Business SMS

Appointment Reminders and Confirmations

Non-attendance incurs considerable expenses for service businesses. If you send a text message 24 hours prior to an appointment, you make it simple for customers to confirm or reschedule an appointment. The message should detail what time the appointment is and where, and give them a simple link to move things around.

Once set up, your scheduling software can automatically do all of this. The site can send texts without any command or document from your staff. For valuable appointments, where a no-show may be much worse, you can send an additional reminder 1 hour prior.

Order Updates and Delivery Alerts

Customers want visibility into the stages of the delivery process. If you give them periodic updates through text, it will often minimize the volume of inquiries to your support team. Text them when the order is placed with tracking, text them when delivery is imminent, and text them again after it’s completed.

Most shipping platforms can send all of these updates automatically once you’ve integrated your SMS service with them. Additionally, always offer customers a link to chat with support if something goes wrong during the delivery process via chat for additional updates. Lastly, keep the messages short.

Customer Support and Two-Way Conversations

Phone customer support commonly involves prolonged wait periods. Text messaging offers a helpful compromise, in that customers obtain answers relatively quickly, and don’t feel like they are interrupted in their busy day.

Polite and time-sensitive replies to standard questions answer questions for all customers without requiring support staff to type out the same answer every time. If the issue becomes too complicated for texting, the issue could be escalated to a phone call or email that continues the conversation. Estimate customer and team member resolution times to note where there seems to be a bottleneck with time and resolution.

Promotional Offers and Marketing Campaigns

Email open rates typically hover around 20%, which means most promotional messages never get seen. Text messages consistently achieve much higher engagement rates. You can send flash sales to create urgency, share exclusive discounts, announce new products, or invite customers to events.

Success depends heavily on proper segmentation. Messages should feel relevant to recipients rather than generic broadcasts. Most businesses limit promotional texts to 2-4 per month. Always include the discount code directly in the message. Don’t make the customers click through.

Internal Team Communication and Alerts

Critical alerts can get lost in communication platforms like Slack, especially if team members do not have SMS notifications enabled. Urgent emails often sit unread for hours when people are focused on other tasks. Text messaging cuts through the noise for truly important updates.

Set up triggers based on events in your monitoring or management systems so alerts are sent automatically. Use groups for department-wide alerts so everyone receives the same outbound SMS simultaneously. Keep internal texts separate from customer messages to avoid confusion. Include clear next steps in every alert.

Volume and Frequency of Messages

Figure out how many texts you’ll actually send based on what you’re doing now and where you expect to be soon. Count your daily, weekly, and monthly messages. This helps you avoid paying for capacity you won’t use or picking a platform that can’t handle what you need.

Sending under 1,000 marketing messages a month? Go with something simple and cheap. At that level, you care more about how easy it is to use than saving pennies on each message.

Between 1,000 and 10,000 messages? Look for platforms with volume tiers—they’ll give you better rates. Over 10,000? You should be talking directly to providers about custom pricing.

Integration Needs (CRM, Ecommerce, or POS)

Your SMS platform needs to work smoothly with the systems you’re already using to run your business. Switching between different tools all day kills your productivity and leads to mistakes.

Before you sign up, actually test the integrations with real scenarios. Send a test message from your CRM and make sure it works. Check if contact data syncs both ways or just one direction.

Pricing, Scalability, and Support

There are three main ways providers charge: pay-per-message, monthly plans with included multimedia messages, or custom enterprise deals. Do the math on what you’ll actually pay per message across different options.

Scalability just means the platform can grow with you without forcing you to start over. Can you add team members easily? Does the price get too high when you hit the next tier? Will you run into message caps during busy seasons?

Support quality really shows when things break. Will you get someone on the phone for urgent problems, or are you stuck waiting for email responses? Make sure they have good documentation, clear API guides, and a searchable help center.

Security And Compliance Capabilities

Carriers will block your messages in mobile phones if you’re not following the rules—they’re protecting their networks from spam. Regulators will fine you, sometimes heavily, if you break messaging laws. Your platform needs to keep you compliant automatically.

If you’re in the US, you need solid TCPA compliance tools. That means clear tracking of who opted in and how, automatic handling of opt-outs, and a complete message history in case you get audited.

Delivery Rate And Read Rate

Delivery rate shows what percentage of your sent messages actually reached customer phones. Check delivery rates broken down by carrier when your platform provides this level of detail. If one carrier consistently blocks your messages while others deliver successfully, you likely have a compliance issue specific to that carrier’s policies.

Read rate tells you whether recipients opened your message, which indicates engagement beyond simple delivery. Most people read text messages within minutes of getting them. So if your messages are just sitting there unread for hours or even days, that’s telling you something. Either you’re texting people at the wrong time, or they’re not really interested in what you’re sending.

Response Rate And Conversion Rate

Response rate is simple—it’s how many people write back. Low responses? That usually means your call-to-action isn’t clear, or people don’t think what you’re saying applies to them. When you see this happening, switch things up and test what actually gets your audience to respond.

Conversion rate is the big one. It shows whether people took the action you wanted—bought something, booked a call, whatever it was. This matters most because it’s tied directly to your bottom line. Look at how different groups convert. Someone buying from you for the first time acts totally different from a loyal customer who already knows they like you.

Opt-Out Rate (Unsubscribe Tracking)

This tells you how many people hit unsubscribe after each message. It’s honest feedback about whether your content is actually useful. Watch which messages make people leave. Promotional texts lose way more people than helpful updates like “your package is on the way,” because nobody needs another sale announcement, but everyone wants to know where their order is.

ROI Of SMS Marketing Campaigns

Here’s how you calculate ROI: (Revenue from campaign – Cost of campaign) / Cost of campaign × 100.

But don’t cheat yourself on the costs. Count everything—platform fees, what you paid per message, how much time your team spent on it, design costs, and yes, the actual dollar value of those discounts you handed out. Too many businesses skip the discount part and end up thinking they made way more money than they really did.

Keep Messages Short, Clear, and Action-Oriented

You have 160 characters before your message splits into multiple parts, each counting as a separate message. Every additional segment costs more money and reduces the impact of your message.

Start with the action or most important information rather than building up to it gradually. Limit each message to a single idea or purpose. Do not try to combine a shipping update with a promotional offer or mix an appointment reminder with a request for a review. Send two separate texts instead, each focused and clear in its intent.

Personalize Messages To Build Connection

Use recipients’ first names when you have that information in your database. Reference past behavior or purchase history when it is relevant to the message. Different customer types need different messages because they have different relationships with your business. New customers require more explanation than customers who have been your loyal customers for years. Reference specific products or services when that detail adds value.

Start With Value, Not Promotion

Lead with what recipients get from your message rather than what you want from them. Answer their implicit question first before you ask for anything else. Provide useful information before you request action from the recipient.

Promotional messages should state the specific benefit immediately. Support messages should acknowledge the customer’s issue before it goes into policy explanations.

Add A Strong, Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)

Tell recipients exactly what to do next. Use action verbs that clearly communicate what you want recipients to do. Limit yourself to one CTA per message. Multiple choices create decision fatigue.

Make the CTA easy to complete without requiring excessive effort. Do not send a 40-character URL that is difficult to type. Use a link shortener or text-back response instead. Add urgency when it is genuinely appropriate to the situation.

Test And Optimize With A/B Variations

Split your subscriber list into two roughly equal groups. Send version A to half and version B to the other half to see which performs better under identical conditions. Test only one element at a time to maintain clarity about what caused performance differences.

Track the metric that actually matters for your specific goal. That means clicks for link-based messages, replies for two-way conversations, and actual conversions for sales campaigns. Sometimes a message generates more clicks but fewer sales.

Send Messages at the Right Time and Frequency

Mid-morning, approximately between 10 am and 11 am, and early evening at around 6 pm to 7 pm typically drive high response rates across nearly every industry. People will look at their phones during morning breaks at work, as well as after work hours.

One common theme with B2B communications is that weekend response rates are much lower because professionals disconnect from work-related messages; however, weekend rates may go up for B2C retail and restaurants, as people have leisure time to shop or dine.

Segment Your Audience for Targeted Messaging

Basic segmentation starts with the customer lifecycle stage: new customers who need more hand-holding, repeat customers who understand your processes, inactive customers who need reactivation, and high-value customers who deserve special treatment. Behavioral segments work even better than demographic ones to predict responses. Segment people by their purchase history patterns, browsing behavior on your site, and support interaction history.

VIP customers deserve special treatment because their loyalty and purchases signify they deserve to be recognized. They can receive special offers, exclusive access to new products, or preferential treatment if you’ve collected stated preferences through survey responses. You can create segments based on interest in a product as well, which allows you to encourage people to purchase the things they care about from their purchase history.

Combine SMS with Other Channels (Email, Social, WhatsApp)

SMS gets immediate attention because texts interrupt other activities and get read quickly. Email provides space for detailed information, rich visual content, and longer explanations that do not fit in 160 characters. Send a text alert about a flash sale to create immediate awareness, then follow with an email that includes product images, detailed descriptions, and customer reviews. The text drives awareness while the email enables thoughtful consideration.

WhatsApp works particularly well in international markets where SMS costs run significantly higher. Social media builds broad awareness and community engagement. SMS drives immediate action from people who have already expressed interest in the subscription. When you post on Instagram about a sale, text your subscribers with the actual discount code before you make the general public announcement. This exclusivity rewards subscribers and reinforces the value of being on your list.

Leverage Two-Way Conversations

Real conversations create authentic relationships that create loyalty beyond transactional value. When people text you back, reply quickly, as speed is the main benefit of a text message. People expect to hear back in minutes when they text.

Use a shared inbox so the entire team can respond from that same number. This way, customers won’t wait forever for one person. Anyone can jump in if they are available to help. Create saved responses for frequently asked questions your team responds to repeatedly. Having a template for these responses will allow you to advise in seconds. There is no need to send the same answer dozens of times a day.

Ensure Opt-In and Compliance to Build Trust

Explicit opt-in is legally required in most jurisdictions and ethically necessary everywhere. People must actively choose to receive texts from your business rather than being enrolled automatically. Pre-checked boxes do not meet this standard.

Double opt-in provides an extra layer of verification. After someone signs up, send a confirmation text. Ask them to reply YES to complete the subscription. This verifies the phone number is correct and proves the person genuinely wanted to subscribe. Process opt-out requests immediately and automatically without manual intervention. If you send even one additional message after someone unsubscribes, it can result in legal violations and substantial fines.

Message Deliverability Issues

Messages fail to deliver for specific, identifiable reasons rather than random chance. Some frequent reasons could be an invalid number format or an invalid condition that prevents the number. The number has been deactivated and/or the service has been canceled. Carrier blocks because they adhere to no spam-like behavior.

Pre-check number validity before sending, as it will help identify empty/disconnected/invalid contacts from your list. Most platforms offer number lookup services that verify whether numbers are currently active. This proactive validation prevents you from wasting message credits on numbers that will definitely fail.

Avoiding Spam Filters and Carrier Restrictions

Spam filters review particular patterns to help them identify unwanted messages. They look for excessive capitalization, excessive punctuation, certain known spam trigger words, and links that appear suspicious.

Some words seem to automatically trigger the spam filter. These include: free, win, cash, click here, for a limited time, act now, and guaranteed, just to name a few. Use these words sparingly. One of the best ways to eliminate spam filters is to send messages to people who actually want to receive them. If the content has real value and the recipient wants it, the spam filter rarely comes into play.

Managing Opt-In Compliance

Record the precise date and time, the specific method they used to opt in, and the exact language they agreed to during subscription.

Separate opt-ins by message type because they have different legal requirements and customer expectations. Transactional messages like order confirmations also have different regulatory requirements than promotional messages.

It is important that point-of-sale opt-ins are completely separate from purchases to avoid any confusion regarding what the customer agreed to. A person who purchased a product did not consent to receive marketing text messages just because they provided a number for order confirmation. The opt-in language should be clear about the expected frequency in order to establish the right expectations.

Scaling SMS Communication with Automation

At 50 messages per day, manual messaging is no longer sustainable. At that point, the time required becomes impractical, and the odds of making a mistake increase exponentially. Automation is required to provide consistency and fulfill messages in an acceptable amount of time.

Automation rules are triggered based on events that happen in your systems. Examples of this would be an order placed in your ecommerce platform, an appointment made in your booking platform, or a support ticket opened in your helpdesk.

Messages get read quickly, conversations happen in real-time, and customers actually respond to what you send. They don’t ignore it like they do with most marketing channels. You need to choose a platform that connects to your existing tools. Make sure you test different message types systematically to discover what resonates with your specific audience. Also track delivery and conversion rates that tie to business outcomes.