The 4 Best Ways to Scale Your SMS Efforts [2024]

As a busy businessperson, you don’t have time to manually execute on a bunch of tasks—even ones that are as effective as SMS.

Let’s say you’re a small business owner named Emma, for example.

Emma sits at her desk late one night, her face illuminated by the glow of her computer screen.

She'd just finished manually sending out a batch of SMS messages to her customers, feeling exhausted. Her SMS marketing was working—maybe a little too well.

With each campaign, her customer base grew, and so did the time she spent crafting and sending messages. As she rubs her tired eyes, a realization hits her: what had once been a manageable task is now consuming her evenings.

She—and you—need ways to scale your SMS efforts.

Here are some of the best and easiest ways to scale…

Use Integrations

Integrations with your other products and services allow your SMS platform to communicate seamlessly with other tools you're already using.

This can save a lot of time and opens up a lot of possibilities—for example, instead of exporting spreadsheets from your CRM database to load it into your SMS platform, you can sync them up via an integration.

Or you can set it up to automatically send out SMS under specific situations, such as when a customer makes a purchase.

Remember Emma from our introduction? By integrating her SMS platform with her e-commerce system, she could automate order confirmations and shipping updates—freeing up time to focus on growing her business instead of manually sending texts.

Use Drip Campaigns

SMS drip campaigns are a series of automated text messages that go out over a period of time.

Drip campaigns can free up your time by allowing messages to go out without needing to be manually scheduled individually.

That way, you can do things like nurture leads, engage with customers, or push out marketing campaigns on an automated basis.

Remember Emma? She could implement a drip campaign for customers who abandoned their shopping carts. The campaign could send gentle reminders and offers over a week, recovering sales that would have otherwise been lost—all without Emma lifting a finger after initial setup.

Use Automated Replies

Yet another way to scale your SMS efforts is to set up automated replies.

With automated replies, you can send canned responses when people reply to your text messages.

Automated replies mean you don’t have to manually reply to every text message, which lets you engage with people via SMS without needing to be manually involved with every step.

Let's revisit Emma's story. She could set up automated replies for common questions about product availability and shipping times. This simple step could dramatically reduce the number of inquiries she has to handle personally, freeing up time to focus on more complex customer needs.

Use Message Templates

Message templates allow you to save preset message content that you might want to send out on a regular basis.

That way, you don’t have to input the same information every time you want to send a similar message.

This can also give uniformity to your messaging if you have multiple people who manage message sending in your business.

Let's check back in with Emma. She could create a set of templates for various scenarios: order confirmations, shipping updates, holiday promotions, and customer service responses. With these templates in place, she could quickly send out professional, on-brand messages in a fraction of the time it used to take.

Take the First Step to Start Scaling Now

As we've seen through Emma's journey, scaling your SMS efforts doesn't have to be a daunting task.

Taking full advantage of SMS integrations, drip campaigns, automated replies, and message templates means you’re setting yourself up for success as your business grows.

Select one of the above listed scaling features to focus on in the upcoming months, and use it to the fullest advantage. Then move on to the next one.

Before you know it, your SMS process will be more organized—and a lot more effective.

Haven’t started with SMS yet? Get your free SMS platform trial now.