SMS for Lead Generation: A Quick Guide to Running Your First Text Campaign

There's a ton of benefits to running a lead generation campaign via SMS. Not only does it tend to be more cost-effective than other forms of outreach such as paid advertising, SMS messages are both immediate and engaging, with high open rates and response rates. Case in point, according to the 2024 Consumer Texting Behavior Report, SMS open rates now average around 98%.

SMS isn't a magic bullet, obviously. An effective SMS campaign requires careful planning and consideration. You'll need to define everything from your core goals to what kind of content you'll send and how you'll send it. In this post, we'll go over everything you need to know, then share a few industry-specific example templates. 

How to Run a Successful SMS Lead Generation Campaign

Initial Planning

Defining Your Objective

Generally speaking, an SMS campaign is best-suited to one of the following objectives: 

• Promoting a specific product, service, or event. 
• Driving website traffic. 
• Raising brand awareness. 
• Producing direct leads to generate sales. 

Presumably, we'll want to go with option four. That's just the first step, though. We also need to set a specific target for the campaign. 

This target could be anything from a specific number of qualified leads to a percentage increase in sales or revenue. Since every industry — and every campaign — is a little different, you'll need to work with your colleagues to identify a reasonable goal. 

Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

KPIs are how you'll measure progress toward each milestone in your campaign and determine its overall success or failure. They can also help you determine if something's going wrong — for instance, messages failing to deliver properly to a specific carrier. While the importance of each metric depends on what you're trying to accomplish, you'll probably find the following KPIs relevant: 

• Delivery Rate. The percentage of messages that reached their intended recipients. 

• Clickthrough Rate (CTR). In this case, CTR refers to the number of recipients who take a qualifying action such as registering for an upcoming webinar or clicking a link to a service page — they're indicating that they are interested in your business's services and have the potential to become paying customers.  

• Opt-Out Rate. How many people unsubscribed from your SMS list in a given period of time. 

• Conversion Rate. The number of recipients who converted from leads to customers after the campaign's conclusion. 

Start Building Your List

Before you can start running a lead generation campaign, you'll need to start building a messaging list. There's a couple of different ways you can do this, but generally you'll want to promote your number across every channel where you've got a presence. Emphasize the benefits of becoming a subscriber, which could include special discounts, offers, and access to exclusive information. 

You'll also want to implement a double opt-in process. This basically just means that customers who register for your SMS list — either by texting you, accessing a shortcode, scanning a QR code or filling out a form — will be asked to confirm that they want to subscribe. Opting out should be as simple as typing a word like "STOP" in response to a text. 

Segment Your List

Once you've started collecting numbers for your SMS list, your next step is to segment it. 

What this involves will vary quite a bit based on industry. If you're an insurance provider, for instance, you might segment your list based on demographics like age and health. A realtor, on the other hand, could segment based on region. 

Other possible segments include, but aren't limited to:

• Previous behavior, such as engaging with a paid ad or attending an event. 
• Interests.
• Income. 

Study up on Regulations

We'd also strongly recommend familiarizing yourself with the rules and regulations surrounding promotional SMS messages. If you're based in the United States, that'll be the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). While the TCPA establishes broad guidelines for all promotional communication, it does include specific guidelines for SMS campaigns. 

You should also familiarize yourself with the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association's Messaging Guidelines, a set of principles and best practices intended to facilitate, among other things, better SMS communication. Although technically voluntary, the CTIA's guidelines are closely adhered to by many wireless carriers. If you fail to follow them, carriers may refuse to work with you. 

In broad strokes, complying with both the TCPA and CTIA Messaging Guidelines, you should:

• Only text with prior express written consent from the recipient. 
• Only text between 8 AM and 8 PM in the recipient's time zone. 
• Provide your name, the name of your company, your business name, estimated text frequency, opt-out instructions, and help instructions in your confirmation text. 
• Make sure your terms and conditions are easily accessible from multiple locations, including your website, your physical office, and opt-in pages. 
• Notify subscribers whenever you change your terms and conditions. 
• Include, at the minimum, a business or program name with each promotional text. 

Choosing a Campaign Type

Once you've gotten the baseline planning out of the way, your next step is to choose a format for your text campaign. Generally, you have three options: standard text blasts, two-way texting, and AI automated texting. 

Why you shouldn't use group texting?

Although group text messaging is technically an option, there are a few very good reasons to avoid using it. First, users cannot opt-out of group texts, and only a limited number of people can be added to each group. Everyone in a group can also read all messages sent within that group, meaning privacy may be an issue. 

Lastly, group texts generally aren't compliant with the rules and regulations around business communication

Text Blast

Text blasts, also known as mass texts, represent the de-facto channel for SMS business communication, at least historically. Usually sent through a TCPA-compliant specialized service or software tool, a blast goes out to all subscribers on a particular list or within a particular segment. Originally, there wasn't really any way to personalize these blasts — they were not only one-way, but every recipient also got the same message. 

With modern solutions, mass texts can be more directly targeted by segment and also personalized through the use of specialized tags inserted within the message's body.

Another characteristic of one-way texts is that recipients aren't able to reply directly to them. They may be able to unsubscribe and access a link included within the message, but that's about it. This makes the format a good choice for informational messaging, which includes, but is not limited to: 

• The launch of a new product or service. 
• Reminders about an upcoming event. 
• A new promotion, sale, or special offer. 
• Reminders about service changes. 

Within the context of lead generation, one-way texts can also be used for: 

• Appointment and scheduling confirmations. 
• Re-engagement. 
• Abandoned cart reminders. 

Two-Texting

Two-texting, or two-way SMS messaging, is basically the next evolution of one-way mass texts. You're still able to send out personalized, segmented text messages en-masse, but recipients can now reply directly to those messages. This allows salespeople, account managers, and customer support personnel to communicate with recipients in real-time. More importantly, it allows recipients to ask questions about your business's products and services. 

Generally, how a two-way text solution works is that when a user replies to a message, the conversation is forwarded to a specialized portal which the business can then use to reply. The lead, meanwhile, is none the wiser — they can simply continue sending text messages as they were before. Most two-way texting solutions are also able to send messages across multiple platforms, including email, select messaging apps, and SMS.  

The main drawback of two-way texting comes when you try to apply it at scale without automation. Because you have to respond to every text manually, prospects and leads can end up facing considerable wait times. Since speed to lead is such an important metric, this isn't exactly ideal, and could potentially even cost you business. 

Fortunately, there's a solution: Artificial intelligence. 

AI Automation

Over the past few years, we've seen AI technology evolve in leaps and bounds — and it continues to do so. Modern conversational AI is now sophisticated enough to handle the majority of baseline sales and marketing tasks, up to and including asking basic qualifying questions to new leads and following up with existing leads. And according to Accenture, companies that apply it to customer-related initiatives could potentially achieve revenue up to 25% higher than those that don't after a 5-year period. 

There are a few reasons for this. 

First, AI automation frees up agents to focus on your highest-priority leads. Instead of having to sort through a mountain of responses and waste valuable time on qualification and follow-up, they can immediately begin cultivating a relationship with the leads who are likely to become customers. The technology also supports a better buyer and customer experience, as your business is able to respond to queries and concerns on a 24/7 basis with little to no lag. 

Since it can scale more or less infinitely, AI also helps you target and qualify more leads than if you were managing your campaign manually.  And again, instead of being overwhelmed by messages, your sales and customer success teams can focus on nurturing and connecting with leads that are likely to convert. 

Lastly, conversational AI can engage with leads in a far more human way than a traditional mass text, even a two-way one. By using natural language processing, the technology's able to mimic how people communicate in real life. This also improves your chances of reviving expired leads and cold prospects, turning them into new revenue opportunities. 

Crafting your messaging

Even if you're using AI to automate the bulk of your SMS campaign, you'll still need to craft the initial messaging and templates. As you do, there are a few things you'll want to keep in mind. 

First, personalize. Include each recipient's name and, where relevant, any information about how they've connected with your business in the past. Consider what each recipient might be interested in. This applies both to initial outreach as well as follow-up messaging.

For cold leads, you might focus on value-driven content or personalized offers. Warm leads, on the other hand, will likely care more about timeliness and information about your product or service. 

You'll also want to include a clear call to action. Before you craft each template, ask yourself: What do you want the recipient to do? Do you want them to engage and learn more about your services, or do you want them to provide you with information about themselves? 

Shape your call to action around that objective. You can check out our example templates a bit further down for an idea of what that looks like. 

Finally, think about your brand. You want your campaign to be authentic — that's not really possible if you're using generic boilerplate copy. Whether you use one of the templates included in this blog post or write your own from scratch, make sure to put your own unique spin on it and inject it with a bit of personality. 

Running the Campaign

We're on the home stretch. It's time to talk about what to do during your lead generation campaign, and then what comes after. Before we dive in, let's go over a few higher-level strategies you might want to consider applying. 

• Don't simply expect leads to convert for nothing. Consider offering coupons or discounts as part of your campaign. This can potentially incentivize people who are on the fence about your business to engage. 
• Encourage leads to spread the word to their friends and colleagues through a referral program. Basically, this provides a customer with a reward such as a discount if someone they refer ends up converting. 
• Include drip messages as part of your strategy. Essentially, this means that any leads who don't respond to will receive follow-up texts after a set period of time.  
• Use AI automation to support more complex conversations, provide leads with more details on your company, and prime qualified leads to speak to human agents. 

Optimizing Timing and Frequency

As long as you aren't violating the TCPA or the CTIA Messaging Guidelines, there's no right answer to when or how often you should send out texts. It largely depends on your business. There are, however, a few questions you can ask to help you figure it out. 

First, think about who you're texting. When are they likely to be checking their phones? Professionals who work a standard 9-5 job, for instance, probably aren't going to appreciate receiving texts at 10 AM, but they might be amenable to hearing from you on their lunch break or during their commute home. 

Depending on how much information you have about your target audience, you could even consider seeing if there's any market research to help guide your decision. Alternatively, if you're reaching out to a more general audience, research collected by sinch found that there are three times of day where SMS blasts appear to have the highest response rate: 

• 12:00 PM
• 2:00 PM
• 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

As for what days you should send out SMS blasts, the research found that Thursday, Friday, and Saturday tend to be the best days, and Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday are the worst. Tuesday is directly in the middle. Again, though, this isn't gospel. Depending on the habits of your target audience, these numbers might even be irrelevant. 

As for frequency, PostScript recommends sending no more than five messages per month. This will let you keep prospects engaged and nurture relationships with them without overwhelming or annoying them. 

Research aside, the best way to find the right timing and frequency is through trial and error. You can experiment with both the timing and content of your messages through A/B testing. In addition to testing different timing and frequencies, you can also gauge the impact of different messaging, incentives, link placement, and content. 

Measuring Performance

Earlier, we mentioned the importance of identifying your KPIs. Here's where they really come into play. Over the course of your SMS campaign, you'll want to pay close attention to your key metrics.

In addition to helping you determine the results of any A/B testing initiatives, you can also measure how effectively your campaign fulfilled its initial objectives — and if it failed to meet those objectives, potentially identify the reason.  

Refinement

The most important thing to remember about marketing is that no campaign or strategy is ever truly perfect. There's always something that you could do better or some new opportunity for you to leverage. With that in mind, you should seek to continually refine and improve your SMS campaign both during its run and after its conclusion. 

In addition to examining campaign analytics, we'd recommend surveying any leads who converted as a result of your efforts. They'll likely be able to tell you why they chose to work with you while also identifying weaknesses or blind spots you may not have noticed.

How Different Industries Can Use AI SMS for Lead Generation

Now that we've finished going over the basics of SMS campaigns, we'll wrap things up with a few examples to showcase how different industries might use SMS messaging combined with AI automation to generate and qualify leads. Note that the templates for appointments, calls, and confirmations 

General

The templates here are broadly applicable to most industries, as they're primarily focused on scheduling, nurturing leads, and addressing uncertainty, and generally responding to basic queries.

Find more quick response templates.

Higher Education

Post-secondary institutions such as universities will usually use SMS to connect with prospective students who have expressed an interest in one of their programs, such as by registering or filling out a form on the school's website. They may also use SMS to reach out to students who put their education on hold for one reason or another. Finally, they might remind prospective students about events such as tours or mixers. 

Students

Upcoming Event

Check out some more event reminder SMS templates.

Insurance

Lead generation for insurance companies generally focuses on providing leads with information about quotes and determining if they're qualified before directing them to an agent or sales representative. 

Insurance Quote

Qualification

Explore more SMS templates for insurance companies. 

Financial Services

Financial organizations might use AI SMS to either qualify prospective leads or, as with other industries, as an auto-response to inquiries about their products and services. Because they often serve a relatively diverse customer base, they must also identify customer segments. 

Outreach

Qualification

Real Estate and Home Services

Automated outreach within the real estate and home services sector can essentially streamline everything from the point of first contact through to the appointment. While the specifics vary a little depending on the type of service — a realtor is going to have a different approach from a landscaper — the outreach and qualification process generally tends to follow the same flow. 

Explore a few more lead generation text message templates

Power Up Your SMS Campaigns with AI Texting

Lead generation and qualification are two of the most important stages marketing your business. You need to make sure you've got the tools in place to get them both right. That means responding to and qualifying leads quickly, efficiently, and automatically. 

Enter Meera.ai. 

An intelligent AI texting platform, Meera enhances your SMS marketing efforts by automatically engaging with, replying to, and qualifying leads for your business. Built from our experience managing thousands of successful SMS campaigns, it ensures that your agents not only have more time to dedicate to quality leads, but also that they know who those leads are. 

Talk to an AI expert at Meera today to get started.