How to test if your SMS campaign is working? Any specialist has wondered about how to improve their activities to gain more results. When we are talking about SMS, there are a lot of factors to check: from its delivery to the preferable content strategies. If you are an advanced SMS marketer, you may even think about how to test your SMS API.
While the task to test SMS delivery or SMS API is out of the technical field, thus easily determined, the influence of your message on the customer is pretty hard to measure or predict beforehand. That’s why it takes some time, variability, and creativity to build a working strategy. Testelium prepared a guide on how to test SMS efficiently.
What is SMS testing and how does it work?
A/B, or split testing, is an impressive tool to check SMS messages. You might know it if you have ever worked with e-mail marketing — it is pretty popular there as well. The point of any A/B test is to observe how users react to the same SMS but with one parameter changed.
Let’s imagine: you want to conduct an SMS campaign to reengage your long-time clients. You want to give them some kind of discount or promo code, but you want to review your theory first. For an A/B test, you need to choose a group for checking (not huge, but big enough, so it would be possible to make some sensible conclusions). Then you need to split it in two and prepare a message for each. You vary only the offer: you can give a constant 5% discount for one group, and on contrary, a one-time promo code for a free service for the other one, and then evaluate the results.
But if you are also looking for a tool to test SMS sending or receiving, consider using the Testelium SMS testing service.
How to analyze and use SMS testing results?
When your messages are successfully sent, you need to monitor your results closely. At this stage, your goal is to define which message gave you the best output. We suggest relying on the following indicators:
- What message was opened more? Though SMS on average has an insanely high open rate, around 98%, in every particular case the performance may change.
- How many people unsubscribed from both messages? Hence, the one that had this rate lower, is more acceptable to your audience.
- What message drove more purchases or orders? It might be the most meaningful indicator you need to pay attention to if your goal is revenue.
When you analyze these results, you will detect a winner. It’s also possible that you may get almost the same result on your split test. Mainly it means that both of your SMS was too identical, and the outcome is invalid. You can try once again, creating more diverse messages.
A Step-by-Step Guide on SMS Testing
So what step do you need to go through to test text messaging?
- Choose the test group size. It should depend on your whole contact list size, but the recommended number is usually around one thousand users. Don’t be afraid to make it too big: it’s better to have a wider audience for a split test, as the small group may give you untrustworthy results.
- Decide on the variable parameter. You can try any hypothesis you consider realistic. The most common parameters to test are the time of sending (morning or afternoon), call-to-actions, offers, price, and overall tone of your message.
- Create two messages. Remember that you need to keep them similar apart from the variable parameter, otherwise, you can ruin the accuracy of the experiment.
- Send the messages and wait patiently. Hit the “send” button and monitor the results. Luckily, you don’t need a long time to get an impression as SMS is a quick channel. You will get enough info for the analysis during the first few hours.
- Analyze results and send the best message to the whole contact list. When you have a better SMS, duplicate it to the rest of your subscribers and expect a great overall result!
Conclusion
It’s sad to waste a good opportunity for promotion through messages, especially remembering all the advantages of SMS marketing. The conduction of split tests can increase your profit and help you choose the best strategies for communication with your clients.
But don’t forget that first you need to be sure in your delivery, so if you have questions on how to test your SMS gateway or test international SMS delivery, Testelium can help you!
