Now that 2021 is here, it’s time to take advantage of one of the most important communication...
If you’re reading this right now, then you’ve probably already discovered that text messages are an incredibly effective way to directly and immediately reach your target audience. Although texting and text message marketing have been around for ages now, we have definitely entered a new era where businesses are sending more texts to their current and potential customers than ever.
The good news is, customers are clearly receptive to receiving text messages from trusted names. In the United States, nearly 50 million customers opted in to business text messaging in 2020.
Before you start sending text messages to potential customers, there’s a few things you’ll need to sort out first, such as when and how you’ll be sending your texts. (For example, make sure you only text potential customers with their permission!)
But we know for many people, that’s the easy part. One of the biggest questions we hear is, how do I know what to write? And how do I know it will work?
If you’ve ever found yourself staring blankly at a white screen, completely unsure about where to begin with composing texts to potential customers, this article is for you. Keep reading to find out a few tried-and-true strategies for writing short, informative and persuasive texts.
1. Spark Their Interest Quickly With Attention-Grabbing Words
One of the best things about sending text messages to your customers is knowing that your text is likely going to get read almost right away. Most emails languish unread in inboxes for days, but 90 percent of text messages will be opened within 3 minutes.
But just because someone opens or reads your text message doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll pay attention to it. The eyes of a text message reader glaze over quickly.
Clearly, the key is to capture their interest as quickly as possible. But how do you do that?
It’s all in the words you use. With a text message, you don’t have many words to work with. (Most text marketing experts still recommend aiming for 160 characters per message, although longer texts are becoming more common.) So you need each word in your text message to aim with precision accuracy straight into the heart of your potential customer. You need to reach their emotions.
Emotions get attention because they cut through the noise by cueing or sparking a reaction in your potential customer -- whether they’re conscious of it or not.
Although there are a lot of emotions that you can prompt in your texts with success, one strategic way to get your audience’s attention is to provoke their curiosity. You can use your text as an opportunity to open up what’s commonly known as “the curiosity gap” for your customer.
This is basically the same theory behind all those clickbait articles we all love to hate (you know, the ones we often end up clicking on ourselves in spite of ourselves because we really want to know whether we “won’t believe what happens next.”) You’re making your customers take notice of the fact that there’s something they don’t know but that they could know. Once they discover that there is an answer out there to a question they didn’t even know they had, they will be inclined to seek it out. Curiosity is a powerful motivator!
Power words to try: Why, guess, surprising, interesting, unconventional, unusual, unexpected, bizarre
2. Create a Sense of Urgency or Scarcity
One of the oldest -- and most powerful -- tricks in the book when it comes to getting potential customers to take a desired action is to make your offer seem urgent.
There are a few ways to trigger this sense of urgency, especially:
- Evoking time. Add a deadline to give your customers a running clock that will make them want to take action quickly. Short turnaround promotions, sales, or limited-time offers can often compel someone to take an action they might not otherwise if they had more time to think about it.
- Evoking scarcity. Maybe it’s not the clock that’s running down, but the amount of what you’re offering. Are there only a certain number of tickets or items available? Are sign-up spaces limited? Are you almost sold out entirely of a popular package? This can also prompt someone to act quickly.
Of course, use discretion when applying these techniques to your text messages, too. Don’t claim something is a limited time offer if it’s actually always available. It can affect how customers perceive your brand, too -- customers will be suspicious if time-bound deals happen too frequently. (They no longer seem scarce, and therefore desirable, if they’re happening all the time, right?)
Power words to try: Now, today, right away, soon, urgent, limited, hurry, don’t wait, last chance
3. Give Them a Clear Next Step to Take
Your main goal in writing informative and short text messages is to transform your potential customer from a passive reader to someone who takes an action. The best way to do that? Make it easy for them. Give them a short and direct call-to-action.
Tell your potential customers exactly what their next step should be, so they don’t have to think about it at all.
Of course, it will depend on your goals for what that next step will be, but it could include anything from opting in to texting you back to buying something, etc.
Since you’re working within the limits of a short text message, you’ll have to be efficient here, too. You’ll probably want to combine your call-to-action with your deadline or urgency message (e.g., “Click here by Friday” “Sign up now”).
Power words to try: any strong & clear action verb, written as a command
4. Make a Human-to-Human Connection
You may have noticed that a lot of the principles we’ve talked about already apply to a lot of marketing tactics. Techniques like creating a sense of urgency and sparking curiosity or another emotion are almost universally effective whether you’re writing a text message, an email, a Facebook ad, or something else.
But in addition to applying these wider strategies, make sure to take advantage of what’s unique about text messages, too.
Remember that when you send a customer a text message, you’re reaching them in a direct, personal and relatively intimate way compared to email or social media.
You get the unique opportunity to talk to them straight through their phone messaging app.
So, whenever possible, use that to your benefit and try to connect on a human-to-human level. In other words, especially depending on your business and your brand, you don’t have to be an impersonal robot blasting thousands of bland messages all at once. Even if you are sending your messages in bulk, write your texts like you’re a real person talking to another person.
One easy way to do this is to use your customers’ names in your texts (whenever you’ve got a list of them). That has the bonus benefit of helping to get their attention quickly, too. As American entrepreneur Dale Carnegie famously said, “Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
When it’s not possible to use your customers’ names in your texts, don’t overlook the most important three-letter word around: you! The simple trick of using the word “you” in a text message will automatically make your customer feel more like you’re talking directly to them.
Power words to try: you.
TL;DR:
While a lot goes into crafting an effective text messaging strategy as a business, learning how to write short and persuasive text messages should be one of your first priorities. Hands down, the most effective text messages are going to (1) grab your customers’ attention, (2) establish some urgency, and (3) give them a clear next step to take -- all while staying short and direct. Finally, remember that text messages give you a unique opportunity to connect with your audience directly, and take advantage of that!
Are you ready to build stronger connections with your audience and more?
Toosa, a powerful new audience communication platform, will be launching soon. Don’t miss out! Get on the waiting list now for updates and find out how to be one of Toosa’s first users.
