18 Creative SMS Marketing Ideas to Engage Your Customers

Wanna know how to reach higher engagement rates in your SME marketing campaigns? Read the following SMS marketing ideas to encourage your customers to interact with your messages.

The open rate of SMS marketing is higher than other channels like email. However, you can’t reach a higher engagement rate or conversion rate by throwing some generic text messages.

You have to build a strong marketing strategy and use advanced SMS tools to make the most of your campaigns. If you want to outperform your competitors, you need to come up with creative SMS marketing ideas that attract more customers.

That’s why we’ve gathered some successful text message marketing ideas that help small businesses and startups engage customers.

1. Personalized SMS Marketing Ideas

Personalization is the foundation of every marketing effort and SMS marketing is no exception.

You must know that generic messages are usually ignored because people don’t consider them important. They think you’re just throwing messages to everyone without considering their interests.

When you personalize the message and tailor your communication based on the customer’s characteristics, things go differently.

It’s estimated that personalization will increase your engagement rates by 20% so don’t forget to personalize your text messages.

With personalized messages, people feel exclusivity and relevance. When they feel you’ve created the message exclusively for them considering their past purchases or interactions, they’re more likely to engage with your SMS.

For example, imagine a customer purchasing a skincare product from your store. A few days later, you can send them a personalized SMS to recommend complementary products. Here is a sample message with personalization:

As you see, there are some factors in this message that personalize it and give an exclusive feeling to the recipient. Here are these factors:

Customer’s Name

Using the first name of the recipient (“Hi Jesika“) makes the message feel personal So Jesika feels she’s part of your story, not just one of thousands of customers.

Reference to Previous Purchase

Look at this sentence: “We hope you’re loving your new skincare product.” It acknowledges the customer’s recent purchase. This way, you’re showing that your brand remembers the recipient’s individual choices and creates a sense of connection.

Relevant Product Recommendation

In this part of the message, “We think you’ll also love our hydrating serum,” you provide a personalized suggestion based on Sara’s previous purchase. This makes your offer more relevant to their interests and needs.

Exclusive Discount

Offering “15% off on your next order” makes the recipient feel that this offer is just for her!  This also enhances the sense of exclusivity and rewards her loyalty to your brand.

Tone of Appreciation

The overall tone of the SMS is friendly and appreciates the customer for the previous purchase. This appreciation will strengthen the relationship between the customer and the brand.

2. Exclusive Deals & Valuable Offers

Customers like to be VIP! You can let them have such a feeling by offering exclusive deals through SMS.

Stats show that the majority of customers are willing to opt-in for SMS messages that offer exclusive deals.

Exclusive deals can include:

• Early access to sales
• Member-only discounts
• Secret promotions

For example, if you have an online fashion shop, you can send the following SMS to your VIP customers:

3. Customer Feedback & Surveys

Feedback and surveys are great methods to optimize marketing strategies and also gain the trust of customers. 

Using the insights from your customers, you can improve your products, services, and overall customer experience.

SMS surveys and feedback requests are the fastest methods to get the opinion of your customer. They’re also convenient and effective, compared to other marketing channels. 

The reason is that the open rate of text messages is much higher than emails and other advertising channels. Therefore, the majority of your audience will respond to your requests.

Of course, you need to be smart in your requests, otherwise, you might annoy recipients. Here are some tips for SMS feedback and surveys to get the best results:

• Use a clear call-to-action like “Take our survey.”
• Offer an incentive for those who take part in the survey.
• Send surveys shortly after a purchase or interaction.
• Ensure the survey link is mobile-friendly.
• Limit the number of questions to avoid overwhelming the recipient.
• Follow up with a thank-you message.

If you consider these tips in your feedback and surveys, you can expect a 45% increase in your response rates. Here is a good example of feedback SMS:

4. Abandoned Cart Reminders

Abandoned carts are a common issue for e-commerce businesses. SMS is the best way to encourage customers to complete their purchases.

You can simply send an abandoned cart reminder SMS to customers and ask them to buy the product they already chose.

You have to offer them something in return to increase the chance of encouraging them to get back to the purchasing process. Reminder text messages can greatly boost your sales.

Take a look at the following reminder to know how to do that:

5. Event Invitations

SMS is the best method to promote your events and increase the number of participants. No matter if you’re hosting an online or in-person event, last-minute text messages can be a great way for event invitations.

The majority of people read their text messages within 3 minutes while many of them don’t check their emails. So SMS is the best tool for such special announcements.

For example, if you have a local boutique, you can send an SMS inviting customers to an exclusive shopping event like:

6. Transactional SMS with Added Value

Transactional messages are also great SMS marketing ideas to engage your customers. These messages include:

• Order confirmations
• Shipping updates
• Receipts 

If you’re running an e-commerce business, transactional messages can be a great tool to build trust, keep customers informed, and reduce manual tasks.

You can also use these messages to offer added value, such as product recommendations, discount codes, or tips.

Take a look at the following order confirmation SMS to know how you can include an extra offer:

7. Limited-Time Promotions

One of the most important benefits of SMS marketing is time-sensitive ads. A great SMS marketing idea for your online store is to use limited-time promotions to create a sense of urgency and encourage potential customers to purchase.

Urgency is a powerful motivator in marketing, and SMS is the perfect channel for this promotion.

SMS promotions with time-sensitive discount offers usually have higher conversion rates than non-urgent messages.

Try to come up with creative SMS marketing ideas for your flash sales at special events. Here is an example of a limited-time offer for an electronics business:

8. Customer Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs are such a wonderful way to appreciate your most loyal customers! Using SMS, you can keep them engaged with your brand.

It’s good to use fun updates about points, rewards, and exclusive offers they’ll love. More than 90% of people like to buy from brands that recognize them and offer them exclusive and loyalty program offers.

Imagine you have a coffee shop and want to run a loyalty program using SMS marketing. Here is a sample SMS for loyal customers:

In this SMS, you can see some good points like:

• Immediate Reward: Susan has previously earned 50 loyalty points. Now, you’re giving her a reward with a free drink. This instant gratification is a great SMS marketing idea to gain the trust of customers.

• More Visits: The SMS encourages Susan to visit the coffee shop again. This will boost customer retention and repeat visits.

• Website Traffic: You’re providing Susan with a direct link to check the balance. This will increase your website traffic and also give an easy-to-use way for the customer to see their points.

• Personalization: The message addresses Susan by name, which is an important way to make your message friendly.

9. Educational SMS

If you want to appear like a niche thought leader, you shouldn’t consider SMS marketing just a selling machine.

You can use it as a platform for sharing useful information about your products and services to add value to the customer’s experience.

Educational messages are among the best SMS marketing ideas that can help you build a great identity for your business.

In these messages, you can include tips, how-to guides, or industry news that aligns with your brand.

Imagine if you have a fitness brand and want to send health tips to your subscribers apart from advertisements and reminders. Here is a good example in this regard:

10. SMS Gamification & Contests

Having hun is a great way to boost engagement in marketing. Gamifying your SMS messages is the best way to add fun to your campaigns.

You can run contests, sweepstakes, and challenges via SMS to generate excitement and increase customer interaction with your brand.

Of course, you need to know what type of customer you’re interacting with. For example, the game that you send to women should be different from those you send to boys. 

Here is an example of a contest SMS that you can send as a beauty brand:

11. Geo-Targeted Offers

When you have a restaurant or a shop in a specific region, you’d better send geo-targeted text messages.

This way, you’ll save time and money and also get higher engagement rates because people in other regions of the city can’t participate in your event even if they want to.

Location-based marketing allows you to reach customers in specific locations, which is especially useful in time-sensitive promotions.

The majority of customers react to such text messages within 24 hours while if you send SMS without considering the location, you’ll get a considerably less engagement rate.

Imagine you have a restaurant chain in several locations. You can send a message according to the following SMS template to the customers who are close to each of the branches:

12. Holiday & Seasonal SMS Marketing Ideas

Special times like holidays and seasonal sales are the best opportunity for SMS marketing.

During these key shopping periods like Christmas, Halloween, and summer sales are best for festive promotions.

Almost every business can use these periods but some of them are more likely to take advantage of them. Here are the list of the best businesses for holiday and seasonal SMS marketing campaigns:

1. E-Commerce (Seasonal Products)
2. Event Planning & Party Supplies
3. Clothing
4. Food & Beverage (Holiday-Themed Menus or Catering)
5. Gift Shops and Craft Stores
6. Travel & Hospitality

For example, if you’re a clothing retailer, you can use a text message template like the following one during the Black Friday shopping season.

If you could combine these messages with your customer data from previous purchases, you can optimize your campaign and get the maximum engagement possible.

13. Drip SMS Marketing Ideas

Drip marketing is about sending automated messages to your audience and asking them to take a specific action.

SMS drip campaigns have many benefits like onboarding new customers, generating leads, and fast results. SMS drip campaigns can result in a considerable increase in engagement rates. 

Here is a sample drip SMS to onboard new users:

14. SMS for Product Launch Announcements

When you launch a new product, you need a fast and effective channel to reach out to your potential customers and inform them of this product. 

SMS is ideal for spreading the word and creating buzz about the new product. This is the best method to drive immediate sales. Of course, it’s good to put loyal customers first by offering early access or discounts on the new product.

New product SMS is best for tech companies. Take a look at the following example to know how it works

15. SMS Referral Programs

One of the best SMS marketing ideas to increase your customers is referral programs. Nothing can encourage people to buy a product more than an offer from a friend or family member who has tried that product. Statistics show that 92% of people trust referrals from their relatives more than any advertisements.

Of course, you can’t expect your customers to do that without any rewards. So try to consider rewards or discounts for referrals and incentivize customers to spread the word about your brand.

Here is an example of a referral program SMS from an online retailer:

16. SMS for Customer Re-Engagement

You can’t find a better way to reconnect to your previous customers than SMS. If you see that a customer has not visited your website or bought anything from you for a while, you can send an SMS with an offer to encourage them to re-engage.

If you have an ecommerce business, you can use the following SMS template to re-engage your customers:

17. SMS for Appointment Reminders

For businesses like healthcare that operate on an appointment basis, SMS reminders are essential. 

Reminders can significantly reduce no-shows and improve customer satisfaction. Remember that you can’t use other channels like email to send reminders because they don’t have the response rate of SMS.

Here is a template for an SMS reminder from a dental clinic:

18. SMS Coupons & Discount Codes

Coupons and discount codes are great ways to encourage people to buy from you. SMS is a great platform for sending these offers. The majority of customers like to receive these codes via SMS.

This is an example of a limited-time discount:

Looking for An SMS Marketing Tool? WP SMS Is the Best Option

Apart from the SMS idea, the SMS tool you choose for your campaigns has a huge impact on your SMS marketing ROI.

You need to select a tool that offers advanced features, a user-friendly interface, and affordable pricing packages.

If you have an online store or have a WordPress website for your business, the best option for you would be WP SMS. It’s one of the best SMS plugins that’s compatible with more than 300 SMS gateways from your website.

WP SMS lets you segment your website’s users and send automated text messages without having to learn programming languages!

It’s also compatible with advanced integrations and add-ons like WooCommerce notifications, GravityForm, Booking, etc. 

It’s good to try the demo of WP SMS to get familiar with its capabilities. You can also contact us if you have any questions about SMS marketing.

Final Thoughts on Creative SMS Marketing Ideas

SMS marketing ideas are so diverse that you can’t use all of them in your campaigns. You have to choose the best ones for your business. 

For example, if you have a healthcare business, you can use appointment reminders and educational SMS. 

Apart from the marketing idea, you need to use the right SMS platform to get the best result at an affordable cost. 

WP SMS is one of the best SMS plugins for WordPress websites that integrate SMS campaigns with digital marketing strategies. You can easily automate and schedule your text messages directly on your website’s dashboard.

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