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SMS Best Practices for Marketers

SMS Best Practices

If you are a marketer or a digital marketing professional, enabling SMS marketing for brands, following best practices helps to maintain customer trust by ensuring that messages are timely, relevant, and not intrusive. It also helps to ensure that privacy is respected, consent is obtained, and opt-outs are provided to avoid legal issues.

By consistently using best practices, businesses can improve their overall customer experience by avoiding annoyance and promoting positive engagement. Optimizing message content, timeliness, and targeting can help businesses increase the impact of SMS campaigns and create stronger, lasting connections with their audience.

ONLY TEXT PEOPLE WHO AGREED TO RECEIVE THEM

Send texts only to people who have given you permission to do so. Putting an opt-in form on your website or other online pages is the best way to do this.

A new user should be thanked in a text message and asked to confirm opt-in (double opt-in) with a simple “Yes” or “No.” This should be done even if they have already opted-in. For both marketing and transactional SMS, people should give their separate consent to receive SMS.

People who receive your SMS messages can also choose not to receive them at any time by replying “STOP,” “QUIT,” “UNSUBSCRIBE,” “OPT-OUT,” or “CANCEL.” The person who delivers messages will see these and stop sending messages to that customer.

If the customer didn’t reply to your opt-in or double-opt-in offer,  that’s an opt-out.  It’s best to wait to get in touch with people until they ask you to.

MAKE IT SIMPLE FOR CUSTOMERS TO SAY NO OR OPT-OUT

Give customers a simple and easy option to stop receiving your texts. It might be as easy as responding “STOP” or “Unsubscribe” to the text message.

START WITH YOUR BRAND NAME

Don’t make your texts too long. Once you have the phone number of your target audience, you should start promoting your brand right away. This makes people more likely to answer a message from a number they don’t know. Start with your brand name and then make an offer that people can’t refuse in the second line. Quick brand memory and being brief are very important.
key SMS marketing statistics

MESSAGES SHOULD BE SHORT AND TO THE POINT

If you want your SMS marketing to work, don’t go over 160 characters. Cut out information that isn’t needed to get more people to open and click on your messages.

Usually, this is how a successful framework for SMS marketing looks:

• Name of the business
• Name of the customer
• Interesting deal or brand promotion
• The rules for opting in
• A strong CTA (Call To Action) and A way to opt out.

Giving people the chance to “opt-out” makes them feel better because they know they are not being forced to do something. If you need to, include a short link to more information.

Step-by-step guide on setting up an SMS marketing campaign for customer engagement.

COME UP WITH AN SMS MARKETING PLAN THAT YOU STICK TO

Consistency is important for any kind of business. Find the right number of messages that you can send in a decent amount of time. Don’t send too many messages to your users, but don’t be quiet either. This balance keeps your business current without being too much of a bother.

FOLLOW THE RULES AND LAWS ABOUT PRIVACY

Lastly, make sure you follow the rules and protection laws for SMS marketing set by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Get explicit consent, include your business name all the time, be clear about the terms and conditions, let people choose not to accept them during business hours, and value their privacy and rights. Following these rules will keep you out of trouble with the law and protect customers’ privacy.
Digital marketer drafting personalized SMS messages on a computer for a targeted marketing campaign

THE NUMBER OF CHARACTERS YOU CAN USE IN AN SMS

Technically, an SMS message can have up to 160 characters, or up to 70 characters if it has one or more Unicode characters in it, like emoji or Chinese characters.

Modern phones and cell networks, on the other hand, can join texts together, which lets you send longer messages. Messages with more than 160 characters are automatically broken up into parts, which are known as “segments.” When they are received, they are put back together again. You can send long SMS messages with message aggregation, but the cost of each message goes up because SMS are charged per section.

Messages that use the GSM-7 character set are limited to 160 characters. Messages that aren’t encrypted with GSM-7 can only have 70 characters.

NUMBER VALIDATIONS FOR PHONES:

Validation criteria must be in place while gathering phone numbers on a landing page in order to guarantee reliable and correct data. The following is a list of validation guidelines that you might want to use:

Phone Number: Make sure that this field is designated as necessary so that users are unable to complete the form without entering a phone number.

Verify that the phone number you supplied is typed in a proper format by using format validation. For example: +[Phone Number] [Country Code]. For a better user experience, you can accept variants like parentheses, hyphens, and spaces.

SMS opt-in form for receiving marketing messages

THE US AND CANADA:

Since both the US and Canada use the North American Numbering Plan, phone numbers are usually written as (NPA) NXX-XXXX, NPA-NXX-XXXX, or 1-NPA-NXX-XXXX.

‘NPA’ is the area code, ‘NXX’ is the central office code, and ‘XXXX’ is the unique user number for each phone. Quebec is the only place where this isn’t true; there, the right code is always 1 NPA NXX-XXXX. In the U.S., the number is +1 (123) 456-7890 or +1 123-456-7890, and in Quebec, it is +1 123 456-7890.

Record all of the numbers in E.164 code. E.164 code is not required, but it is the best way to get phone numbers, especially if user info includes numbers from more than one country.

COUNTRY CODE:

Make users choose a country code from a dropdown menu, or use their IP address to figure it out immediately.

positive impact of SMS marketing campaigns on customer engagement and sales
LENGTH VALIDATION
  • Make sure the phone number has the right number of digits for the country code you chose. There are different lengths for phone numbers in each country.
    •  
  • For example, check that the phone number is formatted as (999) 999-9999 and has a ten-digit rule.
NUMERIC CHARACTERS
  • Make sure that the phone number you collect is made up of only numbers. Get rid of any letters that aren’t numbers that users might type in.
    •  
  • For phone lines from some countries, there may be a starting zero at the This should be taken into account, and it should be dealt with correctly.
CONFIRMATION OR DOUBLE OPT-IN (OPTIONAL)
  • Add an area for proof where users must enter their phone number again to make sure it is correct and cut down on typing mistakes.
 
  • Double-opt-in is a way to get clear permission, and if the customer doesn’t reply, that’s an opt-out. It’s best to wait to get in touch with people until they ask you to.
TESTING
  • Make sure the phone number validation works correctly on all browsers and platforms by testing it thoroughly on a variety of them.
 
  • Keep in mind that these rules might need to be changed depending on your use case and audience. When setting up approval rules, you should always put the user experience and safety first.
REAL-TIME VALIDATION
  • For real-time validation, use JavaS- cript to give users instant  response as they enter their  phone  This will help keep people from entering fake numbers.
SERVER-SIDE VALIDATION (OPTIONAL)
  • Always use server-side validation to
    make sure the phone number entered
    is correct. This is very important for
    security because it makes sure that
    incorrect data doesn’t get handled
    even if client-side validation is
    skipped.

* Server-side validation: In web development, server-side validation is an essential line of defence since data security and integrity are of utmost importance. It entails processing and verifying user inputs on the server to provide a stable and dependable handling of data prior to it being sent to the database or other application components.

* Client-side validation: By rapidly verifying input data within the web browser, minimizing server queries, and offering real-time feedback, client-side validation improves user experience. Although it enhances performance, server-side validation must be used in conjunction with it to
provide strong security and data integrity.

MASKING INPUT:

To help people enter their phone number correctly, you might want to use input masks/placeholders.

compliance and legal guidelines for SMS marketing practices.

ERROR MESSAGES:

If the phone number is wrong, send clear and detailed messages for errors. Tell us what part of the phone number is giving you trouble.

Did you find this article about SMS best practices helpful? Follow AgileSpace Digital on LinkedIn for more informative content just like this.

Ready to start using SMS marketing to generate incremental revenue for your business? Book a 1:1 strategy call today with AgileSpace Consultants to get started.

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