6 Examples of Personalized Text Messages

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The true value of SMS marketing comes when you engage your subscribers in unique and personalized ways—not by saying, “Hi subscriber, here are general items you may be interested in.”

To help your team understand how to best engage customers through personalized text messages, let’s discuss the best practices for texting your customers. We’ll also share personalized text message examples to kickstart your planning.

Why Send Personalized Text Messages?

Understanding how to send personalized text messages is essential to improve your customer experience and prove that you understand their unique needs.

Even something as simple as adding your customer’s name to the text can go a long way in building their trust and loyalty. You should also personalize your text messages by referencing your customer’s shopping history and preferences in a natural and helpful way, like suggesting a complementary purchase or showcasing items in their favorite category.

Other personalized messages, such as appointment/service reminders and delivery notifications give your customers confidence as they shop with your brand, and make their experience as simple as possible.

When you send personalized text messages you increase your chances of driving sales because you are sharing information relevant to your customer’s individual needs, and that sustained value will earn you lifelong customers.

How to Send Customized Text Messages

Sending customized text messages is a breeze with the right SMS marketing tool. Most texting tools for businesses allow you to personalize messages and segment your audience to ensure you’re sending the best message to each individual customer. Even better, there are plenty of automated text messaging features and use cases that provide immediate value for your customers without any heavy lifting from your team.

Check out these 12 tools for SMS marketing you should know about to learn more about what to look for in an SMS marketing tool.

Best Practices for Personalized Text Messages

Despite the clear advantages of SMS marketing, there are several pitfalls you need to avoid to lead an effective strategy. You may find your texts do little to drive sales even if you send personalized text messages, meaning your strategy could need some fine-tuning.

Follow these essential best practices when engaging your customers through text to maximize your results:

Respond in real time

Texting your customers is a two-way channel, so you need to be ready to respond to their replies. More than 60 percent of consumers want to be able to text a business back, meaning you need an SMS marketing solution that can handle ongoing message threads. Savvy marketers implement automation capabilities that rely on chatbots to quickly address common customer needs and offer support outside of business hours.

Keep messages simple

A standard text message should be no longer than 160 characters, meaning you need to be clear and concise in all your text messages. Focus on one goal for each message and tailor your text toward driving a specific action from your customers. If you’re having a hard time distilling your message, then it may be best to use email, social media, or a blog post to spread the word.

Send texts during business hours

There are many considerations regarding the best time to send SMS messages to your customers. In general, you should limit your texting to their business hours to be respectful of their time. You wouldn’t want to text them when they’re sleeping, would you? Pre-scheduling messages is a smart way to address time zone differences if you work with global customers.

Include a call to action

Every text message you send to customers needs a clear purpose. What should they do after reading your message? Include a call to action in every text message you send, and review your message to ensure the customer can easily understand what they should do next.

Give customers an easy way to opt out

No person should be forced to receive your text messages without a way to opt out. In your initial onboarding text message, explain how customers can opt out at any point. Consider adding opt-out language to all texts to ensure customers clearly understand how they can leave your program. While it will hurt to lose that text subscriber, it is a best practice—and a legal necessity—to make opting out easy. Plus, it’ll maximize your likelihood of later re-engaging that customer.