How to Build a Winning Text Strategy From Scratch
Considering building a text channel for your brand? There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but with a bit of strategic thinking, you can create a strong foundation for success. By the end of this guide, you’ll answer four quick questions specific to your goals that will help you build a winning text strategy from scratch!
Starting a new communication channel for your brand can feel daunting.
However, if you’re not running a text program yet, you’re missing out on a significant opportunity to connect with your customers in a way that cuts through the white noise of social media and crowded inboxes. Text messaging is intimate and personal, which makes it essential to use this channel thoughtfully. But when done right, it can also be more immediate and effective than the algorithm-driven methods dominating other platforms. This makes SMS a strategy worth serious consideration.
The good news is that once you answer a few key strategy questions, launching a text program can feel less like a sprint to the finish line and more like a walk in the park. Even better, you’ll see results along the way! For example, we began exploring SMS for one of our partners just before Black Friday and Cyber Monday (it’s never too late!) and managed to grow their SMS list by 20%, achieving an average click rate of 18% in just 3 months!
Let’s take a walk and discuss how we build a winning text strategy from scratch →
Table of Contents
Why Do We Want to Communicate with Users Via Text?
We presented three answers for our partner to choose from:
“We want to start a new way to communicate with our most loyal customers to build our brand.”
“We want to compliment our email strategy, with focus on our biggest moments.”
“We want to create a new revenue stream that parallels, with the potential to surpass, our email channel.”
Which answer most resonates with why you want to start a text program?
You’re looking for a “Passive” strategy.
You’re looking for a “Supplemental” strategy.
You’re looking for an “Aggressive” strategy.
When you work with MKTG Rhythm, we dive into the details of each strategy and how we can accomplish it tactically for your brand. For this partner, they selected a supplemental strategy, i.e. answer #2, and based on their specific goals and current email strategy, we recommended the following steps.
The following recommendations are based on a supplemental text strategy:
Which Text Opt-In Strategy Should We Run?
You’re most likely already collecting email addresses via a pop-over on your site. It’s quick and easy to test the waters of collecting phone numbers by adding a text opt-in as an additional step. It can be as small of a group of just unidentified users on mobile, just to see what submit rates would look like when you add in a text opt-in to the experience. Here’s the experience we launched for our partner:
How Should We Be Thinking About Text Incentives?
Asking for a phone number is a big ask, it’s a very personal way to communicate with your users! You don’t just give your phone number out to someone if you’re not expecting something in return. Ensure to provide a value in exchange for asking for their phone number, and if you’re already giving a discount for an email address (most brands are) consider a few other incentives that are still meaningful:
Early Access / VIP treatment
Free Shipping on next order
Additional % off future order (if already receiving a % off their first order with email submission)
% off upgraded offer from email incentive (i.e. 10% → 15%) when opting into a second channel.
What Type Campaign Strategy Do We Implement?
Start slow. You don’t need to start sending as many texts a week as you do emails. For a supplemental strategy, consider ways that a user receiving a text message is adding value to their journey with your brand. If they’re signing up for texts, that also most likely means they are already signed up via email, and therefore the texts should feel additive and not copy/pastes of your emails. A few strategies we recommended for our partner to lightly launch their SMS campaign program:
Start with one text a week, every other week, to warm your new text subscribers to hearing from you.
Send content via text a few days before email users receive it, so there is a reward and exclusivity to being signed up via text.
Other opportunities to text are for last-minute and time sensitive updates to your users, like shipping deadlines and low stock updates.
The TLDR
You should be considering a text strategy for your brand as a new, high-touch channel of communication.
The type of strategy you run depends on what you need text to accomplish for your brand.
Text should feel additive and exclusive to your users, not a copy/paste of your email channel.
Start slow, and be consistent.
Have more questions about how to build a winning text strategy from scratch? Send us a message and we’d be happy to help brainstorm.
