I’m Derek Johnson with tatango.com.
I’m answering the question, “How do you increase text message marketing open rates?”
So text message marketing is when a brand builds up a large subscriber database of their
customers’ phone numbers and then uses those phone numbers to send out mass text messages,
usually, offers and promotions that drive sales.
So an open rate in text messaging means the customer is opening the message on their mobile
phone.
They’re seeing the text message.
This is going to shock you, I’m pretty sure.
Text message marketing open rates are 99%.
That’s pretty high compared to things like email marketing.
Now, why is it so high?
Well, it’s essentially because there’s no text message spam that is coming to you,
therefore, text messaging is a very clean channel, a marketing channel.
Where email marketing, if you’ve ever, you know, opened up an email account, you’ll
know there’s a lot of email spam, where text message marketing, you really don’t
receive that much text message spam in the United States.
And because of that, that means the open rates for text messaging is significantly higher
than things like email marketing.
Again, 99% open rates, pretty impressive.
Now, the reason there’s no text message spam in the United States is we have federal
law that protects consumers from receiving text message spam.
The federal law is The Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
I know that sounds very long.
Some people say the TCPA.
And it essentially gives consumers the right to sue a brand or a business if they send
them unsolicited text messages.
Now, this is crazy.
A consumer can sue a brand for between $500 and $1,500 per text message that they receive.
You can see pretty quickly why brands are not going to send you unsolicited text messages,
because $500 to $1,500 per text message is a lot of money for any brand.
So open rates are extremely high for text messaging, 99%.
But how do you increase that or how do you at least make sure that consumers want to
open your text message or are encouraged to open your text message?
There’s two tips that I usually recommend.
Number one is find a good time to text message your customers.
So there’s a couple tips here.
One is find a time that makes sense.
You do not want to text message a customer in the middle of the night.
You don’t want to text message them too early.
If you are offering a lunch special, let’s say you’re a restaurant, you don’t want
to text message them right at lunch.
You want to text message them a little before lunch.
All these different kind of tactics will increase the chance of them looking through the message
and then clicking on your message.
The second part of that is kind of a little trick that I like to use, is you don’t wanna
be lumped in with other text message marketing campaigns.
So, as text messaging becomes more popular, even though it’s an opt-in solution, a marketing
channel, there’s a lot of other brands that are going to be text messaging the same customers.
And most of those brands will send text messages, usually, what I’ve seen is, on the hour
or on, usually, the half hour.
So what that means is they’re sending text messages at 11:00, or noon, or 1:00, or 2:00,
or 11:30, or, you know, 12:30, 1:30.
Because usually, they’re scheduling these messages in advance.
And the software providers they’re using only have, usually, 1:00, 1:30, 2:00, 2:30,
3:00, as options to send the message.
So what you don’t want to have happen is you send a text message out to your customers
and so do the other businesses that also have your, you know, maybe a couple of your phone
numbers in their database as well.
You don’t all want to be sending text messages at 1:00 because then you’re going to get
three text messages and decrease the chance of the customer actually opening your text
message.
So what I like to do is, I like to send it at 1:12 or 2:37.
Somewhere where I know that, most likely, other businesses are not sending a text message
at the same time.
That’s kind of the first one.
Send it at the right time.
Number two, the last trick I have is, in the text message, depending on the phone type,
the consumer usually is only going to see the first few lines of text that you put in
the text message.
So, usually, what I like to do is make sure it’s very, very interesting, the first few
lines of text.
Very similar to, like, email marketing, you want to hook them with what you’re offering.
So, at the very start of the text message, you don’t want to be boring.
You don’t want to, like, put your company name and then, you know, say, you know, things,
like, descriptive words like, “You are receiving this text message because…”
That’s very boring.
You want to include something at the very start that’s going to hook them.
So I like things like…put the promotion right up front.
“Save 50% off today at, you know, Bloomingdale’s.”
“Woah, awesome, I’m interested in that.
I want to click on that.
I want to figure out more.”
Now, in the text message, the full text message, you can put all the other stuff at the bottom.
So, “Save 50% off today at Bloomingdale’s when you purchase $100,” or, you know, whatever,
“Click here,” or, “You have to redeem it tomorrow,” whatever it is, you know,
I like to first put the offer right up front so that when they see it in the text message
preview, they’re only seeing the first few lines, they’re seeing a really interesting
promotion rather than kind of the terms and conditions or the clarification of the promotion.
That can, you know, remain at the bottom of the text message.
So, two different ways.
Now, again, you’re getting 99% open rates on text messaging, so this is really trying
to get you to, like, 100%.
But it does help, it does have some effect.
So the first one, first way to get higher open rates is to send it at the right time.
Now, that means sending it at the right time for the promotion and then also trying not
to send at the same time as other businesses would be text messaging customers in the same
time as well.
The second portion is making sure that the start of the message is very interesting and
makes a consumer want to click the text message and open and view the whole text message.
So, hopefully, that helps.
Again, you’re getting 99% open rates but this, hopefully, should get you to 100%.
But it hopefully answers the question as to how you can increase text message marketing
open rates.