Mailchimp's New SMS Platform: What You Need to Know
Hey there! 📣
Have you heard? Mailchimp just rolled out an exciting new feature: SMS Marketing.
What's it all about? Let's dive in.
Why SMS Marketing? 🤔
Direct Line to Customers: SMS is like having a VIP pass straight into your audience's pockets.
High Engagement: Texts have an incredibly high open rate compared to emails.
Instant Impact: No more waiting for your audience to check their inbox. SMS is immediate!
Things to Know 🧐
It's for U.S. customers with a Mailchimp Essentials plan or higher, a Legacy Monthly plan, or Mailchimp Pro.
You'll need to apply and get approved first.
Credits are needed to send SMS and MMS messages.
Right now, it's U.S. mobile numbers only.
How It Works 📲
SMS = text messages to mobile phones.
With Mailchimp’s SMS Marketing:
Set up a text program for your business.
Buy SMS credits.
Get SMS opt-ins.
Send messages to your SMS contacts.
Bonus: Add images or GIFs with MMS!
Get the full list of terms and definitions regarding SMS campaigns.
Carrier Limits ⏳
Two things impact your sending:
Carrier rate limits.
The Russell 3000 Index.
You can send a certain number of SMS or MMS messages per day or per minute based on the carrier rate limits of your subscribed contacts.
For example, T-Mobile has daily limits, while AT&T has minute-based limits.
The Russell 3000 Index is a stock market database that tracks the shares of the 3,000 largest publicly traded companies in the US. Your SMS sends are impacted by whether or not you're on the Index.
If you exceed the limits, your SMS and MMS messages will enter a queue and send at the next available time.
This means of managing carrier rate limits and the cadence of SMS and MMS sends is called throttling. We use throttling to keep your SMS Marketing program compliant.
- Mailchimp
Character Limits ✏️
The longer your SMS, the more messages you'll need to send it. If it's too long, it gets split up. Each split = one SMS credit.
Standard (GSM)
160 characters per 1 SMS message
153 characters for multipart sends (2+ SMS messages)
Unicode (non-GSM)
70 characters per 1 SMS message
67 characters for multipart sends (2+ SMS messages)
If your SMS message requires more than 1 message to send, it'll automatically send as a multipart message with a different character limit.
Modern smartphones reassemble multipart messages so that it appears to be 1 message for your recipients.
Keyword Responses 💬
Subscribers can reply 'help' for info.
Want out? They can reply with words like 'stop' or 'unsubscribe'.
Credits aren’t required to send keyword auto-responses since they are considered compliance messages.
Quiet Hours 🌙
Mailchimp respects the quiet.
SMS messages go out between 8 am-9 pm only. It's all about staying compliant.
If you want to set custom quiet hours , update your quiet hours on the SMS settings page.
S.H.A.F.T. Guidelines 🚫
Setting up? Agree to some standards. No content related to sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, tobacco (S.H.A.F.T.), or even cannabis and vaping.
If your business involves the sale of wine and beer, you can utilize SMS marketing. However, you must refrain from using specific words in your message until you've verified that a recipient is of legal age to purchase your products. The terms "alcohol," "wine," and "liquor" should not be present in your SMS campaign. Instead, you can initiate the process by encouraging individuals to subscribe to your newsletters. Upon doing so, they will be prompted to confirm their age.
Once subscribers have confirmed their age and given explicit consent to receive communications, you can then communicate more directly. This means that your SMS messages can include terms like "alcohol," "wine," and "liquor" without infringing on compliance. Making consumers go through an age-gate like this, or any of the other age gates that exist protects you from knowingly sending texts to minors, and keeps you S.H.A.F.T. compliant.
For more information regarding S.H.A.F.T. guidelines, explore the resource below:
Next Steps 🥾
Now that you know more about Mailchimp’s SMS Marketing, check out these resources to get started:
Highway 29 Creative
At Highway29 Creative, we understand that navigating the world of SMS marketing can be complex. That's why we're here to help.
Highway 29 Creative is actively exploring the new functionalities of MailChimp's SMS platform.
While we are not offering full management services for it at this moment, our team is here to assist and answer any questions you might have.
We're committed to staying updated and anticipate rolling out comprehensive SMS management services in the near future.
If you'd like to be among the first to know when this happens, we invite you to request a free consultation. Your journey in SMS marketing is important to us, and we're here to support you every step of the way.