With the growing importance of mobile in marketing, SMS has become the cutting-edge for efficient company-customer communications. Text messaging is still thought of as a “personal” form of communication, while email and phone have long been the targets of professional marketing campaigns. If your firm can become a text marketing provider and connect with customers on a personal level, you’ve got a clear advance over the competition. For better response rates, read on for these text message marketing ideas.

1.       Keep it informational – Companies that do SMS marketing well focus on information first and self-promotion last (if at all). A credit card company might send a debt sms once in a while to remind consumers of their account balances. Consumers then grow to trust the credit card company and rely on its services, so they don’t delete the occasional marketing message. Information is the ultimate goal here, though, so never try to push your products prematurely.

2.       Get a strong SMS provider: You don’t want to do all the work of sending individual texts yourself, so invest in a good automated provider to make the process easier. Most software can send messages at any time and have automated send times for convenience. They can also track the message performance, making sure that people are opening your messages and (hopefully) replying to them. You can sent up automatic replies too if you’d like.

3.       Segment and test – Just like email marketing, you’ll have a group of people who have opted into receiving your texts. Not all of these people have the same texting habits, so divide them up into relevant groups and mix up your text message content appropriately. You can then track your performance by group to determine what works and what doesn’t. Capitalizing on your SMS best practices will yield dividends in the long run.