SMS marketing basics
If you are not yet implementing SMS marketing in your company, or if you want to recall the most important information about this way of communicating with customers, read on. However, if you regularly launch SMS marketing campaigns, skip this section and move on – for example, by selecting the appropriate chapter from the table of contents.
SMS campaigns – what do they consist of?
In SMS marketing, the company sends messages, notifications and information about promotions via text messages – directly to the recipient’s cell phone. This is usually done through an application that allows automating SMS sending, dividing recipients into different groups and conducting various tests.
SMS restrictions
Why is SMS marketing so important despite its (so far) limited capabilities? When sending SMS, we can only communicate a short text (160 zzs.) to the recipients, and any deviation from this rule exposes the company to additional costs. An SMS whose length exceeds the limit costs double. A longer message, for example, containing 350 zzs. costs three SMS.
MMS, which can include additional elements – graphics, for example – cost even more and have problems displaying on some devices. Costs can therefore exceed potential benefits and require detailed monitoring of ROI.
What’s more, the limit available in SMS messages is even more restrictive when using diacritical marks (so-called Polish characters) or emoji. Using at least one letter among ą, ę, ć, ł, ś, ź or ż changes the SMS encoding to 16-bit, reducing the limit from 160 zzs. to just 70 zzs. So if you want to send SMS messages with Polish characters, be prepared for higher costs or make sure your messages are even shorter.
Emoji work on the same principle – in the context of limiting SMS length.
Strengths of SMS
Despite its many limitations, companies still frequently use SMS marketing – and there are several reasons for this.
First: the group of message recipients on phones is huge. According to a UKE study published in 2021, 96.9% of Poles and 99.5% of companies use cell phones. It’s hard to believe that this number is expected to decrease over the past three years.
Second: when implementing an SMS marketing campaign, you don’t have to wonder whether it will reach the recipient, whether it will be taken down by the social platform’s algorithm, or whether its costs will drastically increase already on display. SMS remains independent of the whims of Facebook, TikTok and other social media.
Third: SMS marketing translates into higher sales in the mobile channel. Sending short messages with a link to an offer is a great way to make sales immediately. The customer can immediately click on the link and go directly to the offer – without intermediaries.
SMS sending vs. email marketing
Among the tools that allow direct communication with the customer (sending a message to a private inbox, rather than – for example – displaying a message on a visited website), e-mail is the closest to SMS. We wrote more about e-mail marketing in a previous article, but today we want to focus on the similarities, differences, advantages and disadvantages of these two tools.
There is no doubt that e-mails are less limited than text messages. With no character limit, the ability to include graphics, audio files, video clips, and advanced text formatting, email marketing can be very effective and provides thousands of opportunities to create engaging content.
Also in favor of e-mail marketing is the greater ease of creating lists of recipients. It is much easier to obtain an e-mail address than a recipient’s phone number. However, this has its consequences – statistics show that e-mail recipients open only 28% of messages on average, while SMS messages are opened by almost all of them (98%)! This disproportion is strongly decreasing when it comes to conversion. Still, e-mails lose in this field, and significantly – 15.2% versus 29% in SMS.
However, it is important to remember that these statistics are averages and will certainly fluctuate widely depending on the industry, audience or product.
Given the effectiveness of both forms of marketing, it is best to use both – depending on the situation, the target audience and the message you want to convey.
Response time to messages is also important. On average, 90% of users read SMS in less than three minutes, while they take about 1.5 hours to read an e-mail. This makes SMS a great tool for informing about so-called “flash sales,” i.e., instant promotions, but also for reminding about ending offers or low availability of a desired product.
SMS communication – good practices
Regardless of what industry you will be using SMS, there are a number of practices worth implementing. Their goal is to maximize the effectiveness of the messages you send.
Obtain the appropriate approvals
It’s not even so much a good practice as a legal requirement. Without permission for marketing communications, you expose your company to heavy fines and reduce your audience’s trust in your brand.
Watch the frequency of your messages
SMS is an invasive method of communication. When you send an SMS message, you step “with your boots” into the recipient’s phone. You send them a push notification, and often an audible one, and hit them right in the pocket. Frequent SMS sending is an easy way for recipients to completely lose interest or unsubscribe.
Calculate profitability
Pay attention to costs and think a few times before adding Polish characters to an SMS, sending a longer message for which you will have to pay double, or replacing an SMS with an MMS. When you send a few dozen SMS messages, the costs will certainly not strain your company’s budget, but when you send several thousand messages, they will be clearly noticeable.
Optimize SMS for devices
SMS messages themselves are tailored to devices by default, but already the pages to which your links lead are not necessarily so. Pay attention to ensure that a smartphone or tablet user goes from an SMS to a page that will load quickly and display properly on their device.
The first words must encourage
Like emails, text messages also preview the first few dozen characters. If you don’t encourage recipients to open the message with the first few words, they simply won’t do so – and they’ll never click on the link you post next.
How to get SMS marketing recipients?
There are several ways to get recipients of your SMS messages. However, the most popular are requests to sign up for post-purchase notifications and pop-ups. An approach worth checking out is to ask for an email address first – many customers are much more willing to share an email than a phone number. So if they see a request to leave a number right away, they may be discouraged – in which case you’ll be left with nothing. By breaking the sign-up request into two steps, on the other hand, you run the risk that after the customer leaves their email address, they’ll swipe right on trying to get a phone number. In this situation, however, you will gain a lead and have the opportunity to further communicate with the customer – a phone number you may be able to obtain through this later.
However, if you decide to use pop-ups, take a moment to configure them properly. Set them up so that they appear not immediately upon entering the website, but after some time – for example, 7-10 seconds. Check how much time visitors spend on your site so that you can display the pop-ups to them at the right moment – before they leave the site.
How to tap the marketing potential of SMS in 2025?
Today, three aspects of SMS marketing, endowed with enormous potential, are spoken of above all. These are automation, which today is even the basis of online marketing in general, personalization and AI. How to take advantage of them?
Marketing automation in SMS marketing
Automation is the key word in the context of effective SMS campaigns. Today, no one can imagine sending hundreds or thousands of messages manually. Not now, when we can easily create automation paths for instant response to important events and actions taken by customers.
Here are some sample workflows you can set up in your company to squeeze the maximum out of SMS and never be late with a message.
Welcome
A new account in a store, signing up for an event or registering for a contest – each of these events is worth confirming, for example, by sending a short SMS message thanking the recipient for the action taken. In this way, the recipient will receive confirmation that their action was carried out correctly. Another message can encourage a purchase (and – for example – include a discount coupon) or inform about an upcoming event. The welcome track should not contain more than 2-3 messages, and in many cases one message is completely sufficient.
Abandoned basket
This is one of those events that is worth responding to decisively. If a customer abandons a shopping cart and does not live to see your company’s response, in all likelihood they will never come back to complete their shopping. A popular way to respond to an abandoned shopping cart is to send a text message about half an hour or an hour after the fact. In the body of the message, it’s a good idea to remind them of the items left in their shopping cart and encourage them to return.
The next SMS in the path can be sent after a few days (even after a week) and contain a discount code that will help customers make a purchase decision. Why should the discount code be sent so late? If you do it right away, some customers may make it a buying strategy – they will start abandoning their shopping carts just to get a discount.
Abandoned email
Do you send messages with important information, but few people read them? You can support your email marketing efforts by “boosting” them via SMS. Simply set up a rule that tells you to send an SMS email reminder when:
- The recipient did not open the message,
- The recipient opened the message, but did not perform any action.
This is especially important if the email contains a link to be clicked on (for example, confirming participation in an event).
Winback
How to get back a customer who hasn’t visited your store for 60/90/120 days? Text them and encourage them to return – inform them about new products, offer a discount or free shipping. You can schedule this workflow so that SMS messages go to customers every time a certain number of days have passed since their last purchase.
When planning the shipping path, don’t forget to include a call to action at the end of the message (or the entire workflow). Encourage them to go to the store page, complete their purchase or registration, and include a link that takes the recipient directly to their destination.
Personalization and AI in SMS marketing
Today, SMS personalization is not particularly extensive. Ot, if you have the right information, you can send content tailored to the recipient in the sense that you greet them with their name and/or surname, or use this data in the content (e.g., offering a mug with the name or a stamp with the company’s name).
In 2025, personalization in SMS marketing will go far beyond including the recipient’s name in the body of the message. The development of tools using machine learning and advanced language models will make it possible for SMS marketing to send a message that takes into account the customer’s behavior (e.g., the hours they usually shop), previously purchased products (ideal for use in cross-selling and up-selling) or favorite categories.
What’s more, the use of AI and chatbots will make it possible for customers not only to receive SMS messages from companies, but also to have “conversations” with them – all within SMS. In this way, customers will be able to inquire about promotional campaigns, product recommendations or store opening hours.
Summary
Is SMS marketing – because of its limitations – inferior in anything to the other marketing tools? The answer is no. Today and in the years to come, SMS will remain a communication channel with great potential and opportunities.
Still, it’s worth remembering that far-reaching caution should be exercised in SMS interactions with customers. SMS – much more so than email or display ads – intrudes on customers’ lives, and using data too far (e.g., on customer behavior in an online store) can result in rejection and unsubscription, rather than increased customer retention.
However, this doesn’t change the fact that the next few years will bring the development of SMS marketing and make it possible to establish and maintain communication with customers in new, effective and interesting ways.
