What is Sales SMS? Benefits, best practices, & top 5 SMS sales tools [Templates included]

Amongst various methods of communication between a company and its customers, one of the most effective methods is SMS, an abbreviation of Short Message Service.

Text messaging has been helping us stay connected since 1992. And now, it has proven to be essential for businesses, as it’s one of the fastest ways of communicating. 

So, how does SMS help you in improving your sales and closing more deals? Well, we’ve covered every aspect of sales SMS in this article.

We have also provided exciting sales SMS templates, so stay tuned and keep reading!

What is Sales SMS?

Sales SMS is mainly selling to your customers using SMS service. You can share about your services, latest updates, offers, discounts, and many other business communications using text messaging.

SMS is one of the sales tactics that has shown great progress over the years. A text message is a platform with 2.2 trillion users only in the United States region.

The stats are compelling enough to get started with SMS sales and reach more target audiences. Sales SMS is one of the best sales strategies to improve brand awareness and increase the response rate.

Top 4 benefits of SMS sales for your business

Yes, SMS sales is effective, but to what extent? The below benefits will show you how text messages can take your sales strategy to the next level.

1. Personal sales approach

Initially, SMS was used for communication between two individuals. Hence, considered a less formal and more personal form of communication.

Therefore, when you’re sending SMS messages to your audience, you can personalize them, and add emojis and engaging content to connect better. 

You can use this to your advantage and build a trustworthy conversation with your prospects. Being consistent while practicing sales SMS will boost your customer loyalty and improve brand awareness.

Hence, SMS sales help you get a personal sales approach and when executed correctly can prove to be a viable sales channel for your organizations.

2. Fast deliverability 

When you send a text message, it gets delivered within seconds. It almost eliminates the delivery time.

The fact that it is perfect for sending messages with time limitations lets you send flash sales, limited period offer, event details, and many more updates. 

In fact, 90% of consumers check their text message notifications within 90 seconds, making it one of the most effective modes of communication.

Also, the SMS text has an open rate of 98% which is the highest among all the sales mediums. Therefore, along with improving the engagement rate, SMS sales also have a positive impact on your revenue.

3. Easy accessibility for customers  

One of the benefits of using SMS sales is its easy accessibility. The reason for its high opening rate is nothing else but its easy accessibility.

Opening a text is as easy as answering a call. In fact, you can communicate with text messages while being in a crowded or noisy room. Also, sending or receiving an SMS doesn’t even require an internet connection, so there’s no room for delayed message delivery.

4. High scalability

It is always suggested to approach a larger audience in order to close higher deals.  

So, when you want to reach a wider audience, you need to send personalized bulk text messages and connect better. These bulk messages will help you reach maximum prospects and eventually increase your sales.

Now that you know the benefits of sales SMS, it’s time to implement the strategy into your business. Below we have mentioned SMS sales best practices that you need to consider when executing text messages.

Best practices for sales text messages that you can’t ignore

In order to get started, here are some SMS sales best practices to follow to receive a great outcome in your sales strategy.

1. Easy opt in and opt out method 

Before getting started with SMS sales, it goes unsaid that you need to gain consent from your prospects to send them any kind of promotional SMS.

Sending SMS without any prior request can get you in trouble, as it’s unlawful and at the same time can harm your brand and customers.

Therefore, you need to ask your prospects to opt-in at the start and maintain transparency on what kind of text messages will they receive after subscribing for the same. 

Similarly, you need to have an opt-out option too. This will ensure that you only reach interested customers.

And will help you keep low unsubscribe rates and maintain a healthy relationship with your customers.

2. SMS sales automation

SMS sales are beneficial and very convenient. To make it more efficient, you can add automation to your sales and SMS marketing campaigns.

Imagine sending individual sales messages to your target prospects – terrible, isn’t it? 

So, you need to segment your customer list based on their preferences and then send targeted text messages.  Moreover, you can also use automation to schedule text messages and reach your audience at the right time.

A text messaging software provides various features to help you streamline your communication channels.

Automate your sales messages!

Explore Salesmate's SMS Messaging to reach larger audience.

Start your free trial

3. SMS personalization 

SMS has the benefit of connecting on a personal level with your customer. Then why avoid it? 

You need to add dynamic fields to your texts. For efficient interactions, you can send identifiable tags like their first name.

72% of customers only prefer to interact with brands that send personalized messages. 

You may even send SMS based on their customer journey and behavior. It is a great strategy to build a long-standing relationship with your customers.

4. Include a CTA

Apart from offering something valuable in your text messages, you need to be clear and convey your goal.

The ultimate goal of SMS sales is to increase your SMS subscribers and turn your prospects into your customers.

Hence, you need to convey the purpose of SMS to your customers as soon as possible. You need to be clear and persuasive with your content. In simple words, you need to add call-to-action (CTA). 

You can ask your customers to participate in voting, take a survey, or complete a questionnaire in your SMS.  

You can even add a straightforward CTA like –

• Sign up now for free! 
• Grab the limited-time deal. 
• Complete the survey and win. 

The key to this kind of call-to-action is clarity and brevity.

5. Offer value 

When your subscribers opt in for receiving a text message, they are expecting something valuable in return.

You need to be mindful while offering value to your customers. It should be an offer that can be leveraged. Hence, the information must be useful to your prospects.

You can also boost loyalty by introducing mobile-specific promotion codes to minimize churn and unsubscribes.

6. Focus on timing

Timing is everything when you’re dealing with your customers.  

Sending a sales SMS in the first week of the month will get you, maximum customers, then sending the same message during mid-month. 

For instance, sending a sales text at 3:00 AM will do you no good as the recipient will not be available. 

However, sending the same message during travel hours or lunch breaks will yield higher results and become efficient. 

Also, the number of messages you send to your customers matters a lot.  

Hence, you need to focus on the timing of sending messages to get the maximum conversions of prospects and increase the sales figure. 

You can always implement these sales SMS best practices to perform better with your sales SMS. 

22 ready-made sales SMS templates & examples you can copy

To help you speed up your SMS campaign, we have provided ready-to-use sales SMS templates for your convenience.

1. Consent SMS templates

Dear Customer, thanks for choosing us. We would love to share our best offers, deals, and other business updates with you. “XYZ Ltd” would like to receive your consent for the same. Reply STOP to opt out.

Dear Customer, “Zelix Tech” needs your consent to serve you better. We will send you details of your account, shipping details, offers, and other business updates. 
Reply STOP to opt out.

2. Sales introduction SMS templates 

Hello Rumi, thank you for enquiring about Salesmate. Kindly let me know your availability so we can schedule a demo with your team and take things forward. Reply STOP to opt out.

Rohan, use our credit card and get “20% off” on all your domestic flights till “30th May”. To know more details, click on the “link.”Reply STOP to opt out.

Hi Jonathan, we are excited to share that M&K is now accessible in your area! Visit our store to avail extra discount! Reply STOP to opt out.

3. Onboarding SMS template 

Hey Kriti! We're so excited to have you onboard. We look forward to serving you with our best offerings and services. To know our latest products, “Click here”. 

Hi Karan, thank you for shopping with us. Here’s a link to our easy-to-use product guide. You can call us on 022-2244-4422 to talk to our executive about the same. 

Hi Ashley, welcome aboard! Kindly go through this demo video of our features to understand the product. You can always reach out to our team for any support.

4. Sales follow-up templates

Hey Sania, this is Ashton from “Melanen”. I just sent you an email regarding your query, but wanted to follow up on text if this is more convenient for you. Feel free to reply or call me on 022-4466-6644.

Hi Logan, I hope the demo was helpful! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and I’ll sync with you in a few days to follow up.

Hello Rachel, kindly let me know the best time to connect with you, so we can discuss further and resolve any queries.

5. Meeting/demo reminder sales templates

Hi Klark, we have a product demo call scheduled this Thursday, at 2:00 PM. Kindly let me know if there is any change in your schedule.

Hey Mona, this is just a gentle reminder message for our meeting scheduled at 3:00 PM. Find the meeting link “here” to join from your mobile device. Feel free to text with any queries.

Hello Merryl, our meeting is scheduled at 6:00 PM, kindly let me know if you require any more information.

6. Upselling/Cross-selling sales SMS templates

Hey Kevin, add a set of Bluetooth speakers along with your order of music system to avail 10% extra discount.

Hi Mila, get more out of your subscription by upgrading to the Enterprise plan – avail premium features along with 24/7 customer support.

Mona, you're missing out on the deal! Get our annual subscription and pay 20% less!

7. Flash sales SMS templates

Flash sale on till 6 PM today! Get 30% off by using the code "FLASH”. Click “here” to start shopping.

Hey Maya, our Black Friday sale is starting in just 5 Hours. Browse to get your gifts sorted and get 30% off on the 1st order. Text “STOP” to opt out.

This weekend, visit our “Henkiz” stores to avail 20% off your purchase. Show this message to save. Happy Shopping!

8. Early access SMS templates

We are offering you our VIP access, to let you have early access to our latest collections and grab better deals. Reply “VIP CLUB” to opt in or “STOP” to opt out.

Want early-bird access to all our sale and offers? join our VIP club reply “IN” and shop with extra benefits. Reply STOP to opt out.

5 Best text messaging software to consider in 2024

Choosing the right sales SMS software is highly important, as it will have a substantial impact on your sales strategy. So, below we have listed the top 5 text messaging software that you can consider for your sales SMS.

1. Salesmate

Salesmate CRM is one of the leading CRM software. It is a unified customer journey platform that helps you streamline your sales, marketing, and customer support processes.

Salesmate’s built-in CRM with text messaging feature is one of the finest amongst other platforms, as it provides various options for executing your SMS campaigns. It offers features such as Text Conversation, Personalized Text, Text Templates, and many more.

It offers advanced functions like SMS automation, Text Pilot, Text Scheduling, Text Reports, Bulk Text, and so on.

Moreover, Salesmate also offers virtual phone number to help increase local presence in different countries

These features let you carry out your SMS campaigns efficiently and let you experience the best results.

Key features

• Use text sequences to schedule your messages.
• Send bulk messages along with personalization.
• Get the context of every conversation with the chat history feature.
• Choose from different and unique text templates.
• Track your performance using text reports.

Pricing

Salesmate’s basic plan starts at $23 per user, per month.

2. Close

Close CRM is known to be one of the best CRM. It offers a bundle of features when it comes to executing SMS campaigns.

It centralizes meaningful conversations so that you can easily read and respond to incoming SMS without leaving the inbox.

Close helps you increase reach with one-click SMS. Instant insights help you get an overview of your entire team’s SMS activities at a glance.

Overall, it offers some great features when talking about SMS services. 

Key features

• Automate your bulk texts via API.
• One-click SMS to improve efficiency.
• Send and receive text messages within Close inbox.

Pricing

The Starter plan of Close is priced at $29 per user, per month.

3. Salesforce

Salesforce CRM offers a bouquet of services. However, when it comes to sales SMS you can easily send promotional messages to your audience. 

It lets you send messages through a proactive outbound function. It has a specified guide to help your sales team set up the SMS flow.

Key features

• Provides SMS automation so that you can schedule your SMS campaigns.
• Bulk text messages help you reach a wider audience.
• Get email notifications on incoming messages.
• Offers conversational 1 on 1 texting.

Pricing

The pricing plan of Salesforce starts at $25.

4. SimpleTexting 

SimpleTexting is known to be an all-in-one texting app. This platform offers a two-way texting feature for its users.

It is mainly used for business texting as it also offers high scalability to reach the maximum number of customers.

Moreover, you can also automate your text messages to improve overall productivity.

Key features

• 2 way messaging to resolve customer queries.
• Schedule and send bulk text messages.
• Easily import contacts and start texting.
• Automatically respond to common questions and queries using triggers.

Pricing

The pricing plan of SimpleTexting starts at $29 per month.

5. Freshworks

Freshworks is a CRM that offers great features along with text messaging.  

It lets you send individual messages, bulk messages, automated messages. It allows its user to configure its owner’s contact and lets you send the SMS. 

Just like other tools, it also lets’ sync your contacts in order to execute all the functions offered.

Key features

• Send individual and bulk text message to your prospects.
• Automate your SMS campaigns and drive more customers.

Pricing

The pricing plan starts at $13.

Comparison of top 5 sales SMS software

Below is the comparison chart to help you choose the best tool offering SMS sales. 

How Salesmate can help you leverage text messaging in your sales? 

Salesmate is one of the best CRM you can implement for your business. It comes with the most feasible and effective features.

It offers a bouquet of services, talking about SMS features here are some of the best functions that Salesmate offers:

1. Send Bulk Text messages

As discussed before, it is not efficient to send an individual message to each of your audience. Hence, you need to send bulk messages to practice efficiency.

Text Messaging CRM can be utilized for sending regular information on promotional discounts and events. You can even send coupon codes, special festival discounts, and more without having to rewrite every single message.

This feature of Salesmate CRM is time-saving and at the same time helps you to reach the maximum audience in the same minute.

2. Text Conversations

Salesmate helps you have contextual conversational SMS messages with your customers. It enables you to go through past conversations to track your communication.

This eliminates the probability of any confusion, even if those conversations span over multiple phone numbers.

This can be executed all within Salesmate.

3. Text Automation & Text Pilot 

Salesmate CRM also allows you to send sales text via automation. 

This powerful feature intelligently manages and distributes a large volume of texts.   

Text Pilot distributes your entire text message queue with your target audience without deteriorating your deliverability. 

Automation and Text Pilot function would be of great help when used in the correct manner for sales SMS method to be successful. 

4. Text Scheduling

Sales SMS is not a one-time activity but a process. You need to be consistent with your SMS.  

Text scheduling helps you with being consistent with your process. It schedules your messages with respect to various time zones. 

You can line your messages and deliver a personalized user experience.  

5. Text Templates 

Stalemate helps you craft compelling and re-usable text templates. 

Salesmate CRM offers text templates to ease your efforts. However, if you still want to create one for yourself you may customize one for your business. 

Then save the same in the CRM and make room for other tasks. 

6. Text Reports

Be it sales or marketing, you need to measure the campaign’s success.  

Salesmate CRM offers a very convenient function Text Reports. This function allows you to get reports on each sales template performance and plan your text campaigns accordingly. 

This gives you the opportunity of choosing the best performing template to get the maximum benefit from this campaign.  

Conclusion

After knowing the benefits and implementing the above-mentioned best practices for sales SMS, there’s a high probability that you can grab an edge over others.

So, get started now and execute your SMS campaigns without any hassle!

Try out Salesmate now and grow your customer base.