Let’s say you’re happily chowing down on your favorite juicy hamburger and you notice the sign at the table that says “Text REDROBIN to 68398 for special offers!” What would you text? Would you text in REDROBIN or could you very easily text RED ROBIN (with a space) by mistake?

The reality is that customers will accidentally add a space to two-word SMS keywords. Our recent analysis reports that a whopping 9% of customers who try to opt-in will make this SMS keyword mistake.

What is a SMS Keyword?

There’s three different ways that a consumer can opt in to an SMS marketing campaign. One is via their mobile phone, one is on a website, like a web form, and then the third option is in-store, at like a point of sale system.

So, the first option is where SMS keywords come into play. So, an SMS keyword is a word, and it can be really anything, it can be a word plus numbers, it can be just a word itself, and the consumer would text that word to a short code. A short code is a five- to six-digit phone number that is used by the brand to communicate, you know, text messages and MMS messages back and forth.

So, the brand will advertise, let’s say, in-store, or on a billboard, or on television, or radio.They would say, “Text the keyword to the short code.” So, it would be something like this, “Text the word ‘Join’,” ‘Join’ being the keyword, “to the short code 1-2-3-4-5 to opt in to our text messaging program.” So, you can see how I used ‘Join’ as the keyword, and then the short code was 1-2-3-4-5.

The Solution

Tatango is proud to announce that all SMS marketing campaigns launched through our service will now automatically accept any spaces typed in by your new mobile subscribers. If you select the keyword REDROBIN for your SMS marketing campaign, any combination of those letters and spaces will be accepted by our system. This way, you don’t have to worry about losing 9+% of customers who want to receive your SMS promotions! We’re always focused on making our client campaigns as successful as possible — so now you’ll never have to worry about those two-word List Names again.

Without a space:

With a space: