If you want to run a successful SMS text marketing campaign, SMS short codes are one of the first things you need to hear about. While texts offer a great way to continue engagement from customers and get direct results through surveys, short codes weaponize the viral flow of information to spread your marketing campaign further.
The accessibility of short codes creates an environment where the most promising customers will reach out directly to you.
What Makes Short Codes Effective
The fundamentals of short codes are simple. When you sign up for a short code, you’re given a five-digit number and can come up with your own keyword. When a customer sends a text message containing that keyword to the five-digit number, they’ll receive an automated response. The amount of flexibility here is very broad and allows you to initiate any number of responses.
Finding a good way to promote your short code and keyword is obviously going to be necessary to run an effective campaign, but you also need to find promotions that are going to really draw the attention of the audience. The promise of free delivery is going to offer a far more promising pull for prospective customers than a simple link to a menu, but both can provide effective and convenient means for connecting with customers. Even if you have to offer the customer a discount to get them in the door, those short codes then expand upon your phone list for other SMS messages.
Vanity vs. Generic Short Codes
Generic short codes offer a simple way for customers to find your business, but they also have the distinct disadvantage of being randomized. While you get to pick the keyword associated with your short code, you don’t have any control over what five-digit combination your customers will be texting.
Vanity short codes resolve that problem at an added cost. Since you can pick the exact number you want, you can create a number combination that spells out a common word associated with your business or simply pick a combination of numbers that’s easier to remember.
Short Codes vs. Long Codes
In addition to short codes, there’s also something called long codes. Long codes consist of ten digits, just like a traditional phone number with an area code. There’s an obvious disadvantage here: that the people you’re trying to reach will have more difficulty remembering a long code than a short one.
It’s a very real issue, but long codes have advantages as well. Long codes can be used to both make calls and send messages, but the amount of messages they can spend in a given period of time is much smaller than with short codes. But long codes can serve as a great hub for your business, especially if you’re dealing with a smaller list of phone numbers for your marketing messaging.
Acquiring Short Codes
Short codes aren’t exactly expensive, but they cost enough that you should really think through what you want before you make an investment. A vanity short code will cost you about $1000 for a month, while a generic short code will half that cost.
And while you can file for your code directly with the U.S. Short Code Administration, there are also plenty of third party services that can handle the transaction with you. Considering that the paperwork and requirements can be a bit complicated – and that most of these third party services offer a whole array of other marketing-based services – it can make a lot of sense to order your text messaging codes through a platform like TextSanity.