore it, not read, decide you'll read it later?

if it's from someone you know and is in your contact list on your phone, then maybe - if they are not, or they are stamped with the business name, then I would suggest it's a fairly slim chance that you would ignore it, and therefore my figures are a bear minimum of what is possible.


So to come back on topic, keep your messages short sharp and to the point and keep them under 160 characters :)