Setting yourself up for success when launching your first Text Message Marketing program is essential, but it’s just as important to have a plan that efficiently scales as you grow. While it’s natural to do more upfront planning with message copy, cadence, and overall strategy for the initial launch, you should also spend time planning tests, benchmarking goals, and subsequent phases to elevate your program. Read on for tips and recommended strategies to keep in your arsenal as your Text Message Marketing program grows.

Focus On the Table Stakes

At the initial launch, acquisition should be a top priority. Firing a Two-Step popup for email and SMS opt-in is ideal, but placing subscription points across your customer journey provides even more opportunities for list growth. This includes a checkbox within the checkout process, cross-promoting signup keywords via email, and even integrating with your loyalty program registration.

As your list grows, you should leverage automation with Welcome Series, Shopping Cart Abandonment, Product Alerts, and Post Purchase at critical engagement stages. These triggered campaigns earn high click-through and conversion rates, given they’re sent upon activity like subscribing to your list or purchasing. Alongside these campaigns, you should strive for a minimum twice-weekly broadcast frequency to build channel awareness and traffic. Strategies can align with your other channels’ content calendars to get started quickly, but exclusive messaging and incentives bring you up to the next level and encourage more mobile engagement.

Consistently Measure Performance and Test

From the beginning, you should pay close attention to your campaign results and list growth to set your own benchmarks and begin formulating milestones and goals. Comparing your program to your competitors is important for understanding their positioning, strategies, and products, but don’t get too caught up in their specific KPIs. Instead, focus on keeping track of your performance to ensure improvement. Benchmarking is often just a numbers game.

Your list, including active audience segments within, should constantly grow, and you should understand more about your contacts over time. Once launched, plan to test a few strategies and collect as much zero and first-party data as possible.

Increase Message Frequency and Reach

After establishing a baseline campaign frequency and your list growth has evened out to a regular cadence, you can move up the maturity model to elevate your program further. You can start this by increasing your broadcast message frequency using strategic segmentation. This means sending more campaigns to your most engaged contacts who are actively clicking and purchasing and talking directly to your lapsing customers with curated offers and products.

One efficient way of increasing broadcast frequency, whether segmented or not, is with Recurring Automated Campaigns, which are set to send on a repeat schedule. Use these sends for evergreen content on new arrivals, clearance, and promotions at regular cadences (weekly or biweekly) that you only must set up once!

Automate!

You can extend your reach even further through additional automated campaign strategies that target more stages of the customer journey:

1. Build upon the success of your Shopping Cart Abandonment campaign with Browse Abandonment messaging higher in the funnel.
2. Implement Info Campaigns to efficiently deliver personal responses based on what your customers are shopping for or need.
3. Trigger critical order and delivery updates via SMS with Transactional campaigns.

And if any steps in between are most relevant to your brand, they likely position a great time to send a text!

Text Message Marketing is a highly efficient channel for engaging and nurturing your best customers. It’s critical to regularly review your program performance and KPIs over time to recognize the opportunities for optimization and additional growth. Whether you’re still in the beginning phases of the program launch or not, take the time to plan other phases and strategies so you can quickly scale to the next level.

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