Transcript:
Hello, everyone. Derek Johnson with tatango.com. Today, I’m going to be talking about one very, very simple strategy that you can use to increase not only the readability of your text messages but because you’re increasing the readability, you’re also going to increase the conversions of your text messages, which for most, you know, SMS marketers, that means more revenue. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to take my phone, I’ll throw it up on the screen here, so you can see kind of what I’m talking about. I’m going to go into some of these messages and just recreate them if I was, you know, the SMS marketing manager, and I want to use line breaks in my message to make the messages appear a little more to read. So, what we’re going to do is I’m just going to copy this and, kind of, recreate it. It’s not going to be perfect, but it’s going to give you an idea of, kind of, where my head sits when I’m creating these messages for clients. So, Bed, Bath & Beyond. I like how they’re starting with, you know, who it is. I do recommend that for most brands. How much will you save? I like things… So, here’s a quick one. As you can see here if you just do a single line break, I don’t like that. It still looks kind of jumbled, the whole message. And this is very interesting too. Why it hasn’t caught on for SMS marketing, but it has caught on for, like, e-mail marketing. You never see an email that’s just, you know, no line breaks. Or you never see even a LinkedIn message nowadays, they all have line breaks. So, just another thing, I love using stuff from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, the strategies that people are using. Don’t feel bad in terms of copying those strategies to text messaging. So, make sure you have a, I guess that would be like a double-line break there. So, how much will you save? I like that because it’s like, “How much,” and then, it continues, you know, on there like, “Oh, I want to keep reading.” Click to review your deal. Now, one thing to be careful of especially with line breaks is you wouldn’t want to do this, because that will break the link. So, be very careful about where you’re breaking up the message. And then, I like the very bottom. At the very bottom, if you want to go crazy, you could go it like a triple line break at the very bottom. And you could put the expiration date, reply Stop to cancel, or end, you know, any kind of terms and conditions apply, you know, only at participating stores… Whatever, you know, the promotion is, I like putting that at the very, very bottom. What I don’t like is at top of their message there in the first part, you know, it’s all just kind of jumbled up, and really, you know, the click to review your deal is getting as much, you know, screen-time and play in the same, kind of, area as reply Stop to cancel. You know, I don’t like that. So, this would be my kind of suggestion. Obviously, you know, you could even try stuff like this so it separates the URL, so it’s not kind of jumbled up. Again, this kind of thing looks much better than the first one where it’s all just, kind of, you know, all combined, and play around with it. I’ve even seen some brands that they do crazy stuff. They’re doing like, you know, something more like that which I’m kind of seeing this on LinkedIn a lot lately because they know that people like, kind of, short snippets of texts. So, that was Bed, Bath & Beyond. Let’s see here. Let’s see if we can redo this one just to give you an example. Okay, so, two pizzas are better than one. I like that. I like kind of leading off with you know, the brand name, and kind of hook to get them hooked. Get two large pepperoni pizzas for $8 each, you know, maybe do something like this, you know, with code. And then, let’s see. We’re gonna put… And sometimes I do this, is I work sometimes backwards because it’s sometimes easier where you’re like trying to figure out what’s going on, you know, so, I sometimes work backwards. I take, like, the participating stuff, you know, you could even do, you know, it’s getting a little more extreme here, but I could take this, you know, and I can put it way down here because it’s really not that important. Now, who knows. the brand might think that’s important, you know, with code. You know, something like this where you could for each, you know, with code, you know, something… Again, you know, look at it on a phone. This is why I always recommend people test it on the screen. Let’s say they’re a, you know, software provider, it might look really because the screen is like this big, but on the phone, it’s really small. So, you know, maybe something like that. You know, you could even combine this if you want, you could something like that. You know… Again, much easier to read than the message above. You know, Papa John’s, you got, “Oh, okay,” with the code, and then the link is on its own. I do like keeping links on their own, or like, something like, you know, very simple like click here. You know, something along those lines, or maybe like even to keep it kind of on one line especially if you’re trying to say like, “You have to click here to do that.” Again, looks way better, and way less jumbled than the message above. Let’s do one more here. Let’s try this one. So, this is American Eagle. Okay, Oh My Gosh Sale. This is cool too. This is a good kind of reminder is you can use cap locks, you know, on your characters, and it, kind of, helps split things up, and kind of draws attention in different areas so as they can see off everything. I kinda like doing the LinkedIn method here where it’s like with an extra… So, 60% off clearance, plus an extra 25% off clearance, online only. Again, you have to kind of, you know, for this one, 60% off clearance plus an extra 25% off clearance online only, you might want to split those up because maybe they apply to each other, so you don’t want people to be just like, “Oh, I could get 60% off or 25% off online.” So, you got to make sure that, you know, you’re putting those line breaks in, appropriately. And again, I like putting the things that are, kind of, the limiters for the promotion, you know, I like putting them at the very, very bottom. Oh, you know what? Actually, I’m going to do this. I’m going to go… I’ve seen this before, and I like this. And let’s do like that, and let’s capitalize this, yeah, you can even do… Again just kind of mixing things up so, you know, the message just looks a little bit different. Let’s see if we can see what it looks like. So, as you can see here, hopefully, you see the top message, and it’s like, “Wow. What is going on in this message? Like, there’s a lot of info, you know, or just a lot of stuff, you know together. And then, you look at this one, it’s like, “Oh My Gosh Sale.” And then, “Oh, I’d want to read more. Twenty-five percent off everything, 60%… Like, it’s just easier for the mind to comprehend what’s going on here. And if you make it easier for people to read, it’s going to easier for them to click, they’ll understand what they’re clicking, so then they will click. Just a better experience. I think we’ve learned a few things. First off, have fun with the message. If you want to go three line breaks, go for it. You know there’s nothing in the rules that say you can’t do, you know, three line breaks. Try using capital letters because it, kind of, mixes things up, and it kind of calls attention to certain areas. Maybe, you might even want to do something like, you know, “SHOP NOW,” you know, to really draw attention to that, but then, it breaks, you know the text message. Again, test it on your phone, test it on your Android, see, you know, how it looks. And then, you know, just kind of mix things up so that every single message is a little bit different, and it kind of surprises people. Also, if you have people that are, you know, working on LinkedIn posts, or Twitter posts, or Facebook posts, just start looking at what they’re doing, and then taking that kind of cues for your messaging. But again, this looks… And I haven’t spent that much time on this, but this looks way much easier to read, it looks cleaner, you know, I think it looks way better compared to kind of the top message. Again, just a quick way, it doesn’t take any extra software, it doesn’t really take that even much time to increase the conversions and readability of your existing messaging. So, again, my name is Derek Johnson with tatango.com. If you have a tip, a suggestion, anything about text message marketing, a question, feel free to leave it in the comments below, and we’ll do our best to answer it. Again, thank you for tuning in and we look forward to talking to you soon.
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