Finally, some good news – 2020 is nearly over. Like us, you probably can’t remember the last time you were so excited to see off the end of year, albeit with slightly less pazazz than we’d like.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Statista found that over 70% have reported increased usage of their smartphone during the pandemic. This year, it’s fair to say we’ve relied on the mighty mobile more than ever. Just think about the number of video calls you’ve had this year, messages sent to friends and family and not forgetting the emails and messages from businesses too.
Spreading Christmas cheer seems more pertinent than ever before and this is echoed in the sales of Christmas cards, which Google data shows had already increased significantly in August, when compared to 2019 (4.61k in August 2020 versus 3.65k in August 2019).
In fact, a survey by John Lewis found that this year more than 70% of respondents said they intended to post either more or the same number of Christmas cards and 51% were planning to send more or the same amount of virtual greetings.
Whether you’re thinking of sending a virtual Christmas ‘card’ to your customers and staff this year or are promoting a winter sale and offer, we’ve put 5 top tips together to ensure that your campaign meets Santa’s criteria, to make it onto that all-important ‘nice’ list.
- Spelling and grammar
We don’t want to come across like a grammar nazi but no one wants to come across as sloppy. It’s easy to make mistakes and it’s even easier to overlook them yourself, so we recommend that you send a test message to someone within your team so they can check for errors.
2. Shorten urls
Tracking performance of your campaign and how it has driven traffic to your website can lead to long urls that take up valuable characters in your message. We’ve thought of that for you as there is a fantastic ‘shorten url’ feature built into MessageBox which instantly makes your links shorter and it has built-in tracking so you can find out exactly how many times people clicked through from the ‘Analytics’ section of your account. Of course, you’re welcome to use any external shortener too.
3. Message length
The beauty of SMS is that it’s short and sweet, the clue is literally in the name ‘short message service’. We get asked a lot about the character limit of text messages and as standard, a single text message is 160 characters but can be extended to include 4 message parts. Each message equals a credit so it can soon add up when sending long messages to people.
4. Get creative
As they say “a picture is worth a thousand words” and a mobile web page is a perfect way to send a Christmas message or include extra information about your plans for the new year.
5. Always include an opt-out
When it comes to marketing messages the same rules apply for SMS as they do for email, so when sending texts to customers remember to include a way for them to opt-out or unsubscribe from your campaigns. And don’t be discouraged by customers opting out – they are effectively helping refine your database to interested and engaged customers only, which is actually a good thing.
Finally, this list is for life not just for Christmas so refer to it when you send your next SMS campaign, and track your results to see how you get on. If you have any more questions please do not hesitate to get in touch, and if you’re thinking about sending your first Christmas SMS campaign you can sign up for your free Text Marketer account here today.