SMS Marketing: What It Is, How to Use It + Examples That Work

SMS marketing is a form of digital marketing that involves reaching users via texts to their mobile devices or phone numbers. It can be an effective way to reach customers directly with targeted, customized messaging. Here, get expert tips to help you do it right.

If you’ve done any online shopping as of late (we’re gonna go out on a limb and assume that you have), then you’re probably already familiar with SMS marketing.

While shopping or adding items to your cart, you might’ve been met with a limited-time offer that involved sharing your phone number with the brand you were browsing.

This offer usually comes in the form of a pop-up that populates via site automation once you’ve been on a site long enough or taken a certain action, like adding items to your cart.

The pop-up will generally offer something like 10% off your next purchase via a unique code if you agree to share your number so the brand can contact you via text message – that’s SMS marketing.

Whether you’re new to mobile-based marketing efforts or are looking to ramp up your SMS marketing campaigns, we’ve got expert tips and advice straight from Brandi Harvey, a team lead strategist here at HawkSEM. Read on for what she had to say.

 Phone-based marketing can be quite effective in terms of encouraging high engagement for both potential and returning buyers. (Image: MollerFinest/peopleimages.com)

What is SMS marketing?

SMS stands for “short message service,” but it’s more commonly known as text marketing or text message marketing. “This form of marketing allows brands to send news, alerts, discounts, and more to their customers via text messages,” Harvey explains.

It’s similar to email marketing but often provides an even more immediate, direct connection to potential customers (usually with high open rates to boot —more on that below).

Types of SMS marketing

There are different stages of SMS marketing campaigns with different goals and tactics attached for each step of the customer journey. They generally fall under these categories:

• Welcome messages – To simply welcome a new customer or subscriber and/or confirm a new signup
• Transactional messages – These are some of the most common and include info about appointments, new offerings, and other reminders
• Promotional messages – For limited-time offers, short codes for discounts, sales, and special events
• Abandoned cart reminder messages – This ecommerce remarketing message is triggered when someone bags an item but doesn’t check out
• Notification messages – Often, these messages confirm orders, include tracking info, or involve password resets
• Customer relationship messages – These don’t require any action on the recipient’s part and are usually sent to build relationships and foster brand loyalty and retention

Shopify breaks down the various types of SMS marketing this way:

• Promotional deals and discounts
• Coupons
• Flash sales
• Text-to-win competitions
• Loyalty programs
• Product drop alerts
• Order updates
• Abandoned cart notifications

Benefits of SMS marketing

As mentioned above, phone-based marketing can be quite effective in terms of encouraging high engagement for both potential and returning buyers.

The reason is fairly simple: People are often looking at their mobile phones. We field notifications all day long, be it emails, texts, or from social media. This provides a unique opportunity when it comes to your target audience – if businesses approach the method strategically.

Here are just a few benefits of exploring text-based marketing:

• Easily promote a new product or service: Let prospective or current customers know about a new offering your business is now providing in real-time.
• Leverage marketing psychology through limited-time offers: Ramp up your engagement rates through SMS marketing messages that include a time-sensitive call to action (CTA) in the form of special offers or discounts.
• Increase chances of closed deals and completed consultations: Using automated texting platforms for things like appointment reminders (for things like demo requests) increases the likelihood of actually connecting with your prospect.
• Boost customer loyalty: Turn a one-time customer into a returning loyal customer via promotional messages that let them know about similar, new, or additional offerings they may be interested in.
• Decrease cart abandonment: An automated “Hey, you forgot something” message can be the difference between a languishing cart and a completed sale.
• Stick to your budget: There are multiple cost-effective SMS marketing platforms and tools marketing teams can use to create SMS campaigns, track response rates, manage subscriber lists, and monitor customer data.

The top industries for SMS marketing

While any company can experiment with text-based marketing, there are a few industries that are particularly primed for SMS success.

“Ecommerce and lead gen companies can both make use of this marketing channel,” Harvey recommends.

“B2C companies of all sorts can make the most of text ads,” she adds. “Whether you’re an event venue, a baby boutique, or bespoke leather works…there’s no limit.”

According to Textmagic, these are some of the top industries that leverage their SMS subscribers effectively:

1. Retail
2. Hospitality
3. Real estate
4. Finance
5. Travel
6. Healthcare
7. Nonprofit organizations
8. Recruiting agencies and HR
9. Beauty
10. Insurance

SMS marketing success secrets

Once you’ve got your SMS marketing strategy laid out, you can up your chances of maximum ROI by following a few tried-and-true best practices.

Here are Harvey’s top tips for SMS marketing campaign success:

• Segment audiences for accuracy and greater personalization: No one wants to receive advertising texts for products that are completely unrelated to them. Sending snow boot ads to your customers in Florida may not be the best way to go. Make sure they’re getting your surf apparel ads with segmenting. You save money on ads and your customers end up converting with the more relevant messaging.
• Get the timing right: They say life is about timing, and you can make great use of that with SMS marketing. Flash sales can tap into our culture’s FOMO and get people purchasing on impulse.
• Compliance is key: Make sure you’re getting the opt-in from customers. There are a few ways to do this, but look for an opt-in that’s easy for customers.
• Don’t rely on purchased data: Your owned audience data will be far more accurate (and legal).

SMS marketing examples

Want to see what SMS marketing looks like in action? Here are just a few examples from different brands with different goals in mind for their text campaigns.

A special offer and event

This promotional SMS text from a fitness studio is highlighting a limited-time offer. They’re also letting customers know about various events that will be happening during this time, and they’ve offered both a code and a special link where those interested can sign up.

The link and special code will make it easy to pull performance metric data to gauge the success of this campaign.

Direct reviews

This text example shows an effective way to obtain reviews from happy customers simply by asking them to review directly via SMS text message. As you can see, once the visitor confirmed and completed their set appointment, a message was triggered to request a simple feedback review.

Creating as few barriers as possible will make the customer more likely to complete the desired action.

Discount code

This auto company kept things simple and eye-catching with a clear mobile marketing offer, a visual emoji, and a link. This message highlights the value for the recipient, makes scanning the info a breeze, and offers a direct path to the next steps for the best possible customer experience and click-through rate potential.

Brand awareness and relationship-building

SMS marketing doesn’t always have to be about a hard sell. As we see in this example from Lalo, a company that makes baby and toddler products, the message can be a simple one of encouragement and commiseration.

By knowing their audience, leveraging personalized demographic information in their messaging, and being strategic about when to send (this message was sent to caregivers/subscribers after breakfast on a Sunday morning), they’re well on their way to fostering major brand loyalty.

Third-party reviews

We’ve written articles in the past about the importance of online reviews – data shows these can be a crucial factor in helping businesses beat their competition.

The message above, triggered after a completed dentist appointment, uses emotion-based language to politely request a review on a third-party site such as the office’s Google Business Profile.

SMS marketing stats

Now that you’ve got SMS marketing best practices secured, let’s talk facts and figures. Here are some of the latest statistics when it comes to an SMS strategy:

• 72% of people have made a purchase after receiving a text from a brand. (Klaviyo)
• In 2024, 80% of businesses use SMS marketing software to text their customers and nearly 70% are increasing their SMS marketing budgets. (SimpleTexting)
• The average open rate for an SMS campaign is 98%, 5 times that of email (20%). (SMS Comparison)
• 45% of people are subscribed to 2-3 brands via SMS marketing. (Klaviyo)
• 91% of business owners and marketing managers say they see higher conversion rates with integrated marketing campaigns that include SMS. (SimpleTexting)
• 48% of customers prefer communication from businesses to come from text messages. (SMS Comparison)

Top SMS marketing tools and costs

Leveraging an SMS marketing tool can help you build and launch your campaigns easily while maximizing effectiveness, timeliness, and the ability to track key metrics.

These tools offer different pricing models to accommodate companies of all sizes, from small businesses and startups to enterprise brands who want to connect with millions via SMS marketing.

Many can even connect with your existing CRM or project management tool for easy campaign integration, monitoring, and modification.

Here are some of the top SMS marketing platforms (and their pricing models):

• SlickText – Free trial, price per month from $29 to $939 and up
• Attentive – Free trial, inquire for exact pricing
• EZ Texting – Free trial, price per month from $20 to $3,000
• ClickSend – Free trial, from $0.0233 per message to $0.0084 per message and up
• TextMagic – Free trial, from $24.50 for 500 texts to $80 for 2,000 texts
• Textline – Free trial, price per month from $20 to $50 and up

SMS marketing mistakes to avoid

A social campaign that misses the mark can make you go viral for all the wrong reasons. In the same way, an SMS message that hits the wrong note will result in an immediate “STOP” response – not what you want.

We get it – and our experience has shown us what common mistakes you should avoid when it comes to this tactic.

• Not personalizing to time zones: Also, make sure your customers aren’t getting texts in the middle of the night while they’re trying to sleep!
• Failing to purge your rolls regularly: Because these texts do come with a cost, regularly go through and purge your contacts to remove customers who haven’t interacted with your ads in a long time. If they haven’t converted, that’s okay. They may just be looking for the right time. But if they aren’t even opening the messages, you may be wasting budget on a user who’s never going to convert or who’s sent your texts to the junk folder.
• Not following the proper guidelines: Much like Google Ads and other platforms, there are rules and regulations that must be followed when it comes to SMS marketing. Namely, you must comply with the FCC’s TCPA privacy laws (or the Telephone Consumer Protection Act). As Sprout Social explains, this means obtaining explicit consent, always including your business name, providing clear terms and conditions, and always offering an opt-out option so they can unsubscribe.

The takeaway

“As someone who’s in the middle of planning a wedding, I can say there is a wealth of opportunity for personalized, interactive text ads and connection,” Harvey says.

“Automated messages can open the door for closer interaction for smaller businesses to connect with users.”

This personalized touch can set SMBs apart from the bulk “SALE” texts of larger businesses. But even international ecommerce businesses are making the most of small discounts for text opt-ins that lead to big ROI.

Have more questions about SMS marketing or other digital marketing tactics? You’ve come to the right place – let’s connect.