Did you know that Charlotte Russe, the specialty retail chain store in the United States dedicated to selling trendy clothing and accessories has a Charlotte Russe text messaging club? Yep, it’s true. Recently I received the following text message from being in their club, telling me to respond “BFF” to their SMS short code 78953 to play their “Text to Win Game”. By entering their text message contest, I could win a buy 1 item, get 1 free type promotion. So naturally, I texted BFF to 78953.
This is what I got in return from Charlotte Russe, which to my recollection is the longest text message promotion I’ve ever received from a business. To be accurate though, this isn’t an SMS message, but an MMS message, which is why they’re able to go past the normal 160 character limits of a text message.
A great rule of thumb in mobile marketing is to keep things simple, and in SMS marketing it’s a good idea to remember that just because you have 160 characters, or 400+ characters in the case of Charlotte Russe, you don’t have to use them all to get your point across. Most of the time, a shorter, more concise text message will have more impact than one that is much longer.