Increase Conversion in Your SMS Marketing by Doing This One Thing
Good copywriting is something marketers really need to understand. But it’s easy to forget the basic principles and best practice when running SMS marketing campaigns. You only have 160 characters after all (or up to 456 characters if you’re using fastsms).
While there are many elements to successful copywriting, there’s one element that is often either overlooked or over-used. What is it? Urgency.
You’ve seen what I’m talking about in adverts:
- Only 20 spots left
- Sale ends today
- Get yours before it’s too late
All these phrases (and many more), make the reader feel a sense of urgency. If they don’t hurry then they’ll miss out. It’s this sense they feel that helps drive the call to action, whatever that may be.
But since SMS marketing messages are short, you have limited space to describe the entire offer, let alone create urgency. It’s also important though, to make sure the urgency doesn’t come across as fake. For example, if you send a message with a discount code good “today only”, then you send a similar offer a few days later, then another, your customers will certainly become jaded. They will no longer believe the urgency in your messages.
This can also happen if you send a limited offer to your “exclusive” text messaging club, but then run the same offer for everyone who comes into your store. In today’s world of social media, you’ll lose credibility once word gets around. Running multiple campaigns is fine, just be sure the urgency you describe is real. If you say the special discount ends today, it should end today. If the offer is exclusive or limited, keep it that way.
And speaking of limited offers, examinations of the copy in successful campaigns have shown that a limited time urgency works better than saying there are limited quantities available. So if you have the choice, limit your offers to a defined time frame – preferably short. A day or weekend can work well, but when the time gets much longer the conversion rates drop.
Here’s one more titbit to help build your urgency: don’t use the word “ends”. Apparently people don’t respond well to terms like “ends today”. They much prefer (and by that I mean they act on the offer more often) terms like “until Friday” or “today only”. Small changes like these can have a surprising impact on your conversion rates.
And the best news is that those types of terms are short, create urgency and are perfect for SMS marketing.
For more help and advice on download our free Mobile Marketing Guide.
Related Articles
12 Great Quotes to Start Your 2018 SMS Marketing Campaign
How to Capture the Essence of Autumn in Your SMS Marketing Campaign
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.
What You Can Learn From a Bad SMS Message
In last week’s blog I covered how the Trump campaign sent unsolicited SMS messages to voters. This week I’m stuck on the same topic, but from a totally different angle: what we can learn from that failure. Because honestly, their biggest issue might not be violating the law. It might be the people they have writing their SMS messages. It’s time to dissect the message that spawned the law suit, and learn what we can from it.
9 SMS Marketing Power Words
With its 456 character limit, SMS Marketing challenges us to be succinct, ensuring we pack the most into our punch and deliver powerful and effective calls to action in a minimum of words. With some research and planning, it is still possible to craft great messages that get results and still stay well within the limits. In this article, we share 9 power words and phrases to help to you do just that.
6 SMS Marketing Faux Pas To Avoid
SMS marketing can be an incredibly useful tool for successful mobile marketing campaigns. However, it is not without its pitfalls. We have compiled a list of six of the worst SMS mobile marketing faux pas, so that you can avoid them and text your way to marketing success.
5 Fantastic Spring SMS Marketing Phrases
9 Football Phrases to Kick Start Your World Cup SMS Marketing Campaign
6 Psychological Tips for SMS Marketing Success
Getting to grips with the underlying psychology of how audiences react both consciously and subconsciously to your message is key to achieving the maximum effect in any type of marketing. All kinds of things come into play with different media, from colours and shapes to images and videos. Even the way things move can have a powerful effect on a viewer. Unlike many other forms of marketing, however, SMS marketing is unique in that the only tool you have is words - and not many of them. But armed with a basic knowledge of consumer psychology, 456 characters is more than enough to get the desired effect. In this article, we present our six top tips to take advantage of the psychology of SMS messaging.
3 Common Errors That Will Ruin Your SMS Marketing
You worked hard to get those customers on your SMS marketing list. But now they are unsubscribing like crazy, or maybe just no longer responding to your messages. What happened? Maybe you’ve committed one of the following common, but easy to fix, errors that can completely drive your customers away.