What is sms delivery and how to increase it

Your SMS delivery rate is the percentage of texts that are successfully delivered to your contacts, making it one of the most critical metrics to monitor as a text message marketer.

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Every day, phone carriers monitor and block text messages they have judged to be “spammy” or non-compliant to their conditions. That’s why understanding text message marketing best practices is the key to not only reaching more of your contacts but also increasing the effectiveness of your SMS campaigns.   

Here are a few tips to get you started

Don’t text phone numbers that have never opted in

You’ve definitely received an unwarranted political text or even a terribly crafted scam text on your phone. More than likely, you reported them to phone carriers as spam or opted-out by texting back “STOP”.

Phone carriers aren’t turning a blind eye to spam text messages and are actively blocking text messages from numbers that send them.

For the sake of your SMS delivery rate and your legal status, stop texting contacts that have not properly opted into your text message marketing. If they report your number as spam your deliverability rate will drop and you may run the risk of a TCPA legal action lawsuit.

Have conversations with your customers

Reply rate, the percentage of replies from a text message campaign, is a valuable metric phone providers use to see if your message is spammy.

A general rule of thumb when using SMS in your marketing strategy is that you should keep it conversational. Ask them to engage with you and text back.

Phone carriers are looking out to keep texting at just that. A channel to communicate and engage, not to blast random messages.

Here’s an example of a text message that will inspire engagement.

“Hey John, it’s Matt from Respond Flow. We have a new promotion that will let you win 1 month free of our software. Here’s a link with all the details you’ll need.

Would love to know how you’ve been liking the platform so far.”

Avoid sending repetitive messages to a large audience.

Although you’ve purchased a text message marketing software to bulk send your message to your contacts, you still need to be cautious of sending a generic copy and paste message.

Here’s an example of a text campaign that will get flagged by phone carriers.

“Flash sale at Good Times! 50% off all products when you show us this message”

The phone carriers will pick up on the repetitive message over a big audience and will start filtering your campaign.

To stop this from happening, using a text message marketing software like Respond Flow with dynamic copy will trick carriers into thinking each message is unique.

Here’s an example of a text campaign using dynamic copy:

Hi {Customers first name}! Matt from Good Times here. We are running a promotion for 50% off all products like the {Customer’s favorite product}. Just show us this message at the register when you come in.

Each contact will be named directly with a different favorite product, tricking the carriers into thinking that each message is unique.

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Segmented Lists

Another method to avoid being flagged as spam is to send text campaigns to segmented lists that care about different products.

This will make your campaigns more appealing to your contacts, increasing sales, decreasing spam reports, and increasing the deliverability of your campaigns.

Sometimes reaching out with the right message is better than sending a text to all of your contacts

Want to optimize your SMS deliverability?

Implementing an SMS deliverability strategy will make sure your message is read. That’s why we’re offering a free consultation with our textperts to go over how they get Respond Flow user’s to above 90% deliverability on every text message campaign.

Schedule a time with our textperts today!