3 Tips to Help You Time Your SMS Marketing Campaign
Timing is everything. While it’s an axiom everyone can understand and agree on, it’s doubly true when it comes to SMS marketing. If you send your messages at the wrong time, you’ll see your opt out rates jump and your ROI plummet. So when should you send your text marketing messages? Here are three key guidelines to help you schedule your next campaign:
- Don’t send on weekends. Percentages vary, but in just about every kind of business, opt out rates jump when messages are sent on a weekend. Retail businesses have seen as much as a 372% increase in opt outs in messages sent on Saturday or Sunday. Restaurants have a less drastic, but still substantial, increase of opt out rates of around 150%. Either way the trend is very clear: people don’t want to be marketed to via text messages on weekends. There are obviously exceptions dependent on the nature of the messages, but just think – will your audience have made their major decisions for the weekend before Saturday?
- Send Tuesday-Friday. Do your best to skip sending messages on Mondays. The evidence and trend isn’t as strong as for weekends, but Mondays tend to have a lower response rate (meaning people don’t take action on the message). The common sense reason given for this is that people are just too busy on Mondays. They are inundated with emails and work demands that built up over the weekend. Your simple text message is likely to get lost in the noise.
- Pick the right time of day. Unfortunately picking the right time of day is not as simple as avoiding weekends. Some studies suggest avoiding traditional work hours (9-5) and reaching out to people just before and just after. But there are other examples that show just the opposite. Before and after work are “rush hours”. People are busy getting to work or getting home, and don’t have time to look at your message. The only agreement in the data is to not send messages after hours, generally from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. So what is the right time of day? You’ll have to experiment, or take a survey of your list, to find out what will work for your business.
Remember these are guidelines. They won’t apply to every business and really completely depend upon your list and what they want. If these guidelines don’t seem to bring good results, consider surveying your list to find their preferences. And you can get more ideas from our free SMS Marketing Guide.
Related Articles
SMS Mаrkеtіng for Wеb Dеѕіgn and Digital Marketing Agеnсіеѕ
6 Ways to Get Results, and Not Annoy People, with SMS Marketing
Using SMS marketing is one highly effective way to maintain relationships with mobile users, but there's an incredibly fine line between engaging with someone and annoying them to such an extent that they swiftly delete your marketing messages and never want to hear from you again. Here's 6 things to keep in mind to make sure you don't annoy your subscribers.
9 Phrases to Add Some Winter Wonder to Your SMS Marketing Campaign
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?
What’s in a Keyword? Three Rules to Using Keywords in SMS Marketing
Keywords are single words that can be used within two way SMS marketing campaigns. They can be used in conjunction with SMS shortcodes or with Virtual Mobile Numbers. Learn three basic rules for the use of SMS keywords that will increase click-through rates and conversions.
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.
Proof SMS Messaging Gets Results: Giveaways and Contests
Companies use contests and giveaways all the time. It turns out that doing them over SMS messaging works really well, and offers some advantages over other channels. Read our blog to see the types of results various companies achieved when using SMS giveaways.
How to use SMS for Highly Targeted Marketing
While brevity might be one of the keys to good advertising, perhaps the most important is to make sure your message reaches the right people. The goal of targeted marketing is not to bombard so many people that some will inevitably listen, but rather to target and nail down your core demographic.
7 Channels for “Free Promotion” of Your Opt In Campaigns
While there are many ways you can probably think of to promote your SMS opt in campaign, there may be some “free” channels you’re neglecting. Thanks to Google, I can point out seven of them. At the mCommerce Summit Google gave a presentation about app promotion and optimising. I can’t even convey how exasperated the presenter was when he talked about how many opportunities companies just let slip by.
Advice and Predictions for the Future of SMS Messaging in 2017
SMS messaging took off in 2016. And that’s saying something for a technology that’s been around twenty-five years. Come take a look at the past year and see what we think 2017 will bring to the industry and how you can use it in your business.