When running a successful SMS campaign, there are several things to keep in mind. Choosing a good SMS keyword is important, but how you advertise your SMS keyword is the true key to success. Before we discuss how Tatango is making it easier for consumers to join your SMS campaign, let’s talk about what an SMS keyword is.
What Is an SMS Keyword?
There are 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 the third option is in-store (like a point of sale system).
The first option is where SMS keywords come into play. An SMS keyword is a word (or a word plus numbers) that a consumer texts to a brand’s short code in order to opt into receiving automated SMS or MMS messages.
A brand can advertise its opt-in keyword in a store, on a billboard, on television, or on the radio. The call to action is usually to text the keyword to the brand’s unique short code. For example, “Text the word ‘Join’ to 12345 to opt into our text messaging program.” The word “Join” in the example is the keyword and “12345” is the short code.
SMS Keywords With Quotation Marks
One common mistake that brands make when advertising their SMS marketing keyword is that they put quotations around the word, like the example above. Why does this matter? Most SMS marketing platforms aren’t able to recognize your keyword with quotations around it. If the platform can’t recognize the SMS keyword, then that consumer is not going to be able to opt in to your SMS campaign.
That’s why at Tatango we designed our platform to recognize SMS keywords with and without quotation marks around them. We never want you to lose a potential subscriber over something as small as a quotation mark.
SMS Keywords With Two Words
Did you know that most SMS marketing platforms aren’t sophisticated enough to recognize SMS keywords with and without spaces in them?
Tatango discovered this back in 2011 when we ran a test and found that 9% of potential SMS subscribers will separate an SMS keyword into two words by adding a space if it is composed of two words. For example, if the keyword was “PIZZATIME”, the consumer would text it as two separate words instead of one.
After finding this, we immediately re-wrote the way our platform handles SMS keywords. Our software allows for keywords to be recognized with or without spaces in them. And this requires no extra work from the brand’s side. You can read more about this feature here.
Choosing the Best SMS Keywords
Need help choosing the right keyword to make your SMS campaign successful? Get in touch with one of our SMS marketing professionals to learn more about how the Tatango SMS platform can help maximize growth within your SMS subscribers.
