Building Effective Dynamic SMS Campaigns

It’s important to remember to gather data from as many sources as you can, to build better omnichannel communication. This is a new way of creating campaigns and has a great impact on their effectiveness. This article will share information on how to build an effective dynamic SMS campaign which will help you boost your sales and customer engagement.  

Business background

At the beginning, we will show you what you can put in dynamic campaigns and what you need for sending SMS campaigns from the Synerise platform.  

We will present three examples—one for beginners and other two for more advanced users.

How to do it

If you want to send an SMS from Synerise, there are two required steps:

1. You need to have a customer data base with phone numbers and marketing agreements for sending SMS messages.
2. You need to have a completed integration of an SMS gateway with Synerise. We offer integration with SMS API, Materna, Infobip, TideMobile and Twilio.

There are also some optional measures. In the example for beginners we will use a first name, the name of a favorite store and a discount code.

In the advanced examples we will use information about the last-viewed pages by the user in your store. If you want to gather information about visited pages, you need to implement our tracking codes on your website.

Example 1: Personalized SMS with discount coupon

Step 1: Add voucer pool

The first step is to add to a Synerise Vouchers Pool. In this example, we will use unique vouchers that are assigned to individual customers. Of course, you can use static coupons like a 30 percent discount for all users with the same code.  

Step 2: Create SMS

Next, we have to create the SMS content. In Synerise, we use Jinjava, which is this kind of programming library used in Web applications to embed data in presentation templates. Jinjava is rendered on the service side, so users can view the final results in their browser. In our case it will be his first name.

Step 3: Define the audience, schedule, UTM and URL

The last step is to define the segment of customers to which we want to send our SMS, schedule our campaign, add UTM and URL parameters and test the ready-to-go campaign.  

Let’s check a use case where we describe how to do it in our platform, step by step >>  

Example 2: Personalized SMS with voucher to a previously visited store

Step 1: Create SMS campaign

In the Audience section, we can choose the campaign recipients. The system will automatically show you customers who have given marketing consent for this type of campaign and have phone numbers on their contact card. We can choose to send the SMS to specific segment, create a new one directly from this place or send the message to everyone.

In Content, we have to choose the sender name (based on previously completed integration with the sending platform) and then we can create the message template in the text editor. 

Step 2: Use inserts in the SMS creator to use dynamic content in your message 

We can use the name of our users to make the message more personalized (search for the insert “name” and copy the code to your message box). 

Then, add the text of your message. Add also info about the user’s favorite store (find the proper attribute e.g. “store” and paste its code to the message box).  

Finally, add voucher choosing inserts – pools (find the proper attribute e.g. “vouchers” and paste its code to the message box). 

Step 3: Set up the campaign schedule and test the campaign 

In Schedule, we have to choose what time the campaign will be sent. 

The last part is testing. If you want to test your SMS, you have to add your phone number and check how the message will display.  

This is all you need to know to prepare and effectively send your first personalized SMS campaign!

Let’s check our use case where we describe how to do it in our platform, step by step >> 

Example 3: Personalized SMS with last visited, most expensive product

Now let's have a look at something more advanced. Our challenge is to engage customers who didn't make a transaction during their last visit. Let’s assume that we want to create dynamic SMS with the most expensive product among the last 10 products viewed and, in this way, encourage our customers to buy it.  

Step 1: Create an aggregate  

The first step is to create aggregate with regular expression. The aggregate is prepared with the intention of analyzing the action of an individual customer. The analysis is based on a particular event occurrence which can be specified by the event parameters within the defined time range. The result of the analyses can be a minimum, average, or maximum value of the event and much more.

In our case, the aggregate helps us to gather information about the last ten views of your products for a specific customer.

Step 2: Create a message template

The second step is to create an SMS content.  

Step 3: Set up the SMS campaign

Lastly, you must define the audience of your SMS campaign and set the sending time.  

This very long message gives us very short notice on your phone. We can see information about the most expensive product the customer saw during his last visit. In the SMS he can see the name of this product, and its image with the link to this product.

Let’s check our use case where we describe how to do it in our platform, step by step >> 

Summary 

In this article we have presented only SMS campaigns, but remember that you can use those scenarios in every communication channel, e.g. in emails, web push, SMS and mobile push. You can use them in a mass communication for notifying all users about the start of a new collection or sale or target SMS shipments as a one to one communication in the loyalty program or e.g. abandoned basket. You can also send a discount coupon to your customer with information about promotions in your store and send them birthday wishes. In dynamic SMS campaigns, you can also add AI recommendations, for example, for the most expensive recommended product as a cross selling suggestion to the current products in their basket.  

So, if you want to increase conversions on your website, you should start from using dynamic campaigns instead of regular campaigns. 

You can use your imagination to create the best idea for using such campaigns in your company. Synerise offers you a lot of possibilities and I hope that using tips from this article will help you to create your own scenario which helps you engage your customers and boost your profits.