In response to content filtering by cell phone carriers, we recommend the following best practices to maximize your text campaign deliverability & ROI.
Standard Best Practices
- Personalize messaging to target audience
- Variety is key
- Avoid use of cannabis-related keywords
- Avoid "spammy" copy
- Include an image
- Don't send duplicate campaigns
State of the Industry & SMS Marketing Regulations
- Since cannabis is still federally illegal, these carriers consider certain content, images, and terms as prohibited traffic.
- The industry is also seeing a lot of high-volume, non-targeted texts (e.g. daily deals to your entire customer database).
- This high-volume texting exacerbates the rate at which cell phone carriers flag cannabis text marketing campaigns as spam.
Why does this matter?
- When cell phone carriers flag your texts as spam, similar content will continue to be blocked from sending by that carrier.
- This can impact your ability to reach customers for a period of days, or permanently impact your brand's sender reputation if changes are not made.
- When you follow the Happy Cabbage approach and best practices, you’ll be better equipped to maximize your campaigns’ deliverability and, in turn, their attributed ROI.
The Happy Cabbage Approach to Text Message Marketing
- Happy Marketers is a tool that allows you to leverage your data to identify and execute the most strategic and high-impact marketing campaigns.
- We designed Happy Marketers to do this because the data continues to prove that targeted marketing is more valuable to your business than non-targeted, spam-like messaging.
Best Practices
1: Minimize each campaign's audience size
For the most effective deliverability rates, Happy Cabbage recommends targeting less than 1,000 recipients per campaign message. You can message an audience larger than 1000 recipients at one time by utilizing Happy Cabbage's Split Campaigns feature to create several unique messages to be sent across your targeted audience.
There are two ways to segment your audiences for each campaign and we recommend using both.
- Refine your audience by using the filters on the Happy Marketers features, Key Opportunities, or Advanced Targeting.
- Split your campaign into multiple, unique messages per 1,000 customers in your target audience size.
Minimizing target audience size not only impacts your campaign's delivery rate, but it also helps maximize the revenue you earn per customer reached. Smaller, personalized campaigns sent using Key Opportunities (machine learning generated segments) tend to generate up to 3x the revenue as massive blasts that target your entire customer database with the same, generic messaging.
2: Personalize messaging to target audience
There are 2 primary methods to personalize text messaging so it’s relevant to the target audience.
Method A: Audience > Message
- Step 1: Identify the audience you want to target (e.g. lost customers).
- Key Opportunities is usually the best place to find a profitable target audience.
- You can also manually select audience attributes using the filters in Advanced Targeting.
- Craft a personalized message according to your target audience’s attributes (e.g. “We miss you…”).
Method B: Message > Audience
- Step 1: Draft the message you want to send (e.g. “STIIIZY sale this week!”)
- Step 2: Identify the appropriate target audience for this message using Advanced Targeting (e.g. customers who have ordered STIIIZY products).
- Step 3: Before sending the campaign, double check that the message is adequately personalized to your target audience, and revise the message from Step 1 as needed.
Examples of Personalized, Targeted Messages to Target Audiences
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Example Target Audience |
Example Targeted Message |
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Customers who haven't ordered in over 90 days |
"B’s on Main misses you! Show this text when you come in, we've got something for ya." |
|
Customers who prefer specific brands |
“We have fresh new STIIIZY flavors on the shelf this week at B’s on Main!” |
|
Customers with $100+ avg order |
"Hey, it's B’s on Main! We've got something special for customers who hit their limit." |
|
Customers who live in a particular region |
“Hey Oakland! Order from B’s on Main by 3pm today and we'll throw in a little something extra!” |
|
Customers who average 1-14 days between orders |
“Thanks for your loyalty to B’s on Main! Come in and show this text, we've got something great for the regulars.” |
3: Variety is Key
Consumers become desensitized to redundant messaging, and phone carriers can use pattern recognition to filter the same or very similar campaigns being sent over time. You'll also see better ROI by changing up your content regularly to keep your marketing fresh and impactful.
Pro Tip: Leverage ChatGPT in Happy Marketers to quickly generate unique messages!
4: Avoid use of cannabis-related keywords
Avoid using the following cannabis-related keywords in your campaigns, as they're more likely to be flagged as spam.
Note that this list is for reference only and is not comprehensive, meaning that additional cannabis-related keywords may be blocked by carriers at any point in time. It's best to use your own judgment - if a word blatantly connotes cannabis (or S.H.A.F.T. content), it's best to avoid it.
In the event a campaign fails due to cannabis keyword inclusion, don't worry- you're not charged for the undelivered texts. If this happens, just email success@happycabbage.io so we can troubleshoot and help you revise your campaign.
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Pro Tip: Add cannabis keywords to your campaign image and make sure they're low contrast so OCR software cannot detect and flag your content! You can test your graphics on sites like this one.
5: Avoid intentional typos
While it may seem tempting to get around cannabis keyword restrictions by substituting special characters for letters (e.g. w@x, ed!bles, conc3ntr@tes, fl0w3r), we find that these "intentional typos" often get flagged as spam and can result in undelivered campaigns.
To work around this, we recommend using brand names instead of any form of cannabis product types. If you're set on advertising specific products, you may consider including images of those items.
6: Avoid heavily promotional and "spammy" copy
Phone carriers regularly flag text campaigns that are overly promotional in context or seem spammy - think:
- BOGO DISCOUNT THIS WEEK ONLY!!!!!! GET A FREE C@RT!!!!!!
- Exclusive savings! Don't miss out on these fantastic offers and discounts just for you.
- $15 off 12/31 only Code JUST4U
- FREE .5G PR3R0LL on orders over $50!! ORDER NOW! LIMITED TIME!
Notice any patterns? The biggest "spammy" qualities that seem to get flagged are:
- over-capitalizing- whether all-caps or every word (or every other word) capitalized
- excessive numeric and special characters in close proximity
- this includes product sizing (ex. 3.5g, 1oz, 10mg)
- promotional language, such as: BOGO, offers, deals, discounts, etc.
- dollar amounts and "free"
To maximize delivery rates, avoid these heavily promotional and "spammy" qualities in your campaigns. Strive to use conversational language in your message body, like you're talking to your customer in-person!
Pro Tip: When including a URL in your campaign, avoid using link shorteners (tinyurl, bitly, shorturl, etc) as these are frequently blocked by phone carriers as phishing and/or spam. Use a clean, branded URL, like myshop.com.
Reach out to your CSM or success@happycabbage.io for more info on including URLs in your campaigns, and for workarounds if your website URL includes blocked words.
7: Include an image
Including an image in your campaigns can help prevent carriers from blocking your campaigns quickly as MMS traffic is more difficult to fully parse than an SMS message.
When using an image, ensure they are under 500KB and in JPEG, JPG, or PNG format.
You can also send GIFs in both text and email campaigns!
Make sure any cannabis keywords you use are low contrast (see here!) so they cannot be flagged by phone carriers scanning the image.
8: Don't send duplicate campaigns
The same exact message sent to one large audience (2500+) or several smaller audiences at the same time is viewed as spam by phone carriers more frequently than not.
Additionally, regularly sending the same or a very similar message to your subscribers can be flagged as spam over time. Remember, variety is key!
Send uniquely worded messages to audiences of 1000 or fewer contacts at a time for most effective message delivery! You can use auto-generate and split campaigns to efficiently accomplish this at scale!