Tip 1 - divide your audience into segments

Like with any marketing, segmenting your Text Journeys audience is hugely important for two reasons.

Firstly, you can tailor messages to each segment, which will improve engagement. Tweaking the wording for each segment will make the message feel more personalised, improving the experience for your supporter.

Here’s one example of how the same message can be tweaked for different audiences:

Secondly, when you track the success of your messages, you will be able to see which audiences are responding well and which aren’t. That way, you can make informed decisions about future Text Journeys campaigns.

Which brings us onto tracking success…

Tip 2 - track the success of your messages

You can track the success of a marketing text message by measuring the number of link clicks or donations made.

We would suggest creating a separate tracking link for each group, then you can compare results across different audiences. Creating a tracking link is dead easy, you may be able to do this through your CRM, if not there are plenty of online tools including Google.

If you are planning to ask for donations in your message, you can track the success for each audience by creating separate Text Giving keywords or Giving Pages.

Tip 3 - the perfect audience for testing

Looking to test out messaging before scaling up? You may well have the perfect audience ready to go - supporters who have donated via Text Giving.

Let’s think about it…

• Phone numbers are accurate (no mistyped numbers, or misread 7’s and 1’s)
• Comfortable with texting
• Given marketing consent (as long as you switched marketing consent on)

You could give your campaign a try with this audience, before scaling up to other supporters!

Tip 4 - build legitimacy with your supporters

Set the scene to ensure that your supporters trust the message is from you.

You can set your own ‘from’ name, so that your messages will be addressed from your charity.

You will already have a default from name, which is your charity name shortened to 11 characters. We can update this for you if you would like - just drop us a line via this contact form with your chosen name. (Note - your from name can be up to 11 characters long and must be letters or numbers only)

Other tips for building legitimacy are…

• Embed your brand’s tone of voice in messages
• Sign off messages from a member of the team who supporters will recognise
• Use links which are clearly yours wherever possible

Tip 5 - don’t rush the journey!

This is perhaps the most important factor we’ve seen in Text Journeys so far. Whilst it’s always important to warm up your audience, it’s particularly key when you are communicating with supporters who haven’t heard from you via text before.

The most successful journeys we’ve seen so far, have been those with the most steps along the way.

Here are a few ways you can warm up your audience before making an ask…

• Add links to rich content like case studies - maybe you could record a bespoke video for your audience?
• Provide updates on what their previous support has achieved
• Reference how they have supported your charity - “we hope knowing this makes all of your marathon training worth it!”

To create your next Text Journeys campaign, log into the Donr Dashboard here or create your account here.