Did you know that SMS marketing, when done correctly, outperforms email marketing?

Research shows that text open rates can reach up to 98% compared to 20% for email. That alone is compelling enough for you to consider moving some of your salon marketing campaigns from email to SMS.

Text messaging is an effective marketing tool because people generally receive significantly fewer marketing texts than emails and, since they are more disruptive, texts are more likely to be opened. Despite this potential, SMS marketing messages tend to have higher unsubscribe rates. This is especially true when too many messages are sent. In order to avoid this issue, studies suggest that the SMS frequency shouldn’t be more than once every 28 days. So, keep this in mind when embarking upon your first SMS salon marketing campaign.

As with any marketing campaign, be it salon marketing or spa marketing, the goal is to optimize the deliverability and conversion rate of your messages. The key to achieving this is to ensure that they aren’t flagged as spam by the carriers, who are innately sensitive to being perceived as “spammy.”

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To help you drive SMS marketing success for your salon or spa, here are six best practice tips you can implement:

1. Create select target segments

For SMS marketing, it is more effective to send out multiple targeted campaigns instead of one large campaign. Segments of 50 people or less are recommended because tighter segmentation necessitates more specific messaging. This ensures the text has a high relevance to its intended audience, leading to increased deliverability and conversion rates. Segments could focus on factors that are relevant to your salon or spa, such as gender, location, recommended service or age to name a few.

If the desired target audience of your salon marketing or spa marketing campaign is much wider than 50 individuals, then email marketing may better suit your needs.

2. Avoid marketing keywords

Nothing says “spam” like obvious attention-grabbers such as “on sale,” “promotional offer,” or “discount.” To maximize the deliverability of a specific text message, edit out these trigger words and find other ways to subliminally or creatively communicate the same ideas in a way that not only means your SMS makes it to your audience but engages them once it gets there. This will help drive the success of your salon marketing or spa marketing campaign.

Check out a list of common spam words for SMS here.

3. Eliminate URLs

In general, URLs are high-risk for carriers and recipients alike. Since it’s hard for carriers to ensure URLs are safe for users to click through, most will simply play it safe and block messages that include URLs. Additionally, recipients are also highly unlikely to click through on texts with URLs (thanks scam artists). If URLs are absolutely key to the messaging of your salon marketing campaign, paying for short codes or a toll-free number are potential alternate options.

4. Make content compliant with anti-spam legislation for all locations

Laws and regulations often differ by location so it’s essential to ensure your offering is legal in every locality you are sending an SMS message to. If carriers are suspicious of your SMS content they will likely act with caution and block it to avoid facilitating illegal activities. This is something to be particularly mindful of when considering SMS marketing for salons or spas.

5. Keep your messages short and to the point

With SMS, the shorter the better. Not only will you lose the attention of the reader, but longer text messages have a higher probability of being flagged as spam. Make sure every word (and dollar!) is making an impact by streamlining (and refining) the message you’re communicating.

6. Mix it up

Creating different types of SMS messages that are varied in style and length helps to diversify the content you’re sending. Take advantage of macros to really add personalization and variance to your SMS marketing campaigns. By doing this you’re one step closer to increasing the delivery rate of your

text messages, since it doesn’t look like the exact same message is being sent to several different people at once.

Leverage SMS marketing messages today!

The truth is your current and future customers are simply more likely to engage with your business through their preferred platform of communication. Today that platform is SMS.

Text messages follow different rules and standards than email campaigns. So, to fully harness the advantages and see the powerful results SMS marketing can deliver it’s important to make sure your content reflects all of today’s best practices.

But you don’t have to do it alone.

Zenoti Connect, our text messaging platform, makes it easier than ever for your business to communicate and engage with your customers through SMS.

Learn more here.