3 Texts Your Brand Should Send Right Now (Plus 1 Automated SMS for Later)

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A little less conversation, a little more action. Well, in this case, we’re doing both conversation AND action. 

Here are three texts your brand should send right now to increase engagement, delight your customers, and drive conversions. 

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1. A Text that’s Personalized.

Let’s make your customers feel special! You most likely have a treasure trove of information to make SMS hyper-personalized for your customers. Something as simple as their past purchases or their birthday can be enough to create a delightful message. The sweet spot is when you can connect your brand personality or theme with personalization.  

For Birthdate Co., a company that crafts one-of-a-kind astrology candles and books, the whole brand revolves around personalization. Ajay Mehta, the CEO, and co-founder of Birthdate Co. said on a recent podcast about his brand's success, “Personalized products aren’t something that you can walk into a Target and buy, but you can buy from a website, like we launched with 365 individual SKUs. So, it was a combination of those things—personalization, customization, and a really excited and vibrant community of people that loved astrology and sharing astrology content.”

Combining astrology and personalization, Birthdate Co. started sending highly-targeted weekly horoscope SMS campaigns that saw CTRs of over 20%. These campaigns focused on what draws their customers to the brand and provided entertaining and personalized content. There are only 12 zodiac signs, so that's only 12 messages to create to engage with their whole subscriber base personally. 

👀 Watch Ajay Mehta and Voyage CEO Rev Reddy discuss why Birthdate Co.’s products have been such a success, Ajay’s journey as an entrepreneur, and much more here. 

While there are thousands of ways to personalize SMS, you don’t have to go over the top to give your customers a delightful experience and see results. You can read more about SMS segmentation and personalization here. 

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2. A Text that Highlights a Rave Review.

Reviews are amazing for converting customers. Qualtrics provided this year’s review statistics which show just how powerful reviews really are. 91% of 18-34 year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. That’s close to the same level as the holy grail of marketing—word of mouth. 

Your customers are probably leaving some incredible reviews. Even chainsaw reviews are entertaining and full of detail (see our Collect More Reviews Through SMS blog for more on that). Use your customer's rave reviews in your SMS to provide social proof and highlight how amazing your products are.

This is another great opportunity to use the power of segmentation! Perhaps you have a product that is typically purchased alongside a best-seller. In this case, you can segment your subscriber list based on best-seller product purchasers, then send an SMS highlighting a review of the complimentary product.

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3. A Text that Asks a Question.

With changes to the marketing ecosystem, such as the iOS 15 update, zero-party data will become more important than ever before. Zero-party data is data that a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand. Asking your customers what they are interested in not only helps your brand’s overall operations, but it also helps you create a better, more curated experience for your customers. 

For example, a clothing company could send an SMS that utilizes Keywords to gather information about their audience: 

What outfit are you shopping for next? Reply with the number, and we’ll send you our hand-picked edit! 

Reply “1” for a cozy WFH day
Reply “2” for dinner with friends 
Reply “3” for a European vacation” 

This type of SMS encourages customer interaction and allows you to be hyper-targeted with your marketing efforts. 

SmoothieBox President Vin McCauley told us how SmoothieBox asks their SMS subscribers questions to start a dialogue and prevent churn. 

“I see SMS as an amazing customer service tool. There's a client acquisition aspect to it. There's a retention aspect because we are a subscription business. There's a management aspect as far as, ‘Do you want to delay your box or exchange flavors?’ There's content engagement where we're conceptualizing things like offering challenges to our customers and serving up SMS reminders, ‘Hey don't forget to have your morning smoothie’ or ‘Do you need a recipe?’ … And then being able to dialogue with our clients at a time that's convenient for them.”

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Bonus: A Text to Set Up Right Now to Recover Abandoned Checkouts.

If you don’t already have abandoned checkout texts firing, this is your sign to set them up right now! Because odds are, someone is abandoning a checkout on your site as we speak. Brands that implement SMS to recover abandoned checkouts have seen incredible results. (Brands recovering 30% of abandoned checkouts with SMS, we are looking at you 👀) 

There are two approaches to recovering abandoned checkouts—automation and live agents. 

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SMS Abandoned Checkout Recovery with Automation 

By setting up automated Drip messages for abandoned checkout, you re-engage high intent customers and have the chance to remove roadblocks. 

SMS best practices for abandoned checkout SMS include:

• Use a URL that brings customers back to their checkout page
• Use time-sensitive wording, for example: "your cart will expire soon"
• Consider incentivizing after the first reminder message (e.g. free shipping and promotional discounts)

Segmenting your SMS list will help make sure the content is tailored to the right audience and control costs by targeting audiences most likely to convert. 

Depending on your product and brand, you can segment your list for abandoned checkout Drips to be more effective by testing: 

• Only texting cart sizes above or below a certain amount 
• Only sending discounts to cart sizes above or below a certain amount 
• If they are returning customers or have never purchased before 

By testing and analyzing your results, you can maximize your recovered revenue and minimize costs. 

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SMS Abandoned Checkout Recovery with Live Agents  

“What we’ve seen with the dramatic shift in customer behavior is consumers spending time on their mobile devices. This includes browsing and shopping. What we’ve seen success with is a lot of these automations and the scalable technology that allows a brand to reach out to these customers through SMS. What’s been lacking though is this human element,” Rev Reddy, CEO of Voyage SMS.

Abandoned checkout recovery is the perfect place to implement the level of nuance live agents can bring. By having knowledgeable agents on the other side of each text, they have the training and resources to answer all the common questions that make customers hesitate—such as shipping, fit or measurement, and other product-specific queries. The agents can also offer a small discount, typically in the form of free shipping, to seal the deal. 

Brands using live agents have recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue in a matter of months. 

💡 Read how Thinx recovered $450,000 with live agents 

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Don’t Forget to A/B Test Your Next Message 

Trying something new? It’s the perfect time to A/B test! Every brand has its own personality, nuances, and target markets, which is why it’s vital to test what works for you. Here are a few different SMS variables that we suggest testing: 

• SMS sending times 
• Variations of images and GIFs 
• Different discounts or offers
• Emoji usage 
• Message copy 
• Message length 
• Discount expiration length 
• Offering buy now, pay later payments

💡 Learn more about SMS A/B testing here

SMS is an incredibly powerful marketing tool that allows brands to bring personalized, delightful experiences into the hands of their customers. So, send that text! 

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Ready to see the power of the Voyage SMS platform? ‍Request a demo today to see the most powerful SMS marketing and message commerce platform in the world.

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