SMS Could Be an Interesting Channel to Explore

In an era of platform uncertainty and a push toward owning the relationship with your audience, more publishers are thinking about distribution tactics that they can control. I had lunch with two media executives yesterday discussing this change in how publishers should think about audience development and I said that email needed to be the north star.

But email does have its challenges. A few weeks ago, Apple announced that it would be releasing tabs in its mail client, similar to how Gmail does it. Emails would get categorized as primary, transactions, updates, and promotions. And it would be using AI to help inform where things go, all with the goal of decreasing clutter in the inbox.

I’ve seen some doom and gloom about this in various communities I’m part of, with one person saying, “newsletters are dead.” Newsletters are obviously not dead. As with all things, things just change. And publishers need to adapt and evolve, just like we do with everything.

That said, it acts as a reminder that there is no single channel that we truly own. There are better and worse channels with varying levels of control, but nothing that we own entirely.

But as I was thinking about this earlier this week after receiving the fifth text message in a single day about voting, I couldn’t help but wonder if publishers should be thinking about another distribution channel to add to the mix: SMS. The data supports a thesis that it may actually be very good for publishers.

First, from a political perspective. According to data from Tatango back in 2021, “the average open rate for political text messages was 98%.” When was the last time any of us had an email campaign with a near perfect open rate? In 2020, Mitto conducted a survey of 1,000 Americans and found that they influenced 31% of respondents to vote.

Second, a majority of people use text messages to engage with companies. According to eMarketer (using data from Salesforce), “66% of people worldwide use text messaging to engage with companies, and 65% use messenger apps.” And the reason marketers love it so much is because people are engaging more with them, confirming the data in the previous paragraph.

Third, it works. According to Attentive, during Cyber Week 2023, its clients sent 2.2 billion text messages, which resulted in over $1.8 billion in online revenue. That’s nearly $0.82 in revenue per message. Compare that to email. Klaviyo has email benchmarks and found the average revenue per recipient was $0.11. SMS was 7.5x as effective as email. I should note that both of these data points are ecommerce specific, but activity is activity.

We have a channel that has three things:

1. Unbelievably high open rates
2. More people are using it for communications
3. It drives activity and generates revenue.

Publishers should rush forward and start asking for phone numbers so we can text our readers, right? Not exactly. As with any channel, there are a few things we should get right to ensure that this helps us rather than hurting us and wasting our time.

At the top of the list is opt-in. Under no circumstance should we be acquiring people’s phone numbers to send them text messages. Many publishers still buy lists for email, but in text, it’s a really bad idea because it can get very expensive. Here in the United States, we have the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) which stipulates some rules. If you don’t get consent, the fine can be $500 per message. SlickText has good information here about the rules.

After that, it’s all about segmentation. You thought you’d get away from talk about 1st-party data? Think again. You want to make sure you’re sending the right message to the right person. The only way to do that is to really understand who these people are and then create targeted, marketable segments. Once you have those, they can become part of the marketing funnel.

Take a lead gen campaign, for example. We should only be sending a text about a white paper to people who are likely to engage with it. That means it’s about a specific topic or it’s the target lead for the client. The list of recipients will inevitably be smaller. However, that’s not a problem because you’ll more than make up for it on the increased engagement.

The next thing to be cognizant of is your mobile responsiveness. I’m surprised I still need to say this in 2024, but a great mobile experience that loads quickly is imperative to a successful SMS campaign. That means removing clutter, compressing images, and delivering exactly on what the message promises. This is not your chance to throw pop-ups everywhere. Before you start investing in SMS, make sure your site is built for mobile.

Then comes the actual messages. Keep it simple and short. When receiving texts, people prefer clear, concise messages with a single call to action. One text, one message, one goal should be the mantra.

Along with that, I’d consider responses. Like email, people are going to hit reply. Some of it may be negative, but some may be positive. If people reply to one of your texts, you should reply back as well. What better way to deepen your relationship with a reader than texting with them? It increases costs and time, but the outcome will be a more engaged reader.

Finally, understand your KPIs. If you’re primarily driving traffic, you should understand the open rates and clickthrough rates of your campaigns. If you’re trying to sell event tickets or subscriptions, conversion rate matters. Each campaign will be different and understanding your expected outcome will help SMS become a stronger channel.

There are a couple of things to be cautious of. First, the data will always tell you to send another text message. But once someone opts out, it’s hard to get them back in, so be very careful about sending too many. You won’t know your audience is burned out until it’s too late. And second, give users a clear ability to modify frequency and messaging. A clean preference center where they can opt out of marketing and only receive editorial is a good idea; so is giving them the ability to cap the number of texts they receive.

If you’ve made it to this point and you’re saying, “this sounds a lot like email best practices,” well, you’d be right. At the end of the day, we need to remember that on the other side of an email address or a phone number is a person. They have emotions. They have expectations. And so, we need to respect their time. The best way to do that is to give them information they are most likely to want. That’s why segmenting and being clear with your message are so important.

As publishers, we should always explore new ways to engage with our audience. Based on the data, SMS may be a good channel.