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SMS Keyword Examples for Marketing, Surveys, and More

SMS Keyword Examples for Marketing, Surveys, and More

 

Keywords are a vital component of any SMS marketing campaign. For instance, text to join allows your customers to automatically connect with your SMS campaigns by texting you a keyword. With text to join, you can also automatically segment your subscribers based on the keyword they use. With NorthText, an SMS keyword can be basically anything you want, so you have the freedom to get creative and customize your keywords to fit your brand and marketing needs.

Choosing the right SMS keywords will make your campaign more memorable and increase customer engagement. However, choosing the wrong keyword could stop your SMS campaign before it even gets started. These best practices and SMS keyword examples will help you determine the best keywords for your text message marketing, surveys, and more.

SMS Keyword Best Practices

Before you start brainstorming keywords, you should have a clear idea of how you’re planning to use your text marketing campaign.

Your keyword should be directly relevant to your SMS campaign. Customers should be able to logically tie your keyword to the service they’re subscribing to so they’ll remember it more easily. Avoid using jargon or buzzwords unless you only want to market to people within your specific industry or niche.

You should also keep your keywords as short and simple as possible. Try to use single words with easy spellings. If your keywords are too long or complicated, many people won’t bother trying to remember them. If there are multiple spellings of a word, or you have any spaces, hyphens, or special characters, there’s also the risk that your customers will text in the wrong keyword and not get subscribed to your campaign.

To succeed with your SMS keyword campaigns, you should aim for keywords that are memorable but unique. You want your keywords to make an impact on your customers and stick with them so they can’t help but take their phones out and subscribe to your SMS marketing.

SMS Keyword Examples

Your SMS keywords need to be directly relevant to the benefit, service, or product you’re offering to subscribers, so there is no “one size fits all.” These SMS keyword examples should be a jumping-off point for you to come up with something unique for your organization.

Marketing

If you’re using text to join to get customers to opt in to receiving SMS communications from you, join or subscribe are two easy keywords. These are better options than something like “sign up” or “opt in,” which have alternative spellings or hyphenations. Remember to also provide a keyword for users to opt out of your SMS campaigns—something like stop or unsubscribe.

Discount or sale are great one-word options for customers subscribing to receive discount codes and sales alerts via SMS. News or press could be used for news and press releases about your organization, or for you to provide your customers with industry news that’s related to their interests. 

You can also use a keyword that’s directly related to your business. For instance, a nursery could use the keyword plant or flower for customers to subscribe to gardening tips via SMS.

Human Resources/Recruiting

Your human resources department or staffing agency can use SMS keywords to streamline the recruitment process. For example, you can create keywords for specific positions you’re trying to fill so interested applicants can get directly connected with the recruiter for that position to receive more information. This wouldn’t work for every field and department, but some good ones are accounting, reception, facilities, or driver.

Surveys

Using SMS surveys is a great tool for getting instant, honest feedback from your customers. One popular tactic for driving this kind of engagement is to offer your customers a mobile discount code for answering a short survey. Some good, easy keywords to use for this include survey, feedback, or reward.

Donations

With services like Text2Donate, your supporters can send you secure payments via SMS. Keywords like donate or support are popular with political campaigns, faith groups, nonprofits, animal rescues, and other organizations that rely on donations. Sponsor is great for 5k runs, wildlife conservation fundraisers, and other charity events.

Internal Communications

Many large organizations use SMS to communicate with their employees, and keywords are a convenient way for your staff to opt-in to receiving specific messages that are relevant to their needs and interests. For example, your employees can subscribe to receive texts about schedule changes, weather-related closures, or other important announcements. Some SMS keyword examples for internal communication include weather, closings, announcements, or schedule.

As you can see, SMS keywords don’t have to be complicated—in fact, sometimes the simplest choice is best. Always remember that the goal is to make the subscription process as painless as possible for your customers, so your SMS keyword needs to be short and memorable.

Perfecting Your SMS Keyword Campaigns

After choosing your SMS keywords, there are a few additional steps to take to ensure the success of your campaign. Though finding the right keyword is half the battle, you still need to make sure your SMS delivery platform or service is configured correctly to manage your subscriber lists and autorespond to messages, and you need a strategy for getting your keywords out to your customers.

SMS Keyword Autoresponses

Before you launch your SMS keyword campaign, you should set up an autoresponse. The purpose of a keyword autoresponse is to automatically confirm that a user has successfully opted in to receive text messages from you and to provide information about how they can opt out in the future. The autoresponse ensures you’re following the legal requirements for opting customers into receiving SMS messages from you without the pressure of an individual text for each customer.

Marketing Your SMS Keyword Campaign

Once you’ve created your SMS keywords and crafted an autoresponse, you need to get your keywords out to your audience and entice them to subscribe. You should advertise your keywords—along with the phone numbers to text them to—as much as possible so your customer base is aware of them and of the benefits they’ll receive from subscribing with your keywords. Some potential ways to market your keywords include:

  • Social media
  • Window stickers/decals
  • Business cards
  • Receipts
  • Napkins and coasters
  • Email signatures

You should be enticing your customers to use your keywords by providing a benefit to them. Customers are much more likely to subscribe to receive discount codes or sales promotions than to receive advertisements via SMS. Your SMS keywords should provide some sort of value to your customers, and that value should be obvious in your marketing of the keywords.

Finding an SMS Keyword Marketing Platform

Launching an SMS keyword campaign is easy with the right text message marketing platform. Your SMS provider should give you all the tools you need to create custom keywords, automatically segment your subscribers, and craft personalized autoresponses. To really take your campaign to the next level, you’ll also want a platform with additional features like survey creation and reporting, Text2Donate, and mobile landing pages.

NorthText provides an innovative SMS marketing and delivery platform with all the tools you need to put these SMS keyword examples to use in your next campaign. NorthText also offers white-glove assistance setting up your account and live, U.S.-based support for all your SMS marketing questions. Call or text us anytime at (312) 869-9070, or contact us online to learn more.

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Unlimited Texts
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240 Characters
240 Characters
MMS capability
MMS capability
Unlimited keywords
Unlimited keywords
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Create surveys
Auto responders
Auto responders
Text-2-win
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Message dashboard
Message dashboard
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API integration

Our innovative SMS marketing services will help your company get ahead—and stay ahead—of the curve by giving you a direct, reliable line of communication with your customers and endless opportunities to grow your subscriber list. Ready to get started? We can get you up and running in a matter of minutes.

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