Bulk SMS marketing is a quick and effective communications solution, and a valuable tool for interacting with customers by sending them updates, alerts or information about upcoming events or sales - on the go.

Some of the highlights of what SMS/Text marketing can do for you are:

• a direct access path to the prospective or current customers

• personalization of the SMS, since you are communicating one-to-one

• the means to tap a customer's constant availability

• the opportunity of direct response from the recipient (interactivity)

• the ability for messages to be sent to multiple customers simultaneously

• delivery reports that confirm the arrival of your messages

Mobile SMS marketing lets companies market themselves effortlessly and relatively cheaply.

But of course, there is an art to writing a great SMS, which includes more than just creating short, compelling copy to inform and motivate your audience.

To reel in clients hook, line and sinker (while not overspending on your SMS marketing) you have to craft luring and personalized text messages, all within 160 characters or less.

The Multi-part SMS

Sending a “mutli-part” SMS (especially when you don’t intend to) is the fastest way to break your mobile marketing budget. Once any SMS goes over the 160 character ceiling, even if just by 1 character, mobile carrier services will count it as multi-part SMS message (i.e. more than one SMS, strung together) - and pump up your bill accordingly.

So, if you’re not mindful about your character count, you could be paying twice or three times more than what you banked on for a bulk SMS campaign.

This is why it’s very important to shave your text down to the absolute minimum and double check how much you’ve actually written before hitting that irreversible send button.

Keep it short, keep it simple and have a strong call to action!

SMS Personalization

It’s not easy to add phone numbers, website addresses and other crucial information into a basic 160-character SMS. You won’t be able to add images, video files or any other multimedia content either.

Let’s face it, without strong and personalized copy, your SMS campaign is probably not going to be really successful. The trick to an effective and inexpensive bulk SMS send is to blend in personal elements for more appeal within the ad copy, while using as few words as possible.

SMS personalization allows your business to choose and address certain fields that will be specific to the recipients message (e.g. name, gender, age, favorite karaoke-star etc.). For example; if you wanted to text people a week before their birthday you could include something relevant to their birth date to make them more interested.

Personalization just means placing any of a variety of signatures and personal call-outs on every SMS message sent, to grab your reader’s attention. While the 160 character limit does make this more challenging, the power of personalization should never be ignored. 

How can you solve the problem?

One way is by unifying the strengths of mobile and email marketing!

With GraphicMail, you can easily combine your direct email marketing strategy with your SMS sweeps, by sending out quick updates via SMS with the minimum amount of necessary personalization, and saving money by using your newsletters for more lengthy and more detailed personalized information.