Copywriting Principles for SMS Marketing
In a recent blog I covered how to create urgency in your SMS marketing messages. It didn’t feel right to leave out a few other key components – the U companions. In copywriting circles they are often called the 4-Us. They are: Urgent, Useful, Unique, and Ultra-specific.
So to make sure I don’t leave anything out, here I’ll show you how to use the others in your SMS messaging.
- Unique – is everyone running a sale on women’s shoes? what can you do different?
- Useful – the message needs to relate to the reader. By segmenting and tracking your list you can know if you’re sending that women’s shoe sale to women … or not.
- Ultra-specific – saying “Sale on women’s shoes” is not as good as “25% off women’s shoes”. The specificity helps drive the purchase decisions. That is it will help justify the women’s desire for more shoes no matter how many she already has (and yes I’m a woman so I understand these things).
Tying these all together in one advert or headline to an advert is often challenging, but doing it in 160 characters (or up to 456 characters if you’re using fastsms) can be even more so.
The key of course, is to understand your product or service and the market you’re trying to reach with the text message campaign. Making an offer useful for instance, completely depends on who you send the messages to. As mentioned above, if you send a text about a sale on women’s shoes to your entire list, most men will likely ignore it (if you send too many they may well unsubscribe too). If you’re able to segment your list so the men don’t get irrelevant messages, but instead get one focused on men’s products you’re conversions will go up.
Having a unique twist to your SMS marketing or message can be one of the more difficult things to define and implement. Let’s say just before Valentine’s Day florists may all be offering roses at a discounted price. If every offer says two dozen roses delivered for £15, a customer has no incentive to choose a particular one. Being unique could mean offering a better discount, adding a vase or other perk, or even in how the message is crafted and delivered – something different from everyone else. Perhaps the text message could include a link to a short video ad with the ability to order right on page. Maybe the SMS message is sent in a funny or humorous way that grabs someone’s attention. This is where creative marketing comes into play and the challenge to make it deliverable within the character limit.
Being ultra-specific is potentially the easiest part of the 4-U’s to include in your message. Use specific numbers and names whenever you can. If your sale is only on a certain brand of product with a certain discount, include all of that if you can fit it into your text message. For example, “10% off Clarks, today only” would be ultra-specific with the discount and the brand name.
Integrating all of the 4-Us will help any marketing campaign. Meeting the challenge of doing so in an SMS marketing message could really help conversions take off.
Related Articles
More Examples of Calls to Action in an SMS Message
In a previous article I shared two examples of SMS marketing messages I received and how their call to action worked, or not. This time I want to share two more examples to help you in crafting the perfect call to action for your SMS marketing messages.
Top Three Things Retailers Should Do to Keep Customers on Their SMS Opt-In List
You've run a successful SMS opt-in campaign for your retail store. Now that you have your list, do you have a plan to keep them from opting out? Wait, you mean there's more to this than just sending out coupon codes? There is if you want to keep your customers from opting out.
How To Craft The Best Content For Your SMS Messaging
You need concise, memorable and high-impact content with a clear call to action in your SMS messaging. That, in a nutshell, is what's needed to achieve with any marketing or engagement communications in any form. But this is never truer than with an SMS campaign when your business text messaging has to rely on a small window of recipient attention.
9 High Conversion Power Words for SMS Marketing
Personalising Your SMS Marketing
Using people’s names in marketing is great. It does provide a certain level of personalisation that can get people more interested in what you’re sending them. Of course in text messaging, you don’t always have the room for a name, your message, and the required opt out information … usually there just isn’t enough room. So how can you make your marketing messages personal?
The Psychology of SMS Marketing
In marketing, everyone wants to be more influential and persuasive in order to build loyalty and return custom. To gain the highest ROI, businesses want their marketing campaigns to speak to every individual in such a way that makes them feel connected and yet, with every will in the world, an SMS marketing campaign is only going to achieve this high conversion and success if it manages to tap into consumer psychology.
SMS Marketing Ideas To Celebrate Wimbledon
13 Words That Inspire Action in Your SMS Messages
Because they are so short, word choice is important in SMS messages. You need to convey instructions and the benefits of following those instructions in few words. If you’ve ever struggled to find just the right one, check out our list of action inspiring words for SMS messaging.
10 Super Successful SMS Marketing Phrases
Are Emoji the Next Big Thing in SMS Marketing?
One of the best things about instant messaging is the ability to send emoticons and emoji to convey a feeling with just one image. Many companies are trying to use them in their SMS marketing. There are technical issues with using them though, as well as questions on whether it’s good marketing practice.