The next time you hear someone tell you that your bulk SMS marketing campaign could use a bit of concatenation, don’t take offense. They’re not trying to insinuate that you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing and are sending your recipients useless information or bothersome messages. Concatenation, an option available on many SMS marketing software programs, is quite a different thing than concentration.

What Does it Mean?
Concatenation is just a big word used to describe something that we’re all familiar with if we’ve ever received text messages on our mobile devices that are split into two, three, or even four separate texts. The reason this happens is because whoever’s sending us the text has exceeded their 160-character limit, so the messages are broken up in the delivery. Concatenation at the point of origin prevents this from happening.

Why Is It Important?
The reason concatenation is absolutely essential to your SMS marketing campaign is really a matter of common sense: many people have limited texting plans and are either charged extra when a message is broken into several pieces, or end up using valuable texts to receive what should have come through in a single message. If you don’t want to stoke the ire of your list of recipients, ensure the SMS marketing software that you use offers concatenation.