90% of SMS-user Shopify merchants send less than 2 SMS campaigns per month.
While you’ll still see great results with this amount compared to no SMS marketing at all, we found that those merchants who send at least 4 messages per month achieve better results: Higher CTR, bigger revenue, better ROI.
If you’re planning to implement SMS in your marketing strategy, read on to find out what is the right amount of SMS for your business, exactly how to write your SMS copy for best results, and how to achieve the best results with your SMS marketing campaigns.
Why Focus More On SMS Marketing
For starters, everyone in your target audience owns a phone. Countless studies have shown that an average human being spends, well, a lot of time on their devices. Somewhere around ⅓ of their time spent awake, if not more.
So why not target them where they already are?
On top of that, once you get consent from your SMS subscribers, you are not limited to when and how much you can send messages. Even if a lead hasn’t interacted with your brand for a long time, you’re still allowed to send SMS at any moment. And unlike emails, they wouldn’t end up in a never-opened spam folder. Isn’t that awesome?
The personal nature of mobile devices gives marketers great power to get a slice of their customers’ attention span any hour of the day.
But as a wise man once said, with great power comes great responsibility.
While the goal is to stay in your customers’ minds and improve revenue, you also cannot just spam them with text messages left, right, and center.
So what’s the right frequency to message your customers without annoying the hell out of your customers?
TL;DR: As a good rule of thumb, you can send at least 1 text message a week, with a maximum of 10-12 messages a month.
But of course, it depends on many factors, so let’s dig deeper.
Sending SMS Too Often
If SMS marketing is so powerful, why is it that most merchants send so few messages?
In most cases it comes down to the same fears: you don’t want to annoy your customers by bombarding them with all your promotions and lose subscribers, customers, and your reputation. But are these fears valid?
Sure, our SMS inbox is a personal space and we don’t want to let anyone in. We don’t want to give our phone numbers to anyone.
For this reason, getting your subscribers’ consent is crucial and should never be neglected (and it’s also illegal to miss it). You need to respect them for letting you interact with them in such a personal way.
But, your shoppers made the conscious decision to opt in for your promotional messages, so limiting communication to the minimum is counteractive.
Of course, you shouldn’t just text them everything without a well-structured plan in mind, but more to follow on this.
Sending SMS Too Rarely
What happens when you barely send text messages to your SMS subscribers?
Will they think how nice you are for giving them space? No. They simply forget about you, especially if your Shopify store is not in a highly unique niche.
With all the competition in an overcrowded market, you need to make sure to always come first in your customers’ minds.
This is especially true for busy promotional periods, such as BFCM. All your competitors are trying to get the biggest slice of your ideal customers’ attention and if you’re only sending a message or two per month, your offers simply get lost in the ocean of great deals.
Sending consistent and frequent messages to your target audience creates multiple touch points with them, helps you enhance brand awareness, customers journey, and CX.
Okay, this all sounds good – but you’re still not sure how to do all this without driving unsubscription rate.
How To Send The Right Message
Did you know that the Harry Potter series is over 4,000 pages in total? And yet, I bet you know many people who binged through them within a few weeks.
While our attention span is getting shorter, we don’t mind consuming a large amount of content if it’s engaging and relevant enough.
Obviously, SMS marketing is mainly focused on promotions. As it comes with a cost, we want to see a good return on our investment.
But that doesn’t mean your messages can’t be attractive.
9 Things to Keep In Mind When Crafting Your SMS Content:
- Be relevant. Shoppers find texts from brands most engaging when they are relevant to their interests and past purchases.
- Segment your audience based on behavior. Always know who to target and when. For example, don’t try to sell to someone who just bought something yesterday and still waiting for delivery. You can also send more messages to subscribers who read your SMS but haven’t clicked on the link yet.
- Find the right timing. To make the best use of this tool, make sure you check your analytics to see when your customers are most active and base your SMS campaign send time on that.
- Always offer value. Your subscribers don’t care about your content if there’s nothing in it for them. Offer discounts, bundles, let them be the first to learn about new items in your inventory.
- Have a clear CTA. What do you want your customers to do when they read your message? Don’t forget to include your link or coupon code.
- Offer a way out. In your SMS, include a “Text STOP to opt out” line, so that nobody is forced to keep receiving your messages against their will, which can seriously hurt your business.
- Keep the individual messages concise. Every word that doesn’t add value has to go.
- Sound like a human. Nobody reads messages that sound too crafted. Write like a good friend who wants to help instead of a salesman who only cares about the revenue.
- Send non-promotional content. You can send your subscribers an informative blog post or case study, ask for reviews in exchange for a coupon, send shipping updates, check if they are happy with the order. These messages might not result in great revenue right away, but think long term: if your shoppers can feel that you care, they’re more likely to remember and purchase from your again. Remember, building brand awareness is key to long-term success.
Best In Class Examples From Recart Users
Let’s take a look at how some of our best-performing merchants achieved great results by sending 3+ SMS campaigns a month.
- The health and wellness brand, Queen Resilient, has sent 3 campaigns in February 2022 so far. The result: $22.7k in revenue, with an average of 12X ROI and 5% CTR.
- In comparison: In January 2022, Queen Resilient only send one campaign to their list. They made a little over $2.2k in revenue, 3.2% CTR and the ROI on that one campaign was only 4.2X.
- Her Juice Bar, the female intimate care company sent 5 campaigns in December 2021. In total, they made $32k in revenue, with an average of a 16.2X ROI and a 3.3% CTR.
- In comparison: Although Her Juice Bar never sent less than 4 campaigns in a month, let’s take a look at what would’ve happened, had they stopped after 2 campaigns in December. After their first two December campaigns, they made $8.5k in revenue, with an average of a 15X ROI and a 3.1% CTR. Sending those 3 additional campaigns was definitely worth it.
How SMS Campaign Frequency Affected The Monthly Revenue?
|
Merchant |
Less than 3 campaigns |
3 or more campaigns |
|---|---|---|
Queen Resilient |
$2.2k USD | $22.7k USD |
Her Juice Bar |
$8.5k USD | $32k USD |
All brands achieved significantly better results when they sent less or more than 3 campaigns within a single month. Queen Resilient earned 10 times as much with their sales, with 3 times higher ROI. The results speak for themselves!
How To Get Started?
As you can see, our merchants in the above examples sent 3-6 SMS campaigns within a single month and achieved a great return on their investments.
You could see improvement on your dashboard too, so why wouldn’t you?
If you’re still not sure if this model is right for you, we recommend starting with just one SMS a week and working your way up from there.
On the Recart dashboard, you can monitor the results right away so you will see how increasing frequency changes your ROI, CTR, and conversion rate.
You can experiment with the perfect time and day for your ideal audience to target them with your offers, analyze the results and adjust based on the outcome. Studies show that engagement increases towards the end of the week, however, this can vary depending on the nature of your business.
Or, you can just ask your highly trained customer success manager from Recart to structure and set up the SMS campaigns for you.
Not a Recart customer yet? Book a free demo with us if you’re ready to grow your business!
