SMS marketing is a permission-based form of marketing that uses text messages to send promotions or updates. It requires customers to opt-in, and is one of the most effective ways to drive immediate purchases and customer loyalty due to its immediacy and the personal nature of text messaging.

On the user’s end, SMS marketing is simple and straightforward. With powerful technologies such as txtsignal, so is the sender’s end. But behind all that is a complex, technical world filled with its fair share of jargon.

We want to make SMS marketing as easy as possible for you. With a little knowledge of the language of SMS, you can launch a highly-successful marketing campaign with confidence.

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Acquisition rate: The percentage of people who opt-in to your SMS marketing list.

Alerts: Notifications sent via SMS that keep the recipient updated on current news with your business or organization.

Autoreply: When a new subscriber opts in to receive your alerts or promotional messages, this is the first message that will be sent to them. It confirms their subscription, and often includes an initial offer.

Bulk Text Messaging: Sending one text message to many different recipients at once. This is one of the fundamental services of txtsignal.

Call-to-Action (CTA): A statement or instruction that explains and incentivizes customers and potential customers to subscribe to your SMS marketing list.

Carrier: The company that provides voice or data services (e.g. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc.).

Characters: Any symbol used in an SMS message (e.g. a letter, number, symbol, and a space all count as characters).

Click-Through: The action of opening a link sent by SMS from a business or organization.

Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who opened a link based on the amount of people the link was sent to.

Common Short Code (CSC): Short numeric numbers that text messages can be sent to and from via a mobile phone. For example, 43506. This is the number users text to opt-in to an SMS marketing list, and the number that text messages you send come from.

Common Short Code Administration (CSCA): The Administration that oversees and regulates the usage Common Short Codes (CSC).

Compliance: Receivers of SMS messages must have the freedom to choose whether they want to be apart of the group. First, they must receive due notice that they’re being added to the SMS group, they have to opt-in, they have to know they have the option to opt-out, and how to do it.

Contacts: Each customer who opts in to receive promotional messages from your business is a contact. You can send them messages and promotions via SMS.

Groups: An aggregation of users to whom texts are sent.

Invite: In txtsignal, you can invite contacts whose email or phone number you know to join your SMS marketing list.

Keyword: Word or name used to distinguish a targeted message within a Short Code Service (e.g., Text BREWSKI to 43506; “BREWSKI” is a keyword; 43506 is a short code).

Marketing Campaigns: Strategic set of promotional activities that is planned with specific strategies, tactics, and a clear goal to increase success in a particular business goal.

Media Planning: The process of finding the right media to reach the appropriate audience.

Messaging Fees: These are fees that carriers place on anyone who sends a text. With txtsignal, all messaging fees are included as part of your monthly fee, so you never have to worry about incurring additional fees.

Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS): A message that contains multimedia objects, such as images.

Offer: To incentivize customers to subscribe to your list, marketers often give something in return. This can be a discount, special promotion, or simply the promise of timely, relevant alerts.

Opt-In/Opt-Out: Because SMS marketing is a permission-based marketing medium, customers decide to join your list (opt-in). If they become disinterested, they may unsubscribe from your list (opt-out).

Opt-Out Mechanism: This is the legal requirement that allows end users to opt not to receive the text messages. For example, this means they can send “Stop” to 43506 to be dropped from the group receiving messages.

Privacy: Privacy is well regulated with SMS marketing. txtsignal’s platform is 100% compliant with all regulations to protect identity and privacy of both the receiver and the sender.

Real-Time Messaging: The ability to send a text message immediately; the message distribution begins immediately and receipt of message is within seconds

Redeem Rate: The rate at which subscribers who receive a marketing message via SMS actually use what you offer them, resulting in new business.

Segmentation: With SMS marketing, you can easily segment your recipients by demographics such as age, location, or past purchase history. This helps you have a more accurately targeted campaign.

Scheduled Messaging: The ability to send a message at a specified date and time; the message distribution begins at the specified date and time and receipt of the message is within seconds.

Short Code: Short numeric numbers that text messages can be sent to from a mobile phone. For example, 43506. This is also the number users text to opt-in to an SMS marketing list.

Short Message Service (SMS): This is the universal messaging protocol that is used to transmit was is commonly-called a “text message”. This protocol has been built into every mobile phone made since 2005.

SMS Marketing: This is the universal messaging protocol that is used to transmit was is commonly-called a “text message”. This protocol has been built into every mobile phone made since 2005.

Spam: This is when the end-user receives messages that they don’t want. txtsignal works to ensure that all of the messages sent through their service are targeted and beneficial to the recipients.

Text Message: A text message is a basic message sent between two mobile device users.