So how many SMS messages should you send each week to subscribers? Even though more and more people are warming up to the idea of mobile messaging, sending too many messages may turn people off. On the other hand, not sending enough may cause them to forget your business exists. Striking a balance is necessary to increase sales and maintain life-long customers.

Types of SMS Messages

The frequency of mass text messages depends on the types of messages you want to send. Common types include:

  • Appointment/reservation reminders
  • Payment reminders
  • New product/services announcements
  • Daily drink or food specials
  • Meeting announcements/updates
  • Product or service discounts

For appointment/reservation or payment reminders and meeting announcements or updates, you may only have to send one message. The frequency of promotional text messages depends on product release dates, how long you plan to offer food or drink specials, or how long discounts will be offered.

Mobile Campaign Testing

To truly determine how many text messages to send to subscribers, you will need to conduct text frequency tests. Email marketers are all too familiar with testing as they do this on a regular basis to determine the frequency, time of day, types of email and other elements that increase sales and decrease opt-out rates. If you already engage in email message testing, then you know how important and valuable the information gathered can be.

To determine the frequency of text messages and the affect on sales, start by sending one message a week. Track your sales (or number of patrons, appointments set, new clients, etc.) and opt-out requests for that week. Increase message frequency by one message for the next three weeks. Keep tracking sales and opt-out requests. After a month, review your data to see if sales numbers and opt-out requests increased, decreased or stayed the same.

Make changes based on your results. For example, decrease the number of messages if you notice a spike in sales when sending two messages and a sudden drop or increase in opt-out requests when sending three messages per week. You may need to keep playing around with the number of messages until you find the right number.