When you're preparing to launch a text message marketing campaign, there are some tips you should keep in mind in order to maximize your chances of success. Over the years, a number of best practices have emerged that are most likely to boost your return, and make your campaign worthwhile. Continue reading below to learn about these best practices.

Make sure to obtain consent

These days, it is illegal to text consumers without their consent, so before you launch your campaign, make sure you've obtained consent from consumers to text them. This ensures that you send to people who either welcome the messages or at least, don't mind them.

People who have not given consent would likely be irritated by receiving text messages, and that could spell trouble for you. Not only would you lose credibility as a marketer and as a brand, but you could motivate the receiver to unsubscribe from all your messages.

Keep texts brief

If you make a habit of sending long, verbose text messages, you can pretty much count on them being completely ignored. The recipients might even opt out of receiving messages from you at all.

If you can keep your message to something like 160 characters, there's a much better chance it will be read and possibly acted upon. All you really need in your message is an attention-getting subject, an informative body, and a good closing CTA.

Don't overwhelm your recipients

It may be tempting to pass along every little tidbit of importance going on with your company, but recipients may not see it that way. If you send them a constant flow of text messages, they may just get annoyed by the bombardment and unsubscribe to your messages.

You're better off to send out a wave of text messages only when it's necessary or when you have something really important to talk about.

Provide value

Whatever else you decide to include in your text messages, make sure that you add value for the user and provide some kind of information that will be useful to him/her. For instance, promotions, discounts, and coupons are usually crowd-pleasers that are well received by most users. Any information you include should be useful to the users, and should be something they can actually use in their daily lives.

Issue your texts at appropriate moments

The last thing you want is for your users to feel like they're being inundated with texts, or that they're constantly receiving them at a bad time. Make sure to send your messages at times when your users are alert and have the chance to conveniently read the texts.

Typically, this would be during business hours, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and when people are already on the job. This will incur much less resentment than if you were to send texts at odd hours and possibly invade the privacy of a person. It's never a good idea to stir up resentment for the messages you send out.