Your SMS Is Probably Broken (Here's Why)

Stop requiring a discount to get an SMS opt-in. On SMS, you should send less than you think, way less.

So I think that most brands are segmenting SMS exactly the same way they segment email, and I don't think that's the right way to do it.

SMS is more expensive and less forgiving, so bad email programs will lose money slowly. A bad SMS program, well, you lose money fast and it damages the channel as well too.

I think SMS is harder to do well than email. I think brands actually underestimate that.

Don't launch your SMS while you're still figuring out who your customer is, what your brand voice is. That needs to be locked in before you add this more expensive channel.

From the open to the click, they're the masters of the flow. Just watch your list grow and your leads turn to go. Did we retain you so far or do we have to extend it? If you want results, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah.

What is up everyone? Welcome to Send It, where we discuss anything and everything retention marketing, specifically in email and SMS marketing and e-commerce. My name is Jimmy Kim and I'm here with my co-host.

Chase Diamond.

So Chase, a few episodes ago we did an email marketing hot takes and I think it took off a bit. Like there's social clips, people kind of posting on social that they agree or they don't agree and it's being shared all over social media and I thought it was really cool.

Yeah, that was a fun one. I think a lot of people loved it because it struck a nerve.

Yeah. So I figured let's do it again, but let's do it on SMS this time.

Sure, let's do it. I think SMS is probably even better for hot takes than email. You know, I think SMS is a younger channel and I think the quote unquote best practices aren't really even that established yet. But a lot of agencies and SaaS companies I think they're pretending that they have and they are. I think there's a ton of confident bad advice floating around that we really need to crack down on.

Yeah. And my hot take right off the rip, and I've said this before, is that all the same principles that we learned in email apply in SMS ultimately. And we learned those like 20, 30 years ago. Over those last 20, 30 years, we've learned them. However, we see most brands really just rip SMS In like a batch and blast kind of way. Plus, I think the other thing I see is that I find brands are either too scared to send SMS or they get way too aggressive and there isn't really a good middle ground.

Yeah, I agree with that. I think some brands are sending like 3 text messages a year because they are terrified of unsubscribes, or other brands are sending 5 times a week and they're gonna torch their list in, let's call it the next 90 days.

Yeah. So the truth is somewhere in between there and nobody talks about that part. So I figured we'd talk about it. So let's get these hot takes rolling. I've got them written down over here and we've got 10 of them to go over. And they're real ones that I would say that they're things that we've seen across hundreds of brands, maybe thousands of brands. And the last time we're going to dis— I mean, just like the last time, we're going to disagree on a couple of them, which is good also, but I'm going to put a Big disclaimer at the top here. SMS does have this thing called compliance and it does vary by region. And most of what we're saying is going to be US-focused. If you're in Canada, EU, UK, Australia, the rules might be different and stricter and I don't actually know them. So I want you to make sure you don't take any of these as compliance advice. With that being said, let's go ahead and kick this thing off and I've got 10 hot takes. All right. So I'm going to start it off right from number 1. And I wanna hear your thoughts here. So hot take number 1 is stop requiring a discount to get an SMS opt-in. And what I'm talking about is every brand does this, sign up for SMS, get 15% off. What are your thoughts here, Chase?

I think that's a good one. I'd say that one works in a sense that it does drive opt-ins, but I think the opt-ins you get are kind of the worst quality subscribers you'll have on SMS. And the reason being, Is those people typically only opted in for the actual discount, right? They then got the code, they used it once. Now you have their phone number and they don't really have an interest in receiving ongoing messages from you.

Yeah, dude. And I agree with you. And you know, when you know that SMS is your most expensive channel per cent, email costs you a fraction of that cent. SMS costs you 1 to 3 cents per message almost, unless you're with Omnisend, I think they're at 0.007 or something. But sending to dead phone numbers is like the most expensive way where sending to dead email addresses, well, you know, it's not a good practice, but it sure is not as expensive.

Yeah, dude, SMS really does add up if you are not using it properly. And I think like the opt-out rates on like discount acquired SMS lists are quite high. I'm talking like 20, 30% of those folks will opt out usually within the first 30 days for You know, the average brand.

Yeah, 20-30% is a lot. What do you think are the alternatives? I think you still need to acquire SMS subscribers. That's important. So what do you think about when you think about alternatives?

Yeah, I think there's a couple. I'd say the first is you want to make SMS the channel, like, for exclusive content, not just discounts, right? Whereas you want to sign up to SMS to get early access to drops. You wanna be the first one to know when we restock. I think that alone helps filter for what people are gonna do, right? This helps people that actually want a relationship with the brand get onto the list. And the people who opt in tend to be more like good long-term buyers than just the ones that want like the hot quick deal. I think the second one is you need to let people opt in via SMS after they've already engaged with the brand. So like a post-purchase opt-in, for example, you know, want shipping updates by text. I think the quality here is gonna be a lot higher because people have made a purchase. Whereas with the discount folks that you talked about, you know, the pre-purchase discount opt-in, it's not nearly as good, never will be. Right. The post-purchase opt-in is buyer validated. They've paid you money, they've given you money. They're a true hardcore real customer. And I think the third one that comes to mind is like, if you need to give a discount, I think you should gate it behind something that filters intent. So like a 2-step opt-in, you do make them confirm via text, where a lot of deal hunters just aren't going to bother going out of their way to do that.

Yeah, I agree with those 3. That's really good. But let me add one more to this. I think the brands that win at SMS, they treat it like a VIP channel from day one. Email is for everyone. That's pretty easy. But SMS is for the people who really, really wanna hear from you.

Yeah, I think that's important. I think that mindset shift does change everything, including the content that you're going to need to send.

Yeah. So I would say with hot take number 1, the end TL;DR is you should stop chasing opt-in volume and start chasing opt-in quality. All right, let's go to hot take number 2. I think this one's a good one because I think this is interesting, but MMS beats SMS for revenue almost always, but brands underuse MMS because it costs Way more, sometimes 3 times more. What are your thoughts off the back on that?

Yeah, I agree with you here. And to your point, right, MMS is roughly 2 to 3x kind of the cost per message of a typical standard text, right? So I think brands are looking at the cost difference and then default to the standard SMS. But I think the revenue lift can be more than the 2 to 3x increase in cost in most categories. You know, I've seen brands get 30, 50% more, even upwards of 60% more revenue lift from MMS over SMS on the same campaign. It's pretty crazy.

Yeah. Why, why do you think this works like this? What are your thoughts around this thing?

Yeah, a few, a few kinds of key reasons. The first is I think visual products do need visuals. If you're selling beauty, fashion, food, You know, et cetera. You do need to show the product. A text alone doesn't sell. You know, it's called an $80 lipstick. Second, with MMS, their messages display differently in the message thread themselves. They take up more space, which means they're going to capture more attention. And then the last one here is like the branded sender names plus a strong image make the brand feel, in my opinion, a little bit more legit. And kind of more premium and it feels like a real brand communication, not some spammy message.

Yeah, and here's the math. I was kind of thinking about it in my head. If you're paying like, let's say a penny, right? A cent for SMS and you're paying like 3 cents for an MMS because it's like 3 times more, but the MMS could convert it like 50% higher, let's just say. The MMS is an obvious win every time. Though I'll put a quick caveat there. I think if you're sending extremely high volume blasts, The MMS cost difference can be real, but for most brands that send at any kind of volume or size, MMS is kind of a better unit economic.

Yeah, I think that's a fair point. And then one more thing to add is I think what's cool about MMS is the fact that it lets you use GIFs, right? So you can animate content in SMS that feels native to the channel and just pops in a way that static images couldn't and don't.

Yeah, and one more thing that I remember about MMS is that you also get an included number of characters that's much greater than the 160 characters, which Is also a good one. So I would say the lesson here is to test the GIF angle. I think that's always important, especially for like product launches. And you should not be cheap about MMS, but you should go figure out why and what you need to do to spend that extra 2 cents to do that.

For sure.

All right. Let's move on to hot take number 3. Hot take number 3 is on SMS, you should send less than you think, way less.

All right. Will you expand on that? Because I think this contradicts about what we talk about in terms of email frequency.

It so does. And I think that's the point because SMS is fundamentally just such a different channel and people treat it like email with a phone number and it's absolutely not.

All right, all right. Walk me through this, yeah?

Okay, sure. So email is a permission-based channel where people skim their inboxes once or twice a day, but SMS is like this interruption channel where the phone vibrates or dings in their pocket and The cost of a bad SMS is way higher than the cost of a bad email because when the phone literally interrupts them, well, they get the attention and they get angry at the brand where a bad email just kind of gets ignored. And a bad SMS, well, they're going to opt out from that or worse, get reported as spam, which can cause a carrier-level deliverability problem that I've seen too.

Right. And while email deliverability problems are challenging and hard, I'm not saying they're easy, The whole carrier-level problem with SMS is way, way, way harder to solve and fix for.

Yeah. So my rule of thumb here is that most brands should be sending somewhere between 4 to 8 times a month with SMS, not per week, but per month. And every brand sending more than that is rolling a dice in a long-term list health ultimately.

Yeah. One kind of quick pushback though, you know, I think there are brands sending, let's call it 3 to 4, SMS a week that do happen to crush it.

Yeah, no, and there's always exceptions to the story, but brands will, they'll engage with their engaged audience, loyal communities, and content that earns the right to send that often. If you look at someone like Gymshark or some bigger DTC fashion brands, I believe they can pull it off.

Right, but what you were saying is for most brands, correct?

Yeah, yeah, for most brands, 4 to 8 sends a month with the strong content and segmentation will perform. Will outperform 12 to 16 cents a month with mediocre content. And the math only works because your cent is more profitable on a smaller cadence, less frequency, more revenue per cent, lower opt-in rates, and longer customer lifetime value on that channel.

Yeah, that makes sense. I'll partially agree there. I think like the key word in your take is like for most brands, right? I think if you have quality content and the audience to support more, You then should send more, right? But I think the default assumption needs to be that for new brands or undisciplined brands, like it should be less is more.

Yeah, I think the default is less, earn the right to send more based on the response in the community that you have. All right, let's roll a hot take number 4 because I think this one's a good one. 2-way SMS, the conversational SMS thing. That's what everybody's been talking about, conversational commerce, blah, blah, blah. I think it's overrated for most brands. Every SMS platform is selling this right now. What do you think? Hey, quick 60-second break to shout out our title sponsor, Omnisend. If you don't know them, Omnisend is an all-in-one email and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce. They're trusted by over 155,000 merchants with a 4.8 rating star on Shopify's marketplace with over 2,800+ reviews. People love using them. Their support is incredible, responsiveness team, great help docs, and they actually show up when you need them. 3, look, everyone loves saving a buck. They've got great features and great pricing. Listen, I've heard this inside the community that someone actually dropped their bill by almost 50% and then included their SMS costs, which is absolutely wild. Another agency that we talked to shifted all his clients over when he discovered that he can save them 30 to 60% off of their actual monthly bill. And they're taking that money now, reinvesting into ads and That real money is going to come back into your pocket too because you're helping them out or whatever it might be. With all this, I literally just helped Chase migrate his personal list to Omnisend not too long ago. It was super easy. They got team, they have an automated solution. It's really great. So if you're looking to scale your email and SMS game, check out omnisend.com/sendit. Tell them Chase and Jimmy sent you. Now back to your pod.

That's funny. Yeah, I think every SMS platform has a conversational commerce feature. Customers reply, the brand responds, it fuels human, it converts.

Yeah. And it works for some brands, but I feel like it doesn't work for most.

Yeah, I think it works if you have a small kind of premium audience and a team that actually is going to respond. I don't think it works if you're an 8-figure brand with 100,000+ SMS subscribers.

100%. And, you know, here's my big take around it. At scale, 2-way SMS becomes one of 2 things. A customer service nightmare that you can't keep up with. That's always what I see. Or B, an AI bot that customers can immediately tell is a bot, which in my opinion are both bad outcomes. AI bot version is getting worse, not better. Customers are getting savvy and they really want to talk to humans and they can spot that in just like 2 messages.

Yeah. And once they do spot it, I think they feel a bit deceived, which I think can really damage the brand. More than not actually having the feature at all.

Yeah. And I think, by the way, AI features are getting better. So I don't think this is a long-term thing, but it definitely is what I've seen in the past historically with more of the legacy companies out there right now. Plus, I think that there's an operational reality that no one talks about with this. Replying to a 2-way SMS at scale requires kind of like a real team. Brands try to bolt in their existing CX team or— and ultimately it fails because CX is not trained to support You know, responses, they're here to support, like, support tickets.

Right. You know, at the end of the day, when you hire for the CX, you're hiring for an entirely different skillset than you would for this kind of conversational stuff.

Yeah. And look, there is a use case that I do think it works. 2-way SMS works in a narrow use case, things like quiz-based product recommendations or reorder confirmations or subscription pause requests or Maybe specific transactional moments where yes or no or short reply absolutely makes sense. There are times when 2-way does make sense.

Yeah, I'm with you. I think the narrow kind of conversational SMS, yeah. I think the broad, like, let's chat with our customer SMS, I think that's almost always tough to make work.

Yeah. And the brands that talk the loudest about conversational SMS, their results, usually they're cherry picking. They're showing you one segment where it worked really well, but not really the overall number. You know, when you start asking for the full numbers and not the highlight reels, you start getting a different picture, at least in my opinion, from what I've seen. And if you in the audience feel like this is wrong, I would love to hear your take on it. Shoot us a note on social or comment about this. Let's go to number 5. This one's an interesting one because I don't think I see a lot of brands do it. But hot take number 5 that we had was transactional SMS is the most underrated, underleveraged marketing surface in e-commerce.

So transactional SMS is the most underleveraged. Can you walk me through that?

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So like I'm talking about order confirmation, shipping notifications, delivery confirmations. Most brands use these like plain, boring transactional notes. Your order has been shipped, track it here. And that's all they send.

Right. So the pure utility stuff.

Yeah. And these messages get opened nearly like 100% of the time because people want to know about these messages way higher than any marketing SMS because customers are watching for them. And I think the brands are really wasting what I would call real estate here. You should be using transactional SMS to drive secondary action. Your order has shipped. While you wait, there are 3 ways to use your new product and start giving them instructions, for example. Or if your order is confirmed, add this to your next order in 30 minutes for 20% off. This is where you could kind of ask for a next sale right there.

Got it. So what you're saying then is like the whole post-purchase upsell window in this transactional SMS is widely kind of under-monetized. Is that correct?

Yeah, I will add though, the carriers and platforms are getting stricter what you count as transactional marketing SMSs. So you have to be careful, but you can absolutely include relevant brand content in a shipping confirmation.

Got it. And here, relevant being the keyword, right? You can't just blast a promo in the shipping notification. That's going to get you flagged.

Yeah. So the rule of thumb, it looks like this. The secondary content has to be related to the order. If you buy like a skincare and you can suggest a matching moisturizer or something in a shipping confirmation, that's fine. But you can't suggest unrelated products like a supplement line or something like that. And the second is under use surface. I would say things like shipping delay notifications. When something goes wrong with shipment, there's an opportunity to recover that relationship and offer something. I think most brands send this delayed, bland notice that is like, You know, oh, I'm sorry it's late or something, or nothing at all. And I think those are both bad ways. In my opinion, a delay notice, it should include some kind of make-good, a discount on the next order, a free gift on the next package, something. There's a place there to get some goodwill because the customer is already annoyed. So you can either let them, the annoyance grow faster, or you can convert it to some type of goodwill.

Yeah. And the transactional SMS is the channel where you actually have the most attention. And kind of the least permission strain. So you do need to use it. All right, well, let's move on. I actually have a hot take for you. Is that cool if I share one?

Yeah, yeah.

All right, so hot take number 6. So I think that most brands are segmenting SMS exactly the same way they segment email, and I don't think that's the right way to do it.

Ooh, this is a good one because I'd almost argue that they aren't doing any of that segmentation right now, but I wanna— I want you to explain what you think brands do.

Sure. So with email segmentation, it's built around behavior over time. So let's call it engaged over 30 days. Someone browsed, but they didn't purchase. Maybe you have a last customer, any type of those types of things, right? It's a long timeframe. Whereas with SMS segmentation, I think it needs to be built more around like immediacy, kind of the recency, the time of day, and kind of event-based type stuff.

Okay. I, I like this. Walk me through the differences here because I want, I'm sure the audience wants to listen to this one.

Sure. So let's say with email, right? You might send a lapsed customer some kind of win back to people who haven't bought, let's say in the last 90 days. And I think that works because they have time to read the email when it's convenient. Whereas with SMS, if someone hasn't bought in 90 days, I think that's too broad of a segment here. I think the right segment for SMS could be You know, hasn't bought in 90 days and engaged with email in the last 14 days and it's a Tuesday at 6:00 PM. I think it needs to be just more specific.

Yeah, because, well, we all know SMS hits in that moment, right?

Right. Where SMS is a moment-based channel, your segmentation therefore needs to reflect when someone is most likely to take the specific action you want them to take.

Yeah. Okay. So, and I love this part of the, this part of the SMS is that there is some data behind an SMS, right? Most brands have no idea when their SMS is working. subscribers actually engaging with SMS. They're just sending at like Tuesday at 10:00 AM because that's when their email goes out.

Exactly. And you have to know that with SMS engagement times, they are completely different from email. So I think SMS tends to peak really well, like after work, you know, evenings, weekend, where I think email peaks around morning and kind of lunch hours. Again, not always, but standard. So if you're sending SMS at the same time as email, I do believe that you're missing kind of the key SMS native window, but you do need to run the analysis. You need to look at when your SMS clicks happen and you need to optimize around that, not just sending when your email schedule sends.

Yeah. And let me add something because I've seen something that works really well is to segment by purchase frequency, not just recency. SMS works really well for high-frequency repeat buyers. I've seen that over, especially like subscription brands, consumables, or anything where the customer's buying every few weeks ultimately. Because the cadence of the channel matches the cadence of the buying and less effective for considered purchases that happen maybe once or twice a year. Like if you're selling furniture or something or mattress, SMS isn't the right channel for nudging someone into a $400 purchase.

Right. So essentially the key takeaway here is you need to match the channel to the consumer's actual buying behavior. Don't just blast everyone the exact same way.

That's it. So let's move on to hot take number 7. I think this is always a good one. Keywords, I think this is something that was really popular when we first started SMS that's kind of dropped off, are wildly underused in SMS marketing. All right. Before we keep going, I wanna touch on something every company runs into at some point, creative bottlenecks. You need more variations, more angles, more hooks, and you need them faster than your team can realistically produce them. This is where SuperScale comes in. It's an AI agent built specifically for social marketing. You connect your Meta, your TikTok, and your Google accounts, and it gives your brand context, your ICP, and your past learning, and it pulls its performance data from your campaigns alongside insights from your competitors' ads. From there, you can give it a single prompt, like taking your top-performing creative, and generate multiple new hook variations in different formats and deliver them Ready to go. They also have full prompt library and tutorials on their site, which is helpful if you're just getting started. They're trusted by brands like Taxfix and SumUp. You can check them out at superscale.ai. I've got the link below. All right, back to your show.

To clarify, you mean like reply type keywords?

Yeah, like text join to 1234, reply or stop to unsubscribe. These are basics, but there's a whole world behind that.

Give me that world. What does that look like?

Okay. So brands have an entire library of like words that they can program, like text restock to be notified of sold-out items to come back, or text drop to get an early access to product launches, or text VIP to enter the loyalty program, text reorder to repeat that last purchase. There's so many ways you can utilize these.

Got it. So the self-service SMS type triggers.

Yeah, right. And these convert way higher than push messaging because The customers are initiating the action. They're actually in a buying mode and they're reaching out to you.

Yeah, I think that was really the key, right? The customer-initiated SMS is a different beast than kind of the brand-initiated SMS.

Yeah, and it bypasses all the, am I being too aggressive anxiety that you can create. The customer's asking for it, and by definition, you can't be aggressive with content that they wanted.

And where do you feel like brands find the most leverage here?

Yeah, so I would think about this, right? So 3 keywords I think brands should always have. These are the 3 that I would tip off to everyone. Number 1 should be like restock for like sold-out alerts. That's pretty simple. Number 2 should be reorders. How can we help them make that one-tap or one-response repurchase? And a custom keyword tied to your highest leverage moment. Like, so that's my 3rd one, which is like for a beauty brand, I might go with like routine or a food brand like bundle. For fashion brand new drop, like something that gets people knowing that if they send that, something will happen. And the data on something like restock is wild. Restock notifications convert at like something like 25 to 40% in some categories. And I think that it's the highest converting SMS message that a brand can have in a trigger response. But people don't do it because they don't seem to understand that the intent is already there. The customer wanted to buy the product, it was out of stock, and now of course it's back And they wanna buy. We already know that that works in email. It absolutely applies in SMS.

Yeah, I got you. And the brands, I think, forget to set up the keywords, right? So they have inventory coming back in stock, but they really have no system to notify the people who actually raised their hand and wanted it. And I think one more is like review or kind of vote keywords. So let customers reply with quick feedback or product votes. I think it engages them on the channel without requiring a long conversation.

Yeah. Okay. So the lesson here I would say is you should document them, promote them in your email program and on your site even if you can, and make it easy for customers to opt into specific value using these keywords. That's a good one that everyone should think about.

Cool. Yeah, I think that's solid. Let's move on to the next one. So hot take 8, I believe it is. So most SMS compliance is theater. And I think the actual compliance risks are different from what brands actually worry about.

Ooh, that's a spicy one, but it's a super important one.

Yeah, I think brands obsess over the reply stop to unsubscribe footer. They obsess over double opt-in and they obsess over kind of like the legal disclaimer at signup.

Yeah. And those are fine. I would say that you should be doing all of those.

Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. But I think those are just the table stakes. I think the actual compliance risks Yeah.

So look, Chase, I was on this advisory board for an SMS company around this for about a year and a half or something, and I got a lot of thoughts around this, so I'll just kind of share them real quick. The first is, and this is simple, I don't think many brands are doing this, but just in case people are talking about it, buying or renting SMS lists, like people who are buying from agencies or data brokers will tell you they have a list of interested customers. Don't touch it. That's how you get a TCPA lawsuit. And these TCPA fines are real, hundreds of thousands per message, class action lawsuits in hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars. And being ignorant, saying that I didn't know is not a good defense. I didn't know when I bought this list doesn't really hold up in that one. The second one is the implied consent loophole. Some brands tried to argue that adding an SMS opt-in to their email opt-in It's just fine, but it's not. Email consent and SMS consent are completely separate, and you've got to have specific SMS consent. And that consent has to be specific to SMS marketing, or we may— where it's not like we may contact you, but it's like I'm going to send you an SMS. And third, and this is a pretty big common mistake that I see, is sending SMS marketing messages to numbers that opted in for a transactional message. I'm talking about like Abandoned carts and different things like that. Customers sign up for shipping updates, customers start sending them a promo—that's actually a violation. And I think brands don't know that. The carriers are getting better and better flagging this stuff, and brands are getting hit with sender ID issues and deliverability issues, or they're getting what they call carrier block. And one last thing I'll add real quick because it came to my head when I was talking about this: this is something that nobody talks about. There's different types of compliance for different types of phone numbers of. A long-form phone number, a shortcode, and there's one called an A2P 10 DLC compliance, which is basically a 10-digit phone number. If your sending infrastructure isn't properly registered to the campaign registry, your throughput gets throttled, which means your speed is slower, and then your messages sometimes will even get filtered. There's so much that comes into this compliance stuff.

Got it. So if I understood correctly, what you're saying is it's not just like a legal compliance issue, but it's actually Like a huge deliverability nightmare that brands aren't going to realize likely until it's too late.

Yeah. So real compliance is like this: clean opt-ins, proper consent flows, segregated transactional marketing, and proper sender registration. That's probably the most important things you've got to think about.

Got it. Whereas most brands just think, hey, slap reply stop at the bottom of every message and we're good.

Look, here's the part of the actual hot take that I think is really important. When you're working with agencies or platforms, they Promise this like compliance thing, but they're only handling the surface level stuff. The real risk they leave on the brand. And if you read your contracts, here's the thing, the compliance liability sits with the brand, not the platform, and that's 100% of the time. So you got to make sure you have that and you know that. So hopefully I got the point across here. Let me go to hot take number 9 real quick. Don't launch SMS until email is dialed in. What do you think about that?

Hey, it's Chase. Got 30 quick seconds? We built something specifically for you. Jimmy and I together have over 20 years of combined experience in email marketing, and we finally put everything together in one place, and it's called Ecom Email Certified. I know it's fancy, but it's going to be great whether you're brand new or running campaigns for 7, 8, 9-figure brands. It covers it all— deliverability, AI, copywriting, design, strategy, SMS, literally everything. Has over 175 total modules totaling 25+ hours of content. Even has quizzes, a community, and you're gonna get a real certification. It's way better than college, right? Don't tell your professor that, but it is. And we've designed it to take you from beginner to certified expert. We're talking about the kind of marketer who actually moves the needle and drives real revenue. Check it out at ecomemailcertified.com. And now back to the pod. That's an interesting one. I do wanna push back.

Okay, go ahead.

All right, so I think brands launch SMS because email's not working and they want a new channel, and sometimes that works.

Okay, sometimes, but way more often it doesn't. Here's why, in my opinion. SMS amplifies whatever your retention strategy already is. If your retention strategy is kind of bad, SMS kind of makes it worse faster.

Got it. Because your hypothesis is that's going to make you bad now in 2 channels instead of just one.

Right. And the SMS is more expensive and less forgiving. So bad email programs will lose money slowly. A bad SMS program, well, you lose money fast and it damages the channel as well too.

Can we define, like, what does email is dialed in mean to you?

I think it's about the core flows. Your campaigns are converting, your list is healthy, your deliverability is overall good, and your segmentation is functional. And you basically have a good documented brand voice and content strategy.

Got it. So the bar here is fairly high.

I would say it's fairly high, but it's also one that I would say you shouldn't be expanding channels until you've got the first one down. And if you can't get email working where you have unlimited sends and forgiving margins, I definitely can't see how SMS can get working for you where you have limited sends and Brutal margins ultimately.

Cool. Yeah, I think that earns some partial credit. I think SMS is harder to do well than email. I think brands actually underestimate that.

Yeah, and the brands that win on SMS treat SMS as like a multiplier on their email program and not a replacement.

Yeah, I think like where I need to push back is like the actual timing. I don't think you need to wait until email's perfect. I think you just need it to be functional. I don't think you need to wait for the masterpiece. Just begin when it's actually working.

Okay. That's a good rebuttal to that. Let me reframe it then. Don't launch your SMS while you're still figuring out who your customer is, what your brand voice is. That needs to be locked in before you add this more expensive channel. How's that sound?

I love that. I fully agree with that.

Okay. And one more thing that just came to my mind real quick. Don't have a separate strategy for SMS and email. I think this is crazy when I see brands do this. They should be coordinated. Your SMS strategy should be a layer on your email strategy, not a separate channel run by a separate person with a separate calendar.

Yeah, I think that's a big and legit problem, especially at bigger brands, right? They have separate email and SMS folks and for whatever reason they don't talk.

Yeah. And ultimately all that happens is like 6, they get 6 messages in a week from the same brand because no one coordinated those calendars.

And dude, it is so easy to coordinate calendars, right? You need one owner of the retention voice, SMS and email working together.

Yeah. Okay. Well, last hot take. Hot take number 10. Stop using SMS for things email does better. Brands send these long-form content via SMS. I've seen them before. They send newsletters, brand stories, educational content, multi-paragraph copy. And I think that it's an absolute waste of money because if you think about what SMS is, it's really 160 characters. per send or segment, which is like where if you send more than 160 characters, you start getting charged for multiple SMS. And long content gets split into these multiple messages, which doesn't look very good. And often it gets ignored because no one wants to read a large SMS. And even if you send it as an MMS to fit more content, the customer isn't reading 400 words on their phone while you're interrupting them in the day.

Right. They're reading it the way they read text. They're reading it fast. In the moment and they're trying to make a quick decision.

You nailed it. SMS is a short, decisive, action-oriented message. Sale ends tonight. Restock alert. Your favorite is back. $30 off your next order. Code below. These are all like decision-oriented, non-consideration-oriented messages. If a customer needs to consider before acting, that belongs in the email. If they can decide in like 5 seconds or less, that's an SMS.

Yeah, and I think unfortunately brands that kind of mix this up, they bleed across both channels, right? They overload SMS with content that should be in email and then they underutilize email by treating it like a transactional sole channel.

Yeah, and each channel, look, it has a job. SMS is about immediate decision and email is about consideration, education, depth, learning, and all that fun stuff. And here's how I think about the content. If you wouldn't text it to your friend, don't text it to a customer. It's kind of my mantra.

Right, like would you text your friend a 400-word brand story? You just wouldn't. You know, would you text them like, hey, that thing we were talking about earlier is on sale today? Yes, you would. SMS needs to feel like that latter one.

Yeah, and I'll add one more thing here because it came to my head. SMS that sounds like an email, formal, polished, brandy, that usually kind of feels off. SMS should sound like a friend, short, casual, and direct, and it should feel almost native.

Right. The key here is matching the tone to the channel and match the content to the actual channel.

And just like the hot takes, stop forcing SMS to do email as a job or vice versa.

Dude, that was fun. 10 hot takes on SMS. I think like the main takeaway from all of this is SMS isn't email with a phone number. It's a fundamentally different channel and brands need to treat it that way to actually win. Right? Different content, different cadence, different segmentation, and different success metrics, right? Don't copy and paste your email playbook onto SMS. And if you're a brand sitting on an SMS list that you've barely touched, there's massive money in there. Don't need to use the channel, you know, any different. You just need to use it properly the way it's supposed to be. Or if you're sending SMS 4 times a week and wondering why your opt-out rate is 30%, You now know what to fix. So either way, you have to take action.

Yep. With that being said, that's a wrap for today's pod, SMS Hot Takes. I would call this 10 Things Brands Are Doing Wrong with SMS Right Now. Listen, if this episode hit you or you know another retention marketer that should listen to this, please share it. And it pissed you off, let us know why you think we're wrong and let us know in the comments or these social media channels you follow us on or wherever our newsletter, wherever it might be. Make sure you send let us know and send this over to SMS people you know and ask them if they're doing the opposite of everything we said. I'd love to know what your thoughts around it. With that being said, that's the end of today's pod. We'll see you guys next week.

From the open to the click, they're the masters of the flow. Just watch your list grow and your leads turn to go. Did we retain you so far or do we have to extend it? If you want results, you know you gotta send it. Yeah. You know you gotta send it, yeah. You know you gotta send it, yeah. You know you gotta send it.