It’s not every day that a new marketing channel comes along. It’s been exciting to see the ecommerce world embrace SMS, or text message marketing, with the first wave of early adopters fired up, ready to test and build out a brand new marketing channel. 

But with a new channel comes a lot of questions. One we hear every day: “what does good SMS marketing look like?” 

In fact, we recently surveyed 1000 ecommerce SMS marketers to see what their biggest challenges were, and they resoundingly said, “understanding what “good” looks like.”

Today, we’re launching ReallyGoodTexts.com as a means to empower brands and agencies to feel more comfortable with SMS by having a robust, living resource of examples. 

You may be wondering why we’re calling this Really Good Texts. The answer is simple. Most folks who operate SMS at a brand also handle email marketing. Like a lot of you, we’ve loved ReallyGoodEmails.com for many years, so calling this ReallyGoodTexts.com was a no-brainer. 

There’s a lot of talk about what “good” looks like and we’re here to break it down for you.  

First and foremost, SMS should not be used in the same way as email. SMS is empathy-driven. You should text your subscribers in the same way you’d think about texting with friends and family. 

Broken down, here’s what the anatomy of a good marketing text message looks like: 

• It’s personalized: Think using a subscribers name & segmenting your list based on their data.

• Use your creative: You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, borrow creative from Instagram & email.

• Incorporate branded URLs.

• Voice: Say it with me: Text people like people. No robots 🤖

• Imagery/GIFs: Both are great ways to convey brand voice, show off your products/people and connect with subscribers on a deeper level.

• Emojis: Emojis are great for implying message tone or adding a little humor to your text marketing. 

• Formatting: Sometimes a little spacing goes a long way to help someone absorb your message.

• 1st person: People want to connect and hear from other people. Humanize your brand by speaking in the 1st person. 

• Avoid “blasting”: Batch & blast text marketing is the quickest way to boost your unsubscribe rate. #RespectTheList.

Really Good Texts is a living, breathing resource that will continually be updated with new content. 

Our suggestion? Bookmark it! So the next time you’re thinking about new ways to incorporate or improve your SMS marketing, you can check out tons of really good examples. 

We’re also launching an Instagram account to showcase a handful of new examples, so be sure to follow us on the good ol’ gram.

As for the content itself, the site is broken down into three main categories: types, industries, and responses.

Poking around is highly encouraged.

Who knows — maybe you’re a beauty brand that will find inspiration from the abandoned cart automation of a food brand. You just never know! 

Do you think you have what it takes to make it on Really Good Texts? Have you come across a brand that is absolutely crushing their SMS marketing? 

We want to hear about it! You can submit examples of really good texts directly through the site. If you include your social handle, we’ll even give you a shout out if your submission is selected.