SMS marketing: the texts that work, how often to send them, and what they cost

The texts that work answer something the customer just did or asked for. For SMS marketing for ecommerce, four do most of the work. Each example is shown as Rasket sends it: your brand name in front and the opt-out line at the end, both added for you.

A daily promotion, or a text that repeats this morning’s email word for word, is where SMS marketing usually goes wrong. A decision rule that holds up: if the message would not be worth interrupting a meeting for, send it as an email.

As often as you said you would when they opted in, and no more. CTIA’s Messaging Principles and Best Practices, the US wireless industry’s guidelines for business texting, ask that the confirmation text tell people the messages recur and how often. So the frequency is a promise: “up to 4 texts a month” on the form means four. A weekly campaign plus the triggered texts above is a ceiling most shops never need to go past.

Two limits apply whatever you promise:

• Daytime only. The FCC’s rule bars telephone solicitations before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. at the recipient’s location. Rasket sends marketing texts between 8 am and 9 pm where each person is, or within the shorter hours some states set. A text due outside that window waits for the next morning, and a campaign still sending at 9 pm carries on the next day. Nothing is dropped.
• One marketing text in any 16 hours. This is Rasket’s own guard, not a law. Across every campaign, automation and API call, a phone gets at most one marketing text in 16 hours; a second one inside that window is skipped rather than delayed. So an abandoned cart text that fires an hour after a campaign does not stack on top of it.

Transactional texts, such as “your order has shipped” or a sign-in code, are not held by either rule and do not count toward the 16 hours.

Only people who gave express written consent to marketing texts. CTIA expects it for every marketing text, whether or not the TCPA (the US Telephone Consumer Protection Act) applies, and a newsletter sign-up is not it. A text that only confirms what someone did (an order, a booking, a code) needs the number given for that purpose instead. Adding a coupon to a shipping update can turn it into a promotional text that needs marketing consent.

In Rasket, SMS consent is a record of its own on each contact, kept with the page and the exact words the person agreed to, and separate from every email subscription. An SMS campaign skips anyone without it, and they still get your email campaigns. A STOP stops every text from your team to that phone at once, transactional ones included. The wording, the double opt-in and the proof to keep are in our guide to SMS opt in, and the rules Rasket applies are in the consent docs.

A contact holds an email address, a phone number or both, so the people you text are the same rows you already email. Segments are built once: “bought in the last 90 days” picks the same people for an email campaign and an SMS campaign, and each channel then sends to the ones who agreed to it. A contact can also have only a phone, such as someone who joined through a form that asked for nothing else.

Topics, the lists people can join and leave, carry a channel: email, SMS or both. So “Flash sales by text” can be its own list, and leaving it does not unsubscribe anyone from your newsletter. The two channels do different jobs for the same campaign: the text announces, the email carries the photos and the detail. Send them a few hours apart rather than in the same minute, so the second does not feel like an echo. SMS vs email marketing compares the two channels message by message.

One audience also means one place for a customer’s history. A bounce, an unsubscribe or a STOP is recorded on the contact you will look at, rather than in a second tool you would have to sync with the first.

Texts run on the same API and dashboard as your email, with the same key, contacts and webhooks; the SMS feature page shows the whole set. There are two ways to send marketing texts.

curl https://api.rasket.com/broadcasts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RASKET_API_KEY" \
  -H "User-Agent: acme-shop/1.0" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "channel": "sms",
    "name": "Spring sale",
    "segment_id": "78261eea-8f8b-4381-83c6-79fa7120f1cf",
    "from": "+18335550199",
    "text": "Spring sale: 20% off everything until Sunday. acme.co/s/spring",
    "local_send_time": "11:00"
  }'

{
  "id": "text_reminder",
  "type": "send_sms",
  "config": {
    "text": "Your cart is waiting. Finish your order: acme.co/s/cart",
    "category": "marketing"
  }
}

Texts have no open tracking, so delivery is the floor and clicks and replies are the signal. Each SMS campaign has a results page with five figures and four panels:

• Delivered, clicked, replies and unsubscribed, each with its share of the campaign’s texts, plus the revenue from orders once a store is connected.
• Delivery: failed and skipped counted apart, each with its reasons, so “no consent” and “sent in the last 16 hours” are not mistaken for carrier failures.
• Cost: the messages billed, those covered by the plan and the extra. Failed and skipped texts are not charged.
• Links and top replies: which links were clicked, and what people wrote back.

The same events reach your code as webhooks: sms.delivered, sms.failed (with failed.type skipped for a text the rules held back), sms.received for a reply and contact.sms_unsubscribed for an opt-out. A text from a campaign carries its broadcast_id, so you can join the results to your own orders. A rule worth keeping: when a campaign’s unsubscribes come close to its clicks, the audience or the frequency is wrong, and the next campaign should be smaller.

A message is up to 160 characters (70 if it has an emoji or another special character). A longer text is sent and billed as several messages. A picture message counts as 3 messages, and texts people send you are free. A text is charged when it is delivered, and a failed, skipped or canceled text never is.

On Pro 50k, a campaign of one message to 5,000 people uses the plan's 200 included texts and bills the other 4,800 at $0.015 each: $72. Free includes 50 test texts a month to your own verified phones, and Enterprise is priced by contract. The first toll-free number is included on paid plans; the table under the number section above has the rest. Texts have their own allowance and spend cap, separate from email, so a large campaign cannot use up the emails your password resets need. The pricing page has every plan.

• You text outside the US and Canada. Those are the only two countries Rasket texts, and picture messages reach US numbers only.
• You need a short code below Enterprise. Short codes are set up on Enterprise by contract; other plans send from toll-free or local numbers.
• Your business cannot register. High-risk lending, debt collection, lead generation, gambling, and texts on behalf of other companies are refused at registration, so no number would be approved.
• You want A/B tests on texts. An SMS campaign has one text; there is no split send or winner selection.

For everyone else, the next step is the opt-in: put an SMS checkbox on your sign-up or checkout form, worded as in the SMS opt in guide, and start the list your first campaign will go to.