Considering an Auto SMS Sender? Here’s What to Know

Updated February 3rd, 2023

It seems like everywhere you turn, people are talking about marketing automation. Even though it’s easy to tune out common buzzwords, automation is something you need to pay attention to — especially when it comes to SMS.

Tools like an auto SMS sender can upgrade your messaging strategy and increase your revenue. Looking for the best auto SMS software? Here’s how to weed out the good from the bad.

Top considerations for an auto SMS sender

Marketing statistics show that 23% of companies that use marketing automation are automating content delivery. We expect this number to continue rising in the coming years. There are a lot of SMS marketing softwares out there that make major promises when it comes to automating text messages, but not everyone can deliver the results.

Before you waste your money or sign up for lengthy contracts that stall your progress, make sure any automatic SMS sender you use has these features. 

1. Drag and drop interface

The entire reason you’re looking to automate your conversational marketing strategy is to save time — so why would you want to use a solution that requires coding or is confusing to navigate? We’re constantly hearing from clients that they appreciate how easy it is to get started using our platform — which is why we created an automated texting solution that requires absolutely no coding. You can create texting sequences that can seamlessly recover abandoned carts, streamline communication and provide superior customer service — all by simply dragging and dropping. 

If you’re considering an auto SMS sender that doesn’t have a drag-and-drop interface, be sure to spend time demoing the product so you know just how complicated it will be to alter the texting sequence. We find that the best automatic text messaging strategy involves incorporating data to make constant improvements — whether that be to the flow of the journey or the wording of your messages.

If the process to make changes is complicated, chances are you could break the entire journey by making small changes. Or, the amount of time it takes to update your automatic texting journey could discourage you from regularly optimizing it. If you have a drag-and-drop interface, this isn’t a problem, but if not, don’t settle for a salesperson merely showing you how it works. Ask for a demo period of the software so you can get to know it yourself. 

Prioritize employee productivity by finding a solution that makes it easy to get the work done — not hard.

2. Ability to hyper-segment

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they move to an auto SMS sender is sending out text messages that are too generic. This happens when you don’t segment your text list accurately enough. We like to use the term “segment of one” at SlickText, which emphasizes how niche we believe segmentation can get. 

One of our best examples of niche segmentation is our client Onyx & Oak, an online retailer. They used Workflows to send automatic SMS messages asking their customers for their sizing information. Using this data, they are able to send targeted broadcast messages to customers when they have an overstock of items in their particular size. Texting in this way helped them increase their monthly sales by 45%. That’s an automated texting strategy that works! 

But, Onyx & Oak wouldn’t have been able to do this without the tools that allow for easy segmentation and text promotions. First, it needs to be simple to collect data. If your team is focused on manually collating first-party data that they gathered over text message, this strategy will quickly become too arduous to maximize. 

An auto SMS sender should make it simple to automate data collection, not just send text messages. That made a major difference for Onyx & Oak when they switched to using our Workflows.

“Collecting information is now totally automated without someone from our team having to be managing that and inputting that data. We get the information we need and save time while doing it,” said co-founder Clint Davenport.

Because Workflows can intelligently detect customer sentiment, Onyx & Oak used it to ask follow-up questions to obtain more information on consumer preferences, rather than manually asking and inputting data.

“Customers know it’s a computer talking to them, but it’s conversational,” said Davenport. “We’re able to wait for their response and if they don’t give the response we’re expecting it’s not like the game is over. We’ve built in ways to keep the conversation going.” 

Not only do you need the first-party data, but your auto SMS sender should be able to do the work for you when it comes to sending messages to the correct segments. There should be no manual entry involved in sorting your contact list — that’s the work for your auto SMS sender. If you’re in the process of shopping around for an auto SMS sender, this is an important feature to ask about. 

When Onyx & Oak automated their text journeys using Workflows they segmented by:

• Time zone: They wanted each customer to receive messages at the appropriate local time instead of choosing a blanket messaging time to cover all time zones. 
• Personalized preferences: Using first-party data they were able to automatically send notifications when they were overstocked on a certain size, prompting more sales. 

3. Integration with apps you already use 

You most likely already have many apps and different software that you use over the course of your day-to-day business. In order to maximize the potential of sending automatic SMS messages, you’ll want the platform you choose to integrate directly with the processes you already have in place. 

For example, do you use Slack to communicate with your sales team? Find an auto SMS sender that integrates with Slack so that you can seamlessly send contacts to the appropriate sales representative for more in-depth follow-up or conversation. Do you use Facebook to remarket to your customers? Find a solution where you can change your Facebook audiences automatically based on SMS behavior such as opens or click-throughs.  

Bottom line

Choosing an auto SMS sender can be overwhelming. There are a lot of companies that claim to have certain capabilities they don’t necessarily have. Others will gloss over the features that are truly important — like a drag-and-drop interface or the ability to see stats in real-time and constantly optimize. As you compare different SMS platforms, use this list to help you make an informed decision. 

Automate Your Texts with SlickText

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