Text marketing campaigns get far greater engagement from customers than email marketing campaigns do. You have to get straight to the point, because the number of characters allowed in a text is limited. Texting feels more direct and personal. It also has an immediacy about it: According to EZ Texting’s 2019 Mobile Usage Report, 97% of all text messages are opened within three minutes, while 4 in 5 email marketing messages are never opened. The best text message marketing platforms make the process simple and can easily integrate with the rest of your marketing programs. To determine the best text message marketing systems, we looked at ease of use, cost, features and integration options. Read our reviews below to learn what each service has to offer, and see which is right for your business.
Our team spends weeks evaluating dozens of business solutions to identify the best options. To stay current, our research is regularly updated. China Advertising
Conversion rates, opt-outs, KPIs, new customers
Message tracking, contact tracking, delivery reports
Opt-in/opt-out tracking, geographic stats, link tracking
Deliverability, open rates, click-through rates
New subscribers, clicks, messages sent per list
Delivery reports, response rates, unsubscribes
Responsiveness to campaigns, subscriber growth, keyword metrics
Campaign performance, delivery reports, engagement times
Engagement rates, unsubscribes, customer satisfaction
Segment performance, opt-outs, support rates
Failure rates, messages sent, reply rates
Automated scheduling, drip campaigns, surveys
Mobile autoresponders, contact management, mass texting, customization
Appointment scheduling, calendar management, streamlined inbox
Autoresponder, customization tools, contact management
Team chat, automated review requests, mobile payments
Campaign-driven solutions, solo shortcodes, global delivery
Advanced analytics, mass texting, international reach
High-volume messaging, CRM integration, 2-way texting
AI response technology, third-party integrations
Campaign automation, email-to-SMS, virtual mobile numbers
Phone, email, webchat, social media
Phone, email, webchat, in dashboard
Phone, email, webchat, in dashboard
Phone, email, text, webchat, in dashboard
Textedly offers the lowest per-text price of any full-featured text messaging platform. The price is its chief selling point, but please don’t mistake cheap for substandard. With Textedly, you can easily build lists, have two-way conversations with clients, run bulk campaigns, and link up to dozens of popular apps like Salesforce. It’s also one of the few platforms that allow you to text your customers directly from your Instagram business profile.
On Textedly’s cheapest service plan, the price per text is just 2.4 cents. It’s still cheap if you intend to use SMS marketing a lot – you’ll pay just $140 a month for 10,000 texts. You have the option to pay monthly or annually. Unlike other providers, Textedly doesn’t offer a per-month discount for annual plans; instead, it offers 20% more texts. So, if you pay for a year of the $140 plan upfront, your cost per message goes down to 1.17 cents. Be careful, though – unused texts don’t roll over from month to month, and while you can upgrade your plan, you can’t downgrade it.
We love that the company’s resources section gives you 65 templates to choose from – far more than most competitors offer. Textedly does charge extra for text personalization, drip campaigns, and automatic replies, but the actual charges are low and one-off. There is a slight learning curve to some of the more advanced features, but the standard functions are simple to operate for novice as well as experienced text marketers.
Textedly has also incorporated a new artificial intelligence copywriting tool into its platform, making it even easier for brands to interact with customers. With SimpleTexting’s AI Assist, users can write a short prompt that includes all the relevant information they want in the text, then click “generate message” and watch as the tool drafts numerous original message suggestions suited for their target audience. From there, users can choose the message they want to send and customize it to their needs, adding links, photos, emojis or additional information.
EZ Texting is an exceptionally intuitive text messaging platform full of useful features. Nontechnical business owners and those with little or no marketing experience should have little trouble with the software, because it’s so easy to use.
An aspect of EZ Texting that we particularly like is its vast array of industry-specific content to give you marketing ideas that prompt you to action. Additionally, the template library is superbly integrated into the messaging apps within EZ Texting. Competitors should follow its lead with this, because most make using templates much harder than it needs to be. EZ Texting has 49 built-in templates, and you can connect it to more than 3,000 apps through Zapier.
EZ Texting has partnered with photo library Shutterstock, which provides access to 20 million images that you can use for MMS business messages. There is also an intuitive Canva-like feature built in to help you create branded announcements, invitations and promotions. It has plenty of design templates too, in case you’re not familiar with graphics packages. For those who need help (although the platform is so easy to use that not many will), the EZ Texting website is full of guidance and helpful information.
The platform’s three main pricing plans range from $19 to $49 per month, and each includes 200 outgoing texts and free incoming texts. If you need to send a lot of messages, EZ Texting is expensive compared to other platforms. Unfortunately, your expensive unused text credits don’t roll over from month to month.
There are four plans, which are flexible for any size or type of business. EZ Texting uses a credit system for messages, so you are in control of the volume of messages you want to send and your budget. The Value plan is $24 a month and offers 200 credits at a rate of 4 cents per additional credit. The Custom package costs $374 per month, and while it also includes 200 credits, the rate is only 1 cent per additional credit. Annual plans offer savings of up to 20% per package.
In early March, EZ Texting and Shutterstock announced a partnership that allows EZ Texting users to send MMS picture messages. For no extra cost, EZ Texting customers can now choose from Shutterstock’s collection of millions of royalty-free images to create promotions, announcements and invitations. Users also gain access to an image editor and hundreds of design templates to quickly design an MMS marketing campaign to boost sales, drive engagement and promote their product or service.
SlickText is an easy-to-use, feature-packed service. What makes it stand out from the crowd is its onboarding approach. When you sign up for paid plans over $139, for any of its paid plans, you get a free onboarding session with a member of SlickText’s client success team. In addition, all users, regardless of plans, have access to product consultants for free.
As well as showing you how to use the system, the client success agents help you develop a text message marketing strategy for your business and optimize your account settings to help you achieve your goals. You get your own client success rep to be your main point of contact, but the SlickText website contains extensive videos and guides to help and inspire you when you need it.
The platform is easy to use and has many useful features. Want to customize how SlickText works for your business? With the no-code automation tool on the site, you can build a more personalized texting experience for your subscribers. We like the custom integration with Shopify, and you can connect SlickText to over 1,100 other apps and software platforms via Zapier.
SlickText’s service plans range from $29 per month for 500 texts to $1,999 per month for 100,000. Though not the cheapest, its pricing is competitive, especially given the number of features it includes – and its free mobile app allows you to do almost everything you can do on the central dashboard while on the move.
Thryv is a productivity, communications, and payment platform that can help you make your service-based business more profitable, efficient, and streamlined. The company wants its software to be the core of all your business activities, from winning and managing orders to taking payment. Text message marketing is one of Thryv’s core features, letting you run keyword-driven marketing campaigns to drive up your subscription numbers.
You can send messages to your subscribers, inviting them to book an appointment, visit your client portal, or view your social media pages, for example. Well-written templates are built into the messaging function, offering inspiration for the types of campaigns and promotions you might like to run.
We like the built-in and programmable appointment reminder service, which is often missing or too difficult to use on other SMS platforms. Your clients can also log on to Thryv and book their own appointments.
Thryv allows customers to see messages from social media, emails, text messages, and now, WebChat messages sent to your website, all in one place. With WebChat, a free service for Thryv users, businesses can gain new customers by allowing them to reach out via their website at any time. In doing so, the customers will be prompted to provide contact information that is stored in the customer relationship management (CRM) or used to update their contact.
You can perform many other business tasks with Thryv, such as managing your social media and Google Business Profile (which includes building citations). It even offers merchant services – allowing you to accept credit and debit card payments – and online video marketing services. Additionally, Thryv recently introduced ThryvPay, a mobile card reader with tap-to-pay integrations using Apple or Google Android operating systems. This new service will allow customers to pay online rather than meeting with business owners in person.
Text message marketing teams can use this new technology to their advantage by communicating with buyers and directing them to the new online payment portal. ThryvPay also allows users to schedule payments online, decreasing the likelihood of forgetting to make a payment. All this makes Thryv a great option for companies that want to run their customer communications, marketing campaigns and management functions from the same platform.
SimpleTexting offers six service plans, ranging from $29 per month (500 included texts) to $899 per month (50,000 texts). The platform has all of the features that most small businesses need to grow. The software is superbly thought out and executed, but some of the features are harder to use than others.
The analytics are in-depth, but easy for a new user to understand. Launching campaigns, adding custom fields to your subscriber lists, and segmenting clients for better-targeted marketing campaigns are all easy to do. The inbox is a pleasure to use, as it allows instant two-way conversations with customers.
SimpleTexting SMS Template Generator helps small businesses hit the ground running with text marketing campaigns. With over 100 curated templates, users can quickly and easily customize messages, and even customize templates for frequently-sent messages. The feature allows users to send bespoke messages to multiple recipients and engage in two-way texting to follow up with leads and increase reply rates.
Through Zapier, SimpleTexting can connect to thousands of software programs, including the best CRM platforms and top email marketing software. It also offers something that no other text message marketing provider does: It will create free integrations that connect the texting platform to the software packages and apps you use (depending on their complexity) if you are on the $229 monthly service plan or higher.
For us, this makes the $229 plan a hard proposition to turn down, particularly if your business is growing. Growing businesses need seamless integration between the apps and software they use to better meet customers’ demands.
Podium is an all-in-one text message marketing platform and an online review management system that starts at $289 a month. It’s also the texting platform of choice for over 100,000 U.S. businesses that serve their local communities. From restaurants and plumbers to car dealerships and retail stores, Podium brings businesses closer to their customers. You can use it to leverage the goodwill of your client base by encouraging them to write positive online reviews of your business.
Podium makes building and segmenting your subscriber lists easy. The service provides various list-building tools, from QR codes to webpage pop-ups that you can use on your site and social media.
Podium ensures you can launch new text campaigns quickly. You simply choose the list of subscribers you want to get in touch with, create a message for them, and press “send.” Handily, Podium has built templates into the messaging feature that you can use if you prefer. The platform’s tidy and uncluttered layout makes Podium easy to use out of the box. Clearly, an optimal user experience was paramount during the design and development of the service. In case you do need help, though, a link to the Podium website’s knowledge base is permanently placed in the top navigation bar.
The Podium inbox is a central location for all your text, email, Facebook, Instagram and webchat conversations. We like that when you click on a subscriber’s name, you caan see your entire conversation history with them at a glance.
You can also use Podium to ask customers and subscribers to leave reviews of your business. You can even reach out to someone who has left a Google review to thank them directly and ask them to join your mailing list. Podium integrates with most major review platforms.
Podium also offers several marketing automation options, which are available via a newly designed automation dashboard that allows users to browse through a portfolio of prebuilt automation templates. These templates — such as review referral automation and website retargeting automation — quickly and efficiently send relevant marketing messages to customers based on how they interact with a business. In doing so, customers can present their issues and needs without speaking to a real representative. Setting up automation templates is easy, requiring nothing more than selecting automation, customizing it and turning it on with the click of a button.
ProTexting is a popular choice for businesses, charities, and schools that want to communicate individually and en masse with customers, donors, students, and parents. You can send individual or group text messages to your subscribers immediately or at a scheduled time and date you set from your desktop or the mobile app. You can also segment your subscribers easily into smaller, more niche groups thanks to ProTexting’s keyword and custom field functions.
ProTexting allows Shopify users the ability to send customers an SMS reminder when they have abandoned their shopping cart. Through ProTexting, Shopify businesses can send their customers an alert if they have an incomplete shopping cart. Texts can be up to 480 characters and sent as soon as 15 minutes after the cart is abandoned.
ProTexting also offers holiday and after-hours SMS auto-replies. Your business can use this to disconnect over the holiday season without leaving your customers hanging. The text messaging service provides options to customize your messages and let people know when you’ll open back up and what they can do in the meantime. With this autoresponder, businesses can choose the date range the responses will arrive, use this feature in conjunction with other automated messages, and share alternative contact information.
An integration with Hubspot allows users to send various image types to their customers. With the addition of MMS (multimedia messaging service) through the HubSpot integration, Protexting users can now add videos or photos to customer messages. MMS enhances the customer experience by adding a visual dimension to the interaction.
We also like that there is an “additional users” feature so teams can easily add sub-users to their accounts. Collaboration is key for text message marketing, and this new feature will allow employees to connect and work together from anywhere. To add a user, you’ll first need to designate a “master user.” All added users will be given their own toll-free number (TFN). If a user is removed, the TFN is returned to the master.
There is a learning curve, however. While some of the features are easy to master, others don’t provide enough on-screen prompts to show new clients how to use them. For those who do run into problems, though, ProTexting offers great customer service. Its customer support is so good that it should give business owners who lack tech savvy or experience in SMS marketing the confidence they need to press ahead. [Take a leaf out of ProTexting’s book with these seven ways to use text messaging for customer service.]
ProTexting offers seven service plans ranging from $49 to $1,119 per month, and you can take advantage of a free trial if you want to test out the features for yourself first. The platform has 19 built-in apps, with 42 add-ons for you to choose from. Most are free, but some cost extra. ProTexting also offers integrations with VerticalResponse, Mailchimp, Amazon ($49 a month), Shopify and Constant Contact.
Twilio is the most developer-friendly text messaging platform we found in our research. It’s the type of platform that fast-scaling businesses will appreciate, because it gives developers the tools they need to integrate the messaging platform with your company’s software ecosystem.
A new partnership with Google Cloud incorporates its generative AI into Twilio’s customer engagement products to enhance customer experiences. The strengths of Twilio’s customer engagement platform data and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI models allow businesses to benefit from generative AI capabilities, improving contact center experiences and marketing automation. Additionally, the affiliation includes integration between Google Cloud Contact Center AI and Twilio Flex, allowing the deployment of AI-powered virtual assistance for conversational self-service interactions.
Twilio recently integrated AI into its platform to create personalized experiences at scale centered around individual customers. Through the use oChat GPT-4’s model, businesses can harness the rich customer data they have on the Segment Customer Data platform, combine it with the generative capabilities of AI to execute more tailored marketing strategies across various channels. With this, businesses can gain a unique understanding of their customers to enhance engagement and offer deeper personalization in customer interactions.
Twilio’s pricing is by far the most competitive we’ve seen. This is a pay-as-you-go service, with SMS texts costing less than a penny each (0.75 cents, to be exact) to send and receive. You can build up your texting platform with extras like clean local numbers for $1 per month, toll-free numbers for $2, and high-volume shortcodes for $1,000. The analytics are second to none, letting you measure your campaign’s performance trends by country, carrier, channel and sender.
Twilio is not ideal for small businesses or growing businesses that can’t afford a development team. It’s best for a business that wants to get big fast (or is already big) and needs a reliable text messaging component to plug directly into the software used to run the company and automate its workflows. [Related article: How Does Workflow Automation Help a Business?]
Tatango’s target markets are nonprofits, charities and political campaigns that need to text in large volumes quickly. The sophisticated back-end platform enables Tatango to send up to 6 million texts per hour. This capacity is one reason it has become the leading SMS marketing platform in the United States when measured by fundraising potential and voter drives.
Rather than offering a selection of service packages like most providers do, Tatango requires you to call so it can create a custom pricing plan for you, based on the volume of texts you want to send and the functionality you need from the system. The platform links natively to over 20 popular CRM and email marketing services, allowing easy and instant sharing of donor and supporter names between apps.
If your organization has no contact list to start with, Tatango will help you collect phone numbers from other software you may use, including Salesforce, HubSpot, WinRed, Anedot, ActBlue and NationBuilder.
Tatango’s analytics tool is impressively sophisticated. You can see how many people received a particular message, clicked on an embedded link, or made a donation. The platform allows for detailed subscriber segmentation and message automation, and the REST API gives your organization’s developers the tools they need to integrate Tatango with your existing software.
Although originally designed for client-facing businesses, Zingle has become popular among hotels and other hospitality venues. The core of the system is its inbox, which brings many different communication channels to the same interface, including SMS, webchat, Facebook Messenger, and other messenger apps. You can carry out conversations with customers on the desktop control panel or mobile app (iOS and Android).
Zingle has an impressive ability to enable fluid, two-way communication with a customer, no matter which channel is the source of their original message. It also offers built-in sentiment analysis to help you understand the intent of your inbound messages. When programmed correctly, Zingle can direct a message to the appropriate person based on whether it contains a question, complaint or booking request. The analytics feature will soon also allow you to monitor how quickly your team members are resolving customer issues and other performance factors.
You can load your existing and potential customers’ contact details into Zingle from leading hotel and hospitality platforms you may already use, such as Opera, Springer-Miller, Amadeus, Megasys and Maestro. You can also create service tickets through its integrations with HotSOS and Quore and include message histories in Mindbody customer profiles.
Zingle offers a three-day free trial, during which you can send up to 1,000 messages to test the system.
TextMagic is a specialist text message marketing platform with pay-as-you-go plans starting at 4 cents per message, as well as monthly service plans that range from $99 per month (2,500 texts) to $1,999 per month (66,600 texts). It offers a free trial with enough preloaded credit for you to send 10 text messages. The company provides services to the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia.
TextMagic uses keywords – like most other platforms do, but differently. You still create a keyword that you ask new subscribers to put in at the start of their opt-in text, but you then program a rule into TextMagic to send a keyword-specific auto-response and to add that number to a specific list (whether a new or existing one). The platform supports MMS messages, letting you schedule both SMS and MMS messages for the times of your choice. Custom fields allow you to personalize messages and to create more detailed segments for your marketing contact lists.
The TextMagic interface is fluid, clean, and easy to use – but in case you do need help navigating the platform, its website has a generous selection of support articles and videos, and the customer service team is available 18 hours a day on weekdays. TextMagic is built upon a solid REST API framework, meaning that integrations with thousands of other apps and software platforms are available through Zapier.
The intuitive analytics tool provides in-depth analysis of your campaigns’ performance. You can even monitor individual team members’ use of the platform and download reports as CSV or Excel files.
Salesmsg is a feature-rich, user-friendly text message marketing service. It offers its best value to businesses that want to send 5,000 to 25,000 text messages a month. Although it’s slightly more expensive for this range of messages than other providers, we chose Salesmsg as the best for high-volume communications because of how many features you get for the price.
Salesmsg’s standout features include shared inboxes, custom and merge fields, conversation archives, private conversation between team members, video messages, dynamic segmentation, contact notes, and integrations with more than 1,500 apps via Zapier. It also has custom integrations for ActiveCampaign, Keap, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Aircall, Marketo, and CRM systems like HubSpot. The platform even has built-in ticketing and quote funnels – something we didn’t find with most competitors.
Salesmsg also offers a streamlined inbox navigation system, with an alphabetical organization as well as the ability to search inboxes by name or pin them at the top for easy access. Users can also reply to customers’ text messages via email or a shared inbox. In addition to text messaging, Salesmsg recently added an audio and video messaging functionality, allowing users to record and send audio messages and videos that will render directly in the message timeline.
Customers can use the smart conversation assignment tool to delegate conversations based on message mood and tone, enabling businesses to provide individualized attention to customers for a faster resolution. With the export option, users can save closed conversations for future analysis and recordkeeping purposes.
Salesmsg’s service plans start at $25 per month for 500 credits, ranging up to $249 per month for 7,500 credits. If you want to send more than 10,000 a month, the company will create a custom quote for you.
Prices for text message marketing services vary by provider. Some charge per text, but most charge by the month, with this fee covering a certain number of texts and keywords for campaigns, depending on the plan you select. Free plans are available, but they are extremely limited in what you can do with them.
Adding more users, keywords, numbers, and features may incur one-time or monthly charges, depending on the provider. Try to make a list of exactly what you want to do with text marketing, and ask providers to quote you for that.
The cheapest SMS marketing plan we saw, from Textedly, costs $24 per month and includes 1,200 monthly texts. The most expensive plan we found was from TextMagic, costing $1,999 for just over 66,600 messages per month.
There are many benefits of using text message marketing as well as some potential drawbacks. The direct, personal nature of text messaging is a double-edged sword in that it provides an excellent opportunity to speak directly with your customers, but some customers may find marketing texts annoying or invasive, particularly if you text them at inconvenient times or too often. [Related article: 12 Best Ways to Use Business Texting]
Data shows that 2.2 trillion SMS and MMS messages were sent in 2020 in the U.S., according to Statista.
Be sure to follow text message marketing laws and best practices. Pay attention to your provider’s own guidelines and recommended use policies in addition to the applicable laws.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act is overseen by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. It outlines the laws you must abide by when collecting contacts and sending text messages. Not everything in the TCPA applies to text message marketing, but you should review the regulations specific to texting to ensure that you comply.
One TCPA requirement is that you get permission from each contact before you send text messages to them. Another is that you only send texts between the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. (in the recipient’s time zone, not yours).
The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association and the Mobile Marketing Association provide guidance to companies on the appropriate use of text message marketing to consumers. Although these guidelines are not laws, they are considered best practices. Here are some of them:
You can be fined $500 to $1,500 for every illegal text message you send. All the services we reviewed have active programs to help you stay on the right side of the regulations.
The prime benefit of text message marketing is, of course, the chance to communicate directly with customers, but it has various other key benefits.
SMS marketing has a much higher open rate than email marketing – 98%, according to a 2021 Birdeye report. This means most recipients will see your messages.
Text messaging is a low-cost way to market your business. The number of texts included in monthly plans is often quite generous and above what most companies actually need. A few pay-as-you-go options are available too.
Customers now expect you to be available in-store, online, on social media, on messaging apps, and by text. Nearly all Americans – 97%, according to Pew Research Center – carry a cell phone that they check multiple times a day. This ensures you can reach them, whether they are in front of a computer or not.
Text messaging doesn’t need to be your entire marketing effort – it works well in conjunction with other types of marketing. For instance, you can include links to your social media profiles in your text messages or offer a discount code for recipients to use on your website.
Text message marketing services should do much more than send texts. They should help you find your target audiences, engage with them, and track how they interact with your messages.
Consider the features below, deciding which ones will be of high value to your business. Then compare the providers you select to quote you for how well they will deliver on what you need.
SMS marketing is still on the rise. Projections from Juniper Research show that businesses will have delivered a combined 3.5 trillion texts by 2023, marking a 40% increase from 2019’s 2.5 trillion.
Text message marketing is an effective, quick and easy way to reach customers. As EZ Texting found in the 2019 Mobile Usage Report, 97% of text messages are read within three minutes of being received. Unlike with emails, nearly every person you send a text will see it. Personalized text marketing messages are particularly effective, as they make customers feel seen and appreciated.
Businesses should use text message marketing to distribute offers and incentives to their audiences, which drives new sales. You can also use them to provide business updates (like changes in your store hours) or invite customers to an event on your premises.
Text message marketing is important because it gives you a clear, dedicated line of communication with your customers. It’s a direct channel where you can keep up levels of engagement, increase customer satisfaction, and build your brand reputation.
Setup varies between providers, but the process usually comprises six basic steps:
The employees you want to help you with text message marketing will first need to know the law. Focus your training on that as well as how to use the platform you select. Some key lessons are how to create campaigns, choose contacts, manage analytics and troubleshoot minor issues.
Text message marketing can show new customers that your business is committed to customer support and a personalized customer experience. This can enhance your credibility and build customer loyalty.
For better customer retention, keep your subscribers in the loop about deals, opportunities and news from your business. Use these texts to keep your brand front of mind for loyal customers and incentivize them to keep buying from you.
Text message marketing services typically cost a monthly fee that ranges from $20 for 1,200 texts to $2,000 for 66,600 texts. Your price will largely depend on the number of messages and keywords your business requires each month.
Yes, it is legal to send messages to customers via SMS – as long as you follow the FCC’s guidelines. The two primary governing laws are the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the CAN-SPAM Act, which seek to protect consumers from unsolicited messages if they opt out or block a number. Penalties range from $500 to $1,500 per violation.
If you want to send marketing text messages to customers, you must obtain express written consent for each number on your marketing list. According to the TCPA, the terms of consent must be “clear and conspicuous.” In other words, a recipient must understand exactly what they are agreeing to when they provide their phone number. The most common way to get consent is by asking a consumer to provide their phone number on an online or paper form that includes the required terms.
Consumers actually open around 98% of texts they receive on their phones, according to research by MessageMedia, proving the effectiveness of text message marketing. For comparison, the average email open rate is around 20%. While email marketing still generates great returns, there is a strong argument – particularly for B2C companies – to shift some expenditure over to text message marketing and see if it gets a higher response rate for your business.
Most text marketing platforms will show you the number of messages you’ve sent, the number of messages delivered (if a recipient’s carrier supports that function), and the number of bounces (failed deliveries due to network issues or a number no longer being in service). You can also include links with tracking codes in your texts to track how many subscribers visit a webpage as a result of your message.
While SMS marketing is an effective tactic to get your message in front of your target audience, this communication method offers a short character limit requiring businesses to condense their message, which can necessitate strategic planning and the omission of certain elements.
It’s also likely that not all recipients will respond kindly to this marketing tactic, especially given the increase in fraudulent messages that consumers receive. Therefore, having recipients express permission to receive messages is imperative, and any message you send should comply with data and privacy protection rules, as well as the e-commerce regulations, which state messages must have a clear sender and be clearly recognizable as commercial communications.
To stay compliant with SMS text messaging, include all relevant program details at opt-in, and ensure you have prior express written consent and opt-in confirmation before sending any messages. You must also include a transparent opt-out process, such as texting “STOP” to unsubscribe. Finally, ensure all messages go out within permitted hours as per the Telephone Consumer Protection Act — between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.
Standard SMS text messages are not end-to-end encrypted, as they are subject to the typically weak encryption of mobile carriers. To increase the security of your SMS text messages, it’s best to leverage a text message marketing platform, which comes with safeguards to protect your business and its customer data.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a big effect on text messaging in general. In the 2021 State of Texting Report by Twilio’s Zipwhip, 50% of American respondents said they sent more texts than usual during the pandemic, and 1 in 3 businesses adopted SMS marketing at the same time to share information on closures, new protocols and policy changes. These changes in communication, once considered temporary, seem to be permanent business fixtures in 2023.
But companies that use text message marketing as a primary means of communication with customers should be aware of a major industry change happening this year. Cellular network carriers have implemented a new rule requiring U.S. and Canada-based businesses that use toll-free numbers (numbers that start with 800, 888, 877, 866, 855, 844 or 833) to verify that number to continue sending text messages.
Companies should plan to verify their toll-free number as soon as possible to ensure their text messages are not filtered as spam. The verification form can typically be found online through your text message marketing service provider. Certain providers have set their own deadlines for verification, but most are giving customers until September 30, 2022 to complete the process.
Research indicates that the shift to SMS is here to stay, which is why it’s important to protect this outreach method by verifying your toll-free number. When businesses include links in their text messages, the click-through rate is 80%, according to Voyage SMS, as opposed to email marketing’s 2.62%. The challenge for companies is to build their subscriber lists and segment those lists accurately so that consumers only receive text messages on offers they want to know about.
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