Text marketing has become a staple of any business’s marketing strategy. When executed properly, it can generate some very impressive results. With its high open rates and the ubiquity of mobile devices, SMS is a powerful medium to deliver mobile offers and notifications. In fact, with 95 percent of text messages being opened, SMS marketing can be the most cost effective way of breaking through the clutter of marketing messages vying for your customer’s attention. While there are many advantages of text marketing, getting the most out of your campaigns require diligent execution. There are a number of reasons mobile marketer may experience lackluster results. Here are some common reasons SMS marketing campaigns can fail and steps to turn things around: 1. Failing to Adequately Promote. Advertising a short code is essential to executing a successful text marketing campaign. Too many marketers neglect to promote their call to action on print, digital and other marketing real estate. To overcome this, consider:

• Mentioning your SMS call to action in print and digital marketing mediums.
• Many businesses have also successfully promoted their SMS marketing campaigns by placing QR codes in the place of business.
• Letting other local businesses promote your QR code through partnerships.

2. Striking Out on the Pitch. SMS marketing campaigns require consumer opt-in consent to send offers and notifications. Often times marketers strike out with a weak call to action that fails to mobilize potential consumers to join your database or redeem an offer. To optimize a call to action consider the following strategies:

• Bounce back coupons or reward benefits for joining the text marketing database. If you’re an ice cream parlor, for example, consider something as simple as promoting “Free complimentary scoop of ice cream when you text ICECREAM to 67076.”
• Place the call to action in as much marketing real estate as possible. Driving signups is as easy as displaying a call to action on a storefront window, reminding customers at checkout, or integrating your call to action into traditional advertising campaigns.
• Make the next step as easy as possible. Making offers and deals easily obtained is the best way to make sure that they get redeemed.

3. No opt-out = No opt-in. It might seem counter-intuitive, but without prominent opt-out disclaimer in your call to actions and messages consumers will be less likely to opt-in to a campaign or redeem offers. For many individuals concerns over spam will deter them from subscribing to a short code SMS marketing campaign in the first place, and without an obvious opt-out message, the text marketing campaign will begin to feel like spam. To optimize your campaign, think of the following steps:

• Clearly display an opt-out message at the end of each message.
• Make it clear and easy how to opt out.
• Make the opt-out immediate upon request.

4. Impersonal Content. Anything you can do to make meaningful and personal contact with your subscribers will increase the redemption rates of your text marketing campaigns. Making every message unique to your audience and business are as simple as:

• Create messages unique to the community.
• Utilize your CRM data. Text marketing campaigns should be an extension of a customer relationship management system. A dry cleaner that keeps track of a customer’s drop off patterns can create specialized discounts or reminder notifications based on those patterns. If the customer usually come in every Wednesday, for example, and they don’t show up for a couple of days, an automatic text reminder can be generated to say: “Hi! We haven’t seen you in a couple of days.”
• Scour your sales data to find product trends.

5. Neglecting New Subscriber Strategy. The best SMS marketing campaigns create new opt-ins through compelling content and allowing users to opt-in. Creating this stream of new users can be as simple as:

• Be creative with your campaigns. Think of ways to have your customers push messages out to their friends.
• Have your sales people promote the opt-in offer at the counter.
• Encourage your subscribers to push their offer by posting the words “FWD 2 a friend” at the end of your message. To encourage forwarding offers, holding polls and contests that encourage member sign up their friends. By encouraging your customers to push an offer, there’s the potential to spread the message beyond your database of opt-ins.

6. Neglecting a mobile sales channel. Most businesses have caught up to speed with QR codes and SMS marketing. However, very few still have solid mobile support for their business, which means that when a user receives an offer there is no easy way to redeem that offer using their mobile device. In a time when mobile shopping is the fastest growing type of internet usage, this doesn’t make much sense. Supporting mobile with SMS can be made easy by:

• Create a mobile version of the site to redeem offers.
• Always including a mobile specific link to the site to redeem offers.
• Create mobile support and sales documentation.