The Best Time to Send an SMS

What do SMS and a large orange cat that loves lasagna have in common? Hating Mondays. 

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In this post, we’ll cover the best times, days, and strategies to send an SMS campaign.

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Best Time to Send SMS Campaigns 

We took a look at our clients, consisting of leading retail and D2C brands, and found the best-performing times for SMS. Of course, these trends could always change, or different strategies may work better for your target market, but this is a good place to start. 

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What Day Has the Highest Click-through Rate (CTR) For SMS? 

Wednesday has the highest click-through rates. 

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What Days Have the Highest Conversion Rates (CVR) For SMS? 

Tuesday and Thursday have the highest conversion rates.

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What’s The Best Time of Day to Send an SMS Campaign? 

On weekdays, early AM and lunchtime are the most effective.

On the weekend, late morning through early afternoon are the most effective. 

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Overall, the best time to send an SMS campaign is on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays in the early morning or at lunchtime. 

Remember to keep all SMS marketing to reasonable hours. The TCPA mandates that SMS texts are limited to regular business hours, which are defined as 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

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SMS Automation 

In the previous section, we covered the best days and times to send SMS campaigns, but what about more time-sensitive needs? This is where SMS automation comes into play. Automation + personalization = never missing an opportunity and delivering delightful customer experiences. 

Automated SMS Drips allow you to be on top of customer actions and provide timely messages to drive sales, retain customers, and ultimately increase customer lifetime value (CLTV). 

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What’s an Automated SMS Drip?

An automated SMS Drip is a specific set of messages sent over a controlled period of time to retain, engage, and convert subscribers. With Drips, you can target specific customer segments or cast a wide net across the full customer journey. Drips are only activated when your subscribers perform a specific action (i.e. an event or "trigger"), such as viewing a product on your website or adding a product to their cart.

SMS has a 98% open rate, which means nearly every subscriber will read every SMS message. So, a generic message may not cut it. To make automated SMS Drips more effective, you can layer filters and segmentation to make sure your messages are perfect for that subscriber. 

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General SMS Automated Drip Best Practices

Here are some quick best practices to follow when you are creating SMS Drip campaigns: 

• Don't be shy to target your SMS subscriber with Drip messages. 
• If you are just starting to develop Drip campaigns, we recommend you start with abandoned browse and checkout.
• SMS delivery relies on cell phone carriers. Delay times may be slightly shorter or longer depending on the carrier so keep that in mind when creating delays in your Drip. 
• For each Drip flow, we recommend having three messages in your series (except for abandoned cart Drips, which are limited to one message).
• Segment and personalize! We want to move past the “hi {{first name}}” and into a personalized and delightful experience for customers. You can read more about segmentation and personalization here. 

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💡 Read more about SMS Automated Drip Best Practices here!

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SMS Human-in-the-Loop 

Utilizing live agents is another way to make sure you're sending SMS at the perfect time. Adding humans-in-the-loop brings a level of nuance that is just not possible with automation. 

“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.

One of the best places to implement live agents is at the bottom of the funnel, specifically abandoned checkout. When you use live agents, they can have a timely conversation with customers to understand why they didn’t purchase, answer any questions, or even offer a small discount or free shipping to help finalize the sale. 

“Having live agents—not bots—recover our abandoned carts is super powerful,” Brendan Hastings, VP of Digital Product and Engineering at Thinx. “They contact our customers manually to understand why they didn’t purchase, are able to answer their questions in real-time, and help them make a decision to buy.”

By sending highly attentive texts at the right time, Thinx recovered more than $450k of revenue in just eight months with a 27% recovery rate. Sending the right message at the right time to the right person is the north star for every brand. When you accomplish those three things like Thinx did, you’ll see incredible results. 

Voyage’s innovative SMS platform (with the most advanced SMS-first segmentation builder on the market) is paired with expertise from our team of accomplished eCommerce founders and best-in-class technical product managers — so you send the right message to the right person at the right time. 

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See what the most powerful SMS marketing and message commerce platform in the world and expert eCommerce guidance can do for your brand. Request a demo today!

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