5 Types of SMS Marketing Campaigns & Automations

Text messaging is amongst the most sacred and effective communication channels today. You are getting your message into the literal hands of your customers with incredible open rates. SMS sees a 98% open rate with 60% of customers reading their texts within one to five minutes after receiving them. The future is limitless on how brands can use SMS to engage customers. 

While we won’t cover the infinite SMS possibilities in this post, we will cover the different types of SMS campaigns and some best practices. So, let’s dive in. 

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Single-send SMS Campaigns

Single-send SMS Campaigns are when you want to engage your customers at a specific time or for a specific purpose. Think: flash sale or exclusive VIP drop. Single-send Campaigns are best for one-off promotions and events, these Campaigns should attempt to spur quick action from subscribers. 

Some examples of single send Campaigns include:

• Promotional discounts
• Product launches
• Event updates
• Brand marketing

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Transactional SMS Triggers

While many SMS campaigns attempt to prompt an action, transactional triggers are a reaction triggered by customer action. Keep your customers updated with purchase confirmations, shipping notifications, or upcoming subscription reminders. 

For example, many subscription merchants have started sending “charge upcoming” emails to give their customers notice that their card will be charged soon. These notifications can be even more effective with SMS. Text messages get opened at a rate of 98% compared to around 20% open rates for email.

By giving your customers a heads up on their upcoming transaction, you give them:

• Time to pause or cancel their subscription
• A reminder that a charge will be on their card statement shortly, which prevents friendly fraud chargebacks
• A chance to add more items to their order
• An overall better customer experience

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SMS Automated Drip Workflows

By crafting thoughtful, multi-touch SMS automation you’ll drive engagement and increase conversion rates. Automated Drips can: 

• Delight your customers when they opt-in with an automated welcome Drip, introducing them to the brand and your unique offerings, including loyalty programs or subscription options.
• Close sales with thoughtfully timed Drip campaigns like Abandoned Cart, Abandoned Browse, and Abandoned Checkout. 
• Setup automated re-engagement Drips to reconnect with dormant customers, helping to reduce churn. 
• Notify customers of products returning to your store with Back-in-Stock notifications.

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Back-in-Stock Notifications

Automated Drips that can see incredible results are Back-in-Stock notifications. Allowing customers to sign up for SMS notifications instead of being met with “out of stock” improves customer experience, grows your marketing reach, and re-engages lost customers. 

With the Back-in-Stock feature, Everything Kitchens could automatically display a back-in-stock button on product pages that allows customers to sign up for texts. Whenever a product is sold out, a button is automatically displayed with a “Text me when available” CTA. So instead of visitors hitting a dead-end, they are prompted to join the SMS list and get notified of when the product returns. In the first 4 months of using Back-in-Stock notifications, Everything Kitchens sent over 3,000 back-in-stock messages that generated over $6,000 in revenue — and achieved 161x return on advertising spend (ROAS).

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💡 Click here to view Everything Kitchens' and other SMS success stories. 

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Some additional SMS automated Drip best practices include: 

• We recommend that you start with abandoned browse and checkout drips.
• Your active subscribers (who haven't unsubscribed) are some of the highest intent users. Don't be shy to target them with drip messages.
• For each drip flow, we recommend having three messages in your series (except for abandoned cart drips, which are limited to one message).
• For abandonment drips, you can incentivize customers with free shipping or promotional discounts.

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Conversational Messaging

The best SMS strategies combine automation with a human-in-the-loop (HTL). Automated drips are a powerful “set and forget it” tool, but live conversations with a real person allow brands to level up SMS campaigns. Build loyalty and learn from customer feedback by meeting your customer where they are: in the SMS channel.

Brands have seen incredible success with human-in-the-loop, especially when used to recover revenue from abandoned checkouts. For example, one popular online deals site deployed human-in-the-loop functionality with First Mate by Voyage. In the first six months of implementing live agents alongside automated messages, a popular online deals site sent 89% more SMS communications. On top of the $100,000 in revenue captured by browse abandon automations, First Mate messages lead to 1,800 recovered checkouts (a 6.4x increase) that translated into over $289,000 in revenue.

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💡 Learn more about First Mate by Voyage here. 

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SMS A/B Testing for Campaigns 

Consider factors like how often you send your customers messages when you send offers and notifications, and what type of content you hope to deliver. There are hundreds of routes for your SMS journey, so experiment with different types of SMS campaigns to see what works, and what doesn't for your brand. 

For example, images and GIFs can be a great way to improve your SMS experience and can improve your campaign results. A/B testing is a great way to see what creative resonates best with your subscribers. You could start by testing a stagnate image vs a GIF. 

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🔎 Check out our other A/B suggestions for SMS campaigns here. 

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SMS Best Practices 

SMS marketing campaigns is just one of the topics we cover in our new guide — The Definitive SMS Marketing Guide. In the guide, we cover everything about SMS, from the optimal candidate for managing your program to setting up a successful acquisition channel, all the way through benchmarks, best practices, and stellar campaign examples.

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To learn more about SMS best practices and more, download the Definitive SMS Marketing Guide today!

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