In any marketing effort, it’s important to protect the integrity of your brand and create a positive experience for customers. Unlike other marketing platforms, text or SMS has a few extra considerations.
Follow these tips to protect your brand as you run your text-to-win or SMS marketing campaign…
Follow the Rules
The best way to protect your brand is to understand the rules to ensure you’re in compliance. See our post on the rules of text message marketing. This is aside from the laws guiding sweepstakes, which vary by state. Abide by the rules in both areas to ensure you aren’t running any risks and also to assure customers they won’t get unsolicited texts.
Stay Consistent
Use the same messaging format each time so that you don’t confuse your audience. If they get confused or can’t identify you, they might opt out. We suggest starting with your sweepkey, then the message. (Example: “MODA: Only 2 days left to enter! As a thank you, enjoy 15% off…”) Also, don’t dilute the influence of your brand by sending messages that don’t match your brand’s personality. If your company has spent a lot of time building up a playful identity, make sure to keep up this tone in all of your marketing communications, including SMS.
Share Your Shortcode
You should make sure you do everything possible to associate the short code with your brand. At Sweeppea, our customers generally use our shared short code (the 5-digit phone number, 65047). Sharing the short code is more cost effective for most, but there is also the option to buy a custom short code for your business alone. While this would be more expensive, it can protect your brand even further as you would be the only one using it.
If you’d prefer a custom short code for your campaign, we can offer this as a solution for companies who have the budget. A custom short code can become part of your permanent brand identity, just like your logo or company colors. Contact us if you’d like to learn more about this option.
Get Feedback
The best way to ensure your SMS marketing campaign is really meeting your customers’ needs is to ask for feedback. You can send surveys to request feedback about the promotion and to learn what customers think about your business. By using feedback, you can improve your marketing efforts to make them as relevant as possible for your audience.