With 98% open rates and 30% click-through rates, SMS marketing has become a hugely successful marketing channel for brands across the globe. Looking for ways to innovate on your existing SMS marketing strategy beyond the generic text message blast? Here, we’ll provide numerous ideas for how to effectively deploy SMS marketing, paired with examples of creative text messages to inspire your own campaigns!
General Tips to Making Your Text Messaging Both Creative and Worthwhile
Getting people to subscribe is just the beginning; keeping them subscribed is an entirely different strategic challenge. Keep the following in mind to ensure that your creative SMS campaign ideas keep customers hooked:
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Don’t be the boy who cried wolf—ensure that every discount or exclusive offer you promote is genuinely generous enough to spark excitement rather than provoke an eye roll. When customers see a promotion, they should feel thrilled about the opportunity, not disappointed by a lackluster offer. If you use a text blast to promote 5% off appetizers, expect your subscriber list to dwindle, fast. Instead, aim for offers that truly provide value—like a buy-one-get-one-free deal—that will keep your audience engaged and looking forward to your messages.
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Write for your target audience—be mindful of your audience, as it significantly influences how they interpret your message. Emojis, punctuation, and word choice can be viewed differently by, for example, a recently retired senior versus a high school senior. For deeper insights, check out Millennials Hate Periods. Here’s What Else to Remember When Texting Them.
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Make sure the text messages’ creative aligns with your overall brand—if you have multiple people or branches communicating with customers via SMS—a semi-common practice in franchise business models—maintaining consistency and adherence to nationwide brand standards is essential. To create a cohesive text message voice, consider developing a clear brand guideline document with examples.
For additional insights, explore Franchise Marketing Strategies That Deliver Proven Results.
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Sneak a peek at the competition—gaining insights into what your competitors offer can be invaluable for ensuring that your own deals are competitive. Additionally, understanding the creative text message ideas that others have yet to seize can inspire you to think outside the box, allowing you to differentiate your SMS marketing and to lead with fresh and compelling solutions.
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Show your brand’s personality—while it’s important to uphold your brand voice, SMS marketing offers a unique chance to connect with your customers on a personal level. If your website serves as your resume and emails are akin to interactions with acquaintances and coworkers, then SMS is the space for engaging with your closest friends.
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Experiment with messaging—this approach not only has the potential to unlock your creativity through text messaging, but it also helps prevent your SMS campaigns from becoming stale and repetitive. Exploring various tones, styles, and formats can captivate your audience, increasing the likelihood of positive responses to your messages. Additionally, it allows you to collect valuable data on the strategies that yield the best results.
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SMS marketing campaign variations—to understand what drives results, it’s essential to experiment with different creative text message ideas. By launching new marketing campaigns monthly or quarterly, you can compare data points to see which strategies yield the best outcomes. For instance, does automated lead engagement lead to higher conversion rates than manual SMS responses?
Creative Text Message Marketing Ideas to Boost Engagement & Revenue
1. Localize and Personalize Texts in New Ways
Once upon a time, the “personalization” of automated texts referred solely to referencing the recipient’s name. Today, advanced SMS technology like Voxie enables brands to scale personalized text strategies in fresh, exciting ways, exponentially expanding creative possibilities. These include:
- Automatically segmenting recipients based on provided information or behaviors for improved targeting
- Programming subsequent communications in direct response to recipients’ text interactions
- Automating text exchanges based on individuals’ birthdays, shopping preferences, loyalty progam points, and more
- Crafting texts to reflect their past purchases
- Asking for the recipient’s preferred language and sending text messages written in their native tongue
- In-platform dissemination of templates from the national-level to individual location owners, empowering localization but with set guardrails
In short, don’t confine your SMS creativity to simple “BUY NOW” messages texted to every subscriber. Pull on your thinking cap and consider out-of-the-ordinary ideas for forging true connections via text.
2. Upsell or Boost Retention Amongst Customers With Targeted Exclusive Deals
The convenience of receiving text messages, combined with scalable personalization, positions SMS as an ideal medium for delivering limited-time offers (LTOs) to customers. This immediacy ensures that promotions reach customers directly and quickly, capturing their attention when they are most likely to act.
By creatively tailoring text message deals to specific customer segments—whether it’s a flash sale for loyal customers or an exclusive welcome discount for new subscribers—brands can effectively engage their audiences. For instance, limited-time offers could include structures such as “20% off your next purchase,” “buy one get one free,” or “exclusive access to a members-only event.”
A powerful tip is to segment your customers and align your offerings with their characteristics; for example, a franchisee of Orange Theory successfully crafted messaging that spoke directly to new customers that encouraged them to take advantage of tailored discounts that foster both interest and loyalty.
3. Create Awareness (and Urgency) for Flash Sales
The physical tangibility of SMS creates an exciting buzz and instills a sense of urgency that traditional marketing channels often lack. When crafting your flash sale, ensure that the discount truly provides value to entice customers to act quickly; for instance, offering 50% off all menu items or service bookings for just 24 hours can create a thrilling rush to purchase.
To create urgency in your text messages, use countdowns or limited stock alerts, like “Only 3 hours left for 50% off!” This marketing campaign approach boosts excitement and prompts immediate action, reducing purchase delays. Ensure your offers resonate with your audience for a successful flash sale that they won’t want to miss.
4. Amplify Awareness of Holiday Specials
Seasonal discounts are most effective when they not only attract traffic, both physical or digital, but also encourage customers to purchase more than they typically would. (Because there’s no better reason to celebrate than an upcoming holiday!) An SMS campaign can significantly enhance the success of holiday specials by delivering timely, compelling offers directly to customers, driving immediate engagement and response.
To explore holiday-specific creative text message ideas, visit How to Use SMS Marketing for Valentine’s Day and Father’s Day SMS Marketing Strategies for Franchises to receive holiday-specific creative text message ideas.
5. Reclaim Abandoned Cart Customers
Abandoned Cart SMS campaigns are a great way to gently push your customers through the last steps of your desired action, or in this case, completing their purchase. They’ve already shown interest in your brand as well as purchase intent, and all it may take is a small nudge to get them across the finish line. That final nudge could take the form of a 20% off exclusive discount code sent via text message, or even just asking if there are any outstanding questions that you can clarify for your customer. As a general best practice, make sure you listen to what your customers are telling you and tailor your messaging accordingly.
Tip: In order to send abandoned cart reminders via SMS, your customers must double opt-in to SMS messages.
Double opting into SMS marketing is a two-step process that ensures customers truly want to receive messages from a brand. First, users provide their phone number through various channels and receive a confirmation text. Then, they must reply with “YES” or a designated keyword to complete the opt-in.
6. Link Click Offer
Unlike Abandoned Cart campaigns, Link Click Offer campaigns are designed to incentivize shoppers to convert immediately before they even have a chance to abandon the process. Let’s say you just launched an SMS campaign announcing a new product drop with a link to the product. Want to take your campaign to the next level? Personalize the experience for your highest-intent customers by offering those who click the link a follow-up text discount immediately after they land on your website. Make the conversion process impossible to resist, and reward those who take action! Your customers are guaranteed to recognize and appreciate the value of subscribing to your text messages.
Ways to Use SMS to Strengthen Your Company’s Social Proof
7. Launch SMS-based Giveaways and Contests
Our phones are no longer just phones; they are cameras, computers, and multi-medium communication tools, all rolled into one. This makes SMS the perfect way to invite followers to participate in engaging contests. For example, businesses could encourage customers to text personal photos of their products in action as a way of entering a contest. Here are a few creative ideas:
- Product in Use: Invite customers to share a photo of themselves using your product in their everyday life. Whether it’s a fitness gear in action or a kitchen gadget at work, this encourages authentic user-generated content (UGC).
- Creative Moments: Ask customers to snap a picture that creatively incorporates your product, like a family dinner with your food item or a DIY project using your supplies. This not only generates visuals but also showcases product versatility.
- Themed Contests: Host seasonal or holiday-themed photo contests where customers can text creative pictures that align with specific themes, such as “Best Summer Vibe with Our Product” or “Holiday Spirit Featuring Our Brand.”
Participants stand a chance to win freebies, while you benefit from increased UGC and potential free promotion as customers share their entries with their networks.
8. Leverage SMS to Increase Your Online Reviews
If you aren’t already taking advantage of post-purchase campaigns in your SMS marketing strategy, you’re losing out on a ton of incremental value. Not only are review SMS campaigns valuable when it comes to generating social proof from your customers, but they can also enable you to further segment your contact list and gather both positive and negative feedback.
To effectively structure SMS messages that encourage more reviews, consider the following strategies:
- Personalization: Tailor your messages to each recipient by incorporating their name and any relevant information you have, such as their past interactions or purchases. This makes the message feel more genuine and increases the likelihood that they will respond positively.
- Direct Links: Include direct links to review sites or survey pages within the message. This minimizes the effort required from the recipient, making it as convenient as possible for them to leave a review. Ensure the links are clearly labeled so recipients know where they will lead.
- Brevity: Keep your messages concise and to the point. A brief message is more likely to be read and understood quickly, increasing the chances of a response. Aim for clarity and simplicity while still conveying your request for feedback.
When faced with a negative review, a human representative should follow up to gather deeper insights and address the complaint. Responding to reviews is crucial, as it demonstrates your commitment to valuing customer feedback. Remember, your response should express genuine apologies for their negative experience rather than disputing it.
9. Promote Referral Programs via SMS
Referral SMS messages are another example of post-purchase campaigns. Referral campaigns should be targeted towards your best customers, or the ones who are most likely to champion your brand. 92% of consumers believe suggestions from their friends and family more than advertisements–so take advantage of this knowledge! Leverage your SMS marketing campaign to encourage your superfans to share their positive feelings about your brand with all of their friends. Once they do, reward them with a special offer. In turn, you’ll be rewarded with a growing contact list.
Add Fuel to Your Creative Fire With AI
Just a few years ago, the creativity behind your text messaging strategies likely centered on clever wording and strategic catalysts. While these remain crucial, AI now unlocks an entirely new dimension, expanding the boundaries of what’s possible with your SMS creativity.
Voxie leverages purpose-driven AI to supercharge targeting and personalization, executing your creativity with greater success and scalability than ever imagined. Some ideas for how you can deploy AI include:
- Build sophisticated SMS drip campaigns that cater the texts and timing to the individual Imagine you’re a composer—sending a witty text message is like writing a song, while a well-crafted drip campaign is more like composing an entire symphony! With Voxie’s AI, you can not only launch creative drip campaigns but also build dynamic, branching paths that guide how your brand responds to set interactions. Did they click the link? Leave a glowing review or just a lukewarm response? Maybe they ignored the text altogether? Each action is different, and your follow-up texts should reflect that.
- Take advantage of genuine two-way conversational intelligence to elevate your SMS to the next level While most SMS campaigns are one-way “blasts”, Voxie’s AI makes it possible to deploy two-way conversational intelligence to encourage two-way interactions. If customers go “off-script,” no problem—we’ll interpret their tone and needs, delivering personalized, on-point responses. As a result, there are now more creative ways to use SMS for both marketing and customer service than ever before.
- Leverage SMS conversations or buyer behavior to extract zero-party data that Voxie automatically saves and utilizes for future creative targeting. QSR brands often use Voxie to can learn which days customers are most likely to order. Maybe Tuesday night is family TV time, or Fridays are date night with pizza ordered for the kids and babysitter; such knowledge—paired with Voxie’s AI—allows you to text discount codes timed specifically for the recipient!
- Generative AI can deliver that extra dose of creativity to your text messages Not everyone has Mark Twain’s wit or Hemingway’s passion—and that’s okay! Voxie’s AI adds finesse and creativity to your texts, all while adhering to SMS best practices to improve customer interactions.
Whether it be assistance developing a creative and compelling campaign, understanding consumer sentiment, collecting actionable preference data to enrich your marketing tools, or helping end-users quickly reply using brand-approved language—Voxie has the AI tools to help you get the most out of SMS.
– Tim Hitchner, Senior Director of Solution Engineering at Voxie
Tying Creative SMS Efforts All Together With Voxie
While SMS marketing has proven itself to be a lucrative channel for marketers, a combination of personalization and creativity is what can really take your text messaging ideas to the next level. SMS marketing platforms like Voxie enable brands to personalize the text messaging process at scale through:
- Dynamic Personalization: Use customer data to personalize messages in real-time, enhancing engagement and conversion rates by addressing each recipient by name and tailoring the content to their interests.
- Analytics and Insights: Gain access to comprehensive analytics that help track campaign performance, allowing you to identify trends and make data-driven adjustments to improve future messaging strategies.
- Creative Assistance: Access a library of gifs to use in your MMS messages and utilize our Text AI capabilities to write SMS messages for you! Additionally, the Voxie team is always on hand to create campaigns for you.
- Playbooks: Access a collection of ready-made campaigns, enabling you to implement strategies quickly and efficiently. These playbooks are a shortcut to multi-step campaign creation, allowing you to adapt and customize each campaign to fit your unique needs while maximizing impact and results.
Schedule a demo to learn more!