How to avoid annoying customers with SMS marketing

SMS marketing is one of the best ways to reach your customers since more than 5 billion people worldwide now use mobile devices.

As a marketer, it's up to you to ensure that SMS marketing is done right. To know what to do, you must know what not to do. So, we've written this whole article to help you understand and make sure your texts don't annoy your customers.

So, let the fun begin if you want to ensure your customers are always happy to get your texts.

1: Don't send too many text messages to your customers

It's fine to send SMS marketing messages to your customers if your goal is to let them know about things that can help them. But if you send too many messages, you could hurt your reputation.

Too many text messages with sales pitches or special offers can hurt your reputation and make you look desperate to make a sale. You don't want to annoy your customers by making a lot of noise about what you're doing or trying to sell.

You shouldn't send more than 3–5 messages a month, at most. You should only send these messages when there is a real need to tell your customers something that could be helpful to them. Sending this many messages will make sure you get good results in the long run, so don't give up in the short term.

Also, make sure you don't send "unnecessary" messages. If you send customers messages that aren't important, they won't take them seriously. They'll just throw them away, delete them, or even file a complaint against you.

Because of this, you should never send your customers messages that don't need to be sent. Treat their time like it's important to you, so they know you care about them. Make sure you spend your time wisely as a marketer by creating maximum value for your SMS recipients!

You might wonder, then, what a text message needs. Our advice is to think about the words, deals, promotions, messages, and anything else that could be very helpful to your customers.

Put yourself in your customer's shoes and ask yourself if you'd like to hear the message you're sending them. You'll be wise enough to know which messages to send and which ones not to send.

2: Do what you say you'll do in your text messages

Have you ever gotten an SMS marketing message with an offer that seemed too good to be true? It asked you to fill out a survey for a chance to win a prize. And then, two weeks later, find out it was all a scam or just a promise that wasn't kept?

If you make promises or commitments in your texts, you should keep them so that the people who get them can trust you. In marketing, trust is the most important thing, and you want to be seen as a real marketer who has the best interests of their customers in mind.

3: Read your messages over again to make sure there are no mistakes.

Make sure there are no mistakes in your messages by reading them over. A message with grammar mistakes shows that you don't pay attention to the little things. If you send a business message with mistakes, it shows that you don't care about your texts or business. If your message has the wrong tone, it shows that you don't care about your customers.

Every word in your message shows what you believe in, your brand, and what you stand for. So, before you send them, you should double-check them to make sure they are correct and make sure your messages have as few mistakes as possible or none at all.

You can use tools like Grammarly to make changes to your grammar, or you can just use a simple spell-checker to make changes to your spelling. If you have a legal team, you should also run your message by them to ensure there are no copyright or legal issues. 

4: Don't send texts at the wrong time

Send your messages when it's the right time.

‍

You could annoy your customers if you send text messages at the wrong time. If you sent a marketing text to your prospects when they were sleeping at midnight, you might be seen as a marketer who doesn't care about their customers.

You need to make sure that your customers get your messages at the right time of day, preferably during the week. The perfect time is usually when your customers are most attentive and receptive to your texts, which is usually between 2 pm and 4 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays as most research surveys would confirm.

You also must ensure your messages are sent at the right time. Don't send your customers an SMS Christmas greeting in November, it's too early! Send it on Christmas Day or as soon as the holiday season starts.

5. Consider your audience

‍

A casual tone is direct and invites the customer to join the conversation. It's fine to use common acronyms and emojis, but try to do so as little as possible. Think about the age, location, interests, needs, etc. of the people you want to reach. Don't send messages that are unclear or hazy.

6. Have a clear call to action

When you want your customer to do something, always give them detailed instructions in the text. If a customer needs to pick up an order, tell them when it will be ready and how to get their things. Other calls to action (CTAs) could be requests for a review of the product, discount codes, or timely sale alerts.

If you send a call to action (CTA) in a text message, don't send the same CTA in an email or phone call. Using multiple ways to get your message across can be annoying to customers and lead to too many messages.

7. Always give an exit

Whether you are sending a promotional text to a possible lead or a longtime customer, the customer may want to stop getting your messages. Follow the rules of the TCPA and make it easy to stop getting messages ("text STOP to stop getting these messages") to avoid legal problems.

What do the laws say about spam text messages?

Depending on the type and number of spam text messages a sender sends, sending spam text messages could have serious legal consequences. Apps, mobile service providers, and the Federal Trade Commission can all be used to report spam (FTC). If businesses keep sending messages after customers have blocked and reported them, they could be fined a lot per message.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) protects consumers. It was originally meant to stop companies from calling people without their permission, but it has since been expanded to include robocalls and text messages.

Under the TCPA, people can sue companies for up to $500 to $1,500 per spam text message. For example, see the 2009 case of Satterfield v. Simon & Schuster Inc.

The most important thing is that the TCPA gives people the right to block, report, and sue companies that send spam text messages.

SMS marketing ideas

SMS is a good way for any business to market itself because text messages can be read by anyone. There are many different ways to reach your customers and clients through SMS.

‍

Here are some popular ways to use SMS to market your business.

Coupons, discount codes, and special deals

One of the most common ways to use SMS marketing is to send offers, discounts, and other marketing materials directly to customers through text messages. Shopify storee like this strategy because it's the easiest way to tell customers about deals.

These messages try to get people to go to an online store to get their coupon and buy something. There should be three things in every SMS marketing coupon campaign:

‍

• A message that makes it clear what is being offered and for how long.
• A clear request for the customer to do something.
• A link that is easy to click on and goes to your SMS campaign

‍

Customers almost always open SMS messages right away, so it's a good idea to try out time-sensitive offers. Having a sense of time creates a feeling of urgency. Putting a time limit on a coupon might make a customer more likely to use it.

Tracking and order updates

As we said earlier, most customers want to get text messages about when their orders will arrive. A great way to improve the customer experience is to send quick and accurate shipping information via text.

It relieves your customer of the stress of finding information about their purchase. By sending them updates directly, you keep them up to date. By giving this information directly to the customer, your customer success team won't have to answer the same questions repeatedly. This way, your team won't have to spend time looking for tracking numbers when they could be fixing problems.

Here are some text messages you should send to your customers automatically:

‍

• Send your customers SMS alerts to inform them when their package will arrive.
• Tell your customers about any changes or delays in delivery that might happen.
• Tell customers when their packages have been sent.

How Cross-Store Selling grows your Shopify store

Want to know the open secret to growing your Shopify store? It’s Cross-Store Selling. With Cross-Store Selling, your brand can sell products from other stores and vice versa.

Sell your products on other brands’ websites

With Carro, we have a directory of the biggest brands for you to partner with. This means they’ll sell and market your products to their customers. But if you can’t decide which brands are the best fit, we have a tailored recommendation service where we introduce you to brands so you can begin working together.

The best part is you don’t have to pay for products like you would with traditional wholesaling. This allows you to choose different SKUs to see what complements your existing product catalog.

‍

"Take my word for it, if you install Carro, you are going to see what I’ve seen. Which is a dramatic increase to average order value, especially on orders that contain Carro products, which for us is over 80% increase to AOV." 

‍

Ryan Pamplin, Founder & CEO of Blendjet

Virtual inventory makes fulfillment easy

Brand partnerships are not like wholesaling. With Carro, you don’t have to buy products from your partners. Instead, orders are automatically sent to your partner brands so they can handle fulfillment themselves. 

‍

“Before we joined Carro, we had put our company on the market. We thought we needed capital to expand our traditional wholesaling. Now, we’re able to meet our goals without having any cash come out of pocket. We’re tripling and quadrupling the numbers of units that we move because we have access to so much more inventory.”

‍

Amy Richardson-Golia, June & January

Find new bundling & upsell opportunities to increase AOV

Perhaps the most exciting reason to leverage Cross-Store Selling is that it’s the best way to grow your Shopify store in the long run. By working collaboratively with other brands, your brand will set itself up for success. Your Shopify store will become THE destination for your niche. 

‍

One of the best reasons to shop on Amazon is convenience. Being able to buy everything you need in one place is a powerful motivator. Wouldn’t you love it if your Shopify store was the go-to place for your customers’ needs?

‍

"In addition to a nice contribution to the bottom line, it was also one of the most highly-engaged social posts for the year." 

‍

David Krimper, Director of Ecommerce, Manduka

‍

To learn more about how Carro can help your Shopify store grow, check us out on the Shopify App Store.

‍