The guide to SMS marketing for small businesses

Most consumers stop and take notice of the marketing in their texts since they willingly signed up for these messages and usually look forward to seeing them. In fact, Klaviyo’s SMS marketing research with Recharge found that 86% of consumers made 2+ purchases in the past year from SMS messages, and 30% made 4+ purchases. 

Part of the reason SMS marketing is such an effective conversion channel is that modern consumers are more comfortable buying products on mobile. In fact, it’s actually the most popular channel for retail purchases, according to Klaviyo’s future of consumer marketing report.

If small businesses want to stay ahead of the curve, they have to adapt to these ever-evolving consumer preferences. “SMS is how people want to be communicated with these days,” says Brett Vincke, email marketing manager at handcrafted watch brand Shinola.

SMS marketing tells consumers what they want and need to know in a snap. It also offers discounts, exclusive trials, and more, and it can meet consumers’ lofty personalisation expectations.

All of that helps explain why SMS is so good at speeding up your customers’ time to purchase. According to Klaviyo’s SMS marketing research with Recharge, 65% of people who made an SMS purchase in the last year ended up buying an item earlier than they planned to because of a promotional text message.

Along with email, SMS is a top channel for getting the best bang for your buck. Take it from brands like Frances Valentine, a small business that sells vintage-inspired women’s apparel and accessories. They saw a 21.8x ROI from Klaviyo SMS in their first 8 weeks of sending.

To start things off, Frances Valentine added SMS to only their highest-intent automations: abandoned check-out and back-in-stock. Revenue from these flows then jumped 32% YoY.

Create SMS sign-up forms that pop up on your website after users meaningfully engage with your website, scroll through to a certain depth, or show exit intent. You can also consider embedding your SMS sign-up forms in the footer of your website, or using multi-step forms that first ask for someone’s email address, then ask for their phone number on the second screen. 

Of course, in order to get someone to share their phone number with you, you have to make it worth their while. Here are the top 3 reasons people sign up for SMS marketing, according to our SMS marketing research with Recharge:

• It’s a brand they love: 39%

• They’re about to make a purchase and want a discount: 38%

• They want to get messages about their order status: 38%

And here’s what increases the likelihood of subscribing to SMS, according to the same research:

• Being offered a discount: 59%

• Being able to ask questions and receive fast responses via text message (conversational SMS): 39%

• Being offered a unique product or experience: 38%

To get people to sign up for SMS through VIP early access incentives, consider using it as a VIP channel, where you give your biggest spenders and most frequent buyers the ability to receive early access to sales, new products, or events through SMS. This can make them feel special, like they’re exclusive insiders of your brand. 

Your existing customer base and email subscribers are great candidates to convert into SMS subscribers. They’ve either purchased your products or are interested in purchasing your products, so they’re more likely to be receptive to joining your SMS list.

Send email campaigns that invite them to sign up for SMS. You can use exclusive discounts or VIP early-access incentives as the carrot to opt in. You can also send them post-purchase emails that offer transactional SMS communications like order confirmations and shipping updates, which can familiarise them with SMS and lead to future SMS opt-ins for your exclusive discounts and VIP early access incentives.

If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you can drive SMS marketing sign-ups IRL just as you do on your website. Consider placing QR codes that offer an exclusive store-wide discount or deal on highly visible real estate like counter displays, check-out counters, and doors.

On your receipts and packaging, you can also include labels that offer an exclusive discount or deal if your customers text your short code. Additionally, consider training your staff to ask your customers if they’d like to receive SMS updates during check-out. 

Other ways to grow your SMS list include promoting your SMS program on social with SMS subscribe links and tap-to-text stickers, and using two-way SMS as an automated customer support channel that can send company and product FAQs, product recommendations, and gather customer preferences.

Automated flows are triggered by customer actions. You set them up using logic in your SMS marketing platform. Here are a few must-have SMS automations for small businesses:

An SMS welcome series is the first message sent to a subscriber after they opt in for SMS marketing. To make the best first impression possible, thank them for signing up, send them their promised offer, and set expectations for your future messages.

An abandoned cart flow is an automated message that’s triggered when an online shopper adds an item to their cart, but doesn’t complete the purchase. Here are a few abandoned cart SMS best practices:

• Figure out the right cadence. Is 30 minutes the ideal timeframe to send your first abandoned cart message? 2 hours, followed by another message 24 hours later? Experiment to find out what works best for your brand.

• Determine the number and type of messages. Abandoned cart flows can include 1–3 messages and a combination of texts and emails.

• Consider including an incentive. According to our future of consumer marketing report, the primary reason consumers abandon their cart is because they found a better price elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean you have to offer every cart abandoner a discount. Consider including an offer only on your third message, for example, or only for people who’ve abandoned high-value carts. 

• Personalise. Use the recipient’s name and reference the product they left behind. Test whether including an image of the product helps boost conversions.

According to Klaviyo’s SMS marketing research with Recharge, transactional SMS messages like shipping and delivery confirmations are the type of texts consumers want to receive most often from brands.

Proactive text messages can reduce customer inquiries about package status, missed deliveries, package theft, and more. Transactional SMS messages also get your customers used to hearing from you through text and, more importantly, wanting to hear from you through text. In a nutshell, transactional SMS messages can drastically enhance your post-purchase experience.

Along with the aforementioned VIP programs that you can roll out through SMS marketing, you can use SMS for loyalty program updates. Consider setting up automations that keep your SMS subscribers updated on their points balance and how close they are to receiving a loyalty-based offer, which can help drive sales. Once they reach the required threshold, you can send them their offer.

You can also automate referral offers through SMS by asking for friend-to-friend referrals and giving both parties a discount, connecting with influencers who can share a referral link, or setting up an affiliate program with superfans who frequently share about your brand.

Tata Harper sends 6 flows via email or SMS, often based on the channel subscribers engage with most. In 2023, they launched 7 integration-triggered flows, like their loyalty-triggered referral reward flow—and in Q1 2024, their total revenue from flows grew 139% YoY.

In our future of consumer marketing report, we discovered that customer reviews and feedback are the most influential factor when someone is making an initial purchase with a brand. With this in mind, consider using SMS to ask your customers to leave reviews or submit surveys about your products.

SMS re-engagement flows can help you win back inactive customers. First, identify your unengaged segments, like those who haven’t made a purchase in 90 days, or subscribers who have engaged with marketing materials but haven’t shopped with you. Then, experiment with messaging to re-engage and keep your brand top of mind, or adjust your marketing to send messages less frequently to these groups.

According to our future of consumer marketing report, when consumers have a negative experience with a brand, 1 in 4 would give that brand a second chance if they received a great follow-up or customer service experience. Set up flows that target folks who have shared a negative experience and offer discounts, ask for feedback, or connect them with your customer service team for 1:1 support.

SMS marketing campaigns are one-off messages based on specific events or marketing goals. Here are a few SMS campaign ideas for small businesses:

Let’s face it—most people are on their phones almost constantly. SMS lends itself very well to urgency-based offers and deals. Consider sending texts that call out limited-time offers like flash sales or low-inventory warnings to specific segments in your audience.

SMS campaigns are a great way to promote a new product drop among a group of highly engaged subscribers. Send out early access to your SMS list to generate buzz (and sales), and use a cohesive promotion strategy with social, email, and SMS to get your audience talking about the launch (more on this later).

Another SMS campaign that your subscribers might be happy to see is one that promotes in-person or virtual events. Consider sending reminders and notifications for both through text to audiences in certain geographies, especially right before the event or when it’s taking place.

Honing a unique, human voice is key to writing engaging SMS messages. You don’t have to go full Gen Z with it (unless that’s your audience), but try to add your own flair to your texts while staying true to your brand. 

That said, you do want to keep your SMS messages concise. People don’t like reading novels masquerading as texts from their friends, let alone brands. There are also character counts for each type of text you can send. For traditional SMS, the character limit is 160 characters. For Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS), it’s 1,600 characters. And for Rich Communication Services (RCS), it’s 10,000 characters.

To make sure your SMS messages do their job and compel your subscribers to take action, consider using a single CTA that really leans into your voice. And make sure it takes your subscribers to the destination that has the highest chance of converting. 

Per our future of consumer marketing report, 74% of consumers expect more personalised experiences from brands in 2025. Make sure to use the basics, like your subscriber’s first name, and more detailed personalisations like the most recent product they ordered or their style and colour preferences in each text you send them.

Importantly, segment your SMS list based on behavioural data, like engagement with SMS, customer lifetime value, and location. You can also segment by purchase history and website activity to send your subscribers tailored product recommendations.

You can write the best SMS messages in small business marketing history, but if you don’t send them at the right time or you send them too often, they won’t convert your subscribers nearly as well as they could. 

Here’s what Klaviyo’s SMS marketing research with Recharge found as the optimal send times and frequency for your SMS marketing efforts.

Consumers want to receive brand texts in the: 

• Evening: 45%

• Afternoon: 25%

• Midday: 13%

• Morning: 9%

• Late night hours: 8%

Consumers want to receive brand texts:

• A few times a week: 32%

• Once a week: 27%

• A few times a month: 16%

• Once a day: 13%

Coordinating your email and SMS efforts allows you to build more personalised customer journeys that boost conversion rates and dampen list fatigue.

SMS and email are two entirely different channels when it comes to messaging, tone, and content, but they should still both feel like your brand. Texts, for example, are quick, skimmable, and get straight to the point. They don’t have the luxury of longer character counts, like email, so they don’t make sense for lengthy messages. But they do make sense for time-sensitive messages and clever shorthand.

Email, on the other hand, is a relationship-building channel that leaves ample opportunity for storytelling, rich content, more detailed information, and multiple calls to action. To find the right balance, think about email and SMS as pieces of the puzzle that work best together, and consider each other as part of a bigger picture.

Hybrid SMS-email flows and campaigns integrate SMS and email at the best possible moments. Sportswear brand Montirex, for example, uses SMS and email to accelerate brand adoption and connect with a young, active audience.

To engage with subscribers at every stage of the sales funnel, they use multi-channel flows that combine email and SMS, like their abandoned cart flow that varies messaging based on cart value and generates 30% of revenue attributed to Klaviyo.

Targeted social ads can pull in SMS subscribers for your small business, too. With Klaviyo, you can create lookalike audiences based on existing segments and lists, then sync these audiences to your social media ad accounts and reach them with targeted ads across Instagram, TikTok, Google, Facebook, Pinterest, and Criteo. Within these ads, you can encourage viewers to subscribe for SMS to get exclusive updates, early access to sales, and more.

Force of Nature, a toxic-free cleaning product company, created lookalike audiences in Meta based on ultra-specific Klaviyo segments. As of now, their Klaviyo-informed audiences are reliably some of their top performers in Meta in terms of CAC and ROAS.

In order to send SMS messages as a business, you must meet certain compliance standards. 

Here are some of the most important compliance regulations to keep in mind: 

• Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA): This US law restricts telemarketing calls and auto-dialing systems or pre-recorded voice messages, and enforces company-specific do-not-call lists.

• Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA): The CTIA has developed a set of best practices for consumer and non-consumer messages via wireless providers protecting US consumers from unwanted messages. 

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): The GDPR applies to anyone processing the data of EU citizens or residents, or offering goods and services to those in the EU, and it outlines how companies can process, collect, and use personal data. It stipulates that those handling personal data must collect and process only the data absolutely necessary, keep it accurate and up to date, and maintain confidentiality, along with more regulations.

•  Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR): Like GDPR, the PECR is another set of guidelines from the UK that protect individuals with rules on marketing calls, texts, emails, and faxes. To comply with PECR, brands need to send only solicited marketing messages, get consent via opt-in, and maintain confidentiality with collected data.  

• Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL): CASL is a law that protects consumers against spam and cyber threats, and prevents businesses from sending false or misleading information, harvesting electronic addresses without permission, and illegally collecting personal information.

• The Spam Act: Australia’s Spam Act similarly prohibits unsolicited electronic messages, requires consumers to opt-in to marketing messages, and requires unsubscribe links in commercial electronic messages. 

• Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act (UEMA): New Zealand’s UEMA protects consumers from spam messages, and applies to commercial electronic messages—those messages promoting goods, services, or a business. It requires that companies obtain consent, provide identification information, and offer an opt-out or unsubscribe. 

Check out our complete guide to SMS compliance to learn how to comply with the 3 main areas of SMS: collecting and removing consent, creating content, and sending messages. With Klaviyo B2C CRM, which has built-in SMS compliance features, you can confidently send messages to 19 countries—ideal for small businesses with global ambitions.

To make sure people are providing explicit consent for you to send them SMS messages, follow these best practices:

• Don’t pre-check your opt-in box.  

• Use double opt-in, where subscribers have to send you a text to confirm that they want to receive your SMS messages.

• Build preference center pages where your subscribers can easily choose the frequency and types of messages they receive from you. 

• Make sure your opt-out instructions are as clear as day by including them in each message you send (for example, “reply STOP to unsubscribe”).

• Automatically unsubscribe those who opt-out and send them an unsubscribe confirmation message.

There are a few considerations that impact SMS deliverability:

• The type of phone number you use

• The content and quality of your messaging

• Your recipients’ mobile devices

An SMS deliverability hub like Klaviyo’s can help you monitor and improve your SMS performance and give you real-time insight and control over your sending reputation. Check out our marketer’s guide to SMS deliverability to learn more.

To launch your SMS program:

1. Choose an SMS platform that can grow with your business.

2. Set up an account and integrate with your existing platforms, or start fresh.

3. Build your first sign-up forms and begin collecting contact information.

4. Create and send your first SMS campaign or flow.

5. Iterate, measure, repeat.

SMS marketing is not only accessible to small businesses—it’s also highly profitable, especially when it’s personalised and works in lockstep with your email marketing in an all-in-one B2C CRM like Klaviyo.