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Thought Leader Series: Tips to Make Your Texts More Appealing Than Your Competitors’

December 3, 2015 12:00 am by


Graham Jones is a Thought Leader on Internet Psychology and has extensive experience helping businesses understand the behavior of their customers. To learn more about Graham, visit his website at www.grahamjones.co.uk.

Your SMS marketing has to compete with billions of other text messages that are sent each day. If you don’t stand out, it will be all too easy for your messages to be missed. Not only that, but amongst young people – the biggest group of nightlife consumers – text messaging is the most popular way that they use their smartphones. That means you’re up against tough competition to make your texts appealing.

So what can you do to engage people more readily with your text message marketing? Read on for some pointers.


Make your text messages appealing so people take notice no matter what they’re doing!

“Text Speak” Helps Engage Young People

Research suggests that young people tend to prefer “text speak.” For the nightlife business, this means that using such language is essential to appeal to younger clients. One study, for instance, showed that young people preferred a printed advertisement with text speak over one with “normal” language. Using text speak is more acceptable to your target audience, even if you think it looks unprofessional.

Choose Emotional Words

To make your messages as appealing as possible, use words that trigger emotions. Newspaper headline writers have known for years that those brief headlines aimed at selling the story have to be packed with emotion. Otherwise, people simply won’t read on.

Choose words that trigger happy feelings and positivity. Such words include exciting, amazing, beautiful and luxury. However, any word that makes people feel good can help make a message seem more appealing. For nightclubs, some of the most useful emotional words include free, limited or last chance. Head over to “Slow Night? Use Text Marketing to Liven Things Up” to learn more about the benefits of using these types of emotional triggers.

Add in Some Unusual Words

If your text messages have words that stand out – unusual words that your competition wouldn’t use very much, if at all – then they’ll score high in appeal. Such words could include literally, rad, or awesome. These words can help your message stand out. People don’t expect to see them in correspondence from any type of business, so using these types of words will make the message more interesting than the usual texts your customers receive.

Include Action

Another headline writer’s trick is to make their headlines active, rather than passive. They don’t say things like “The Nation Is Addressed By the President,” for example; instead they say, “The President Addresses the Nation.” When we see active wording, we find it more appealing than passive phrases. In your SMS marketing, make sure you use active wording. To learn more about active versus passive voice, check out this article.

Make the Recipient Feel Good

Provide your text message recipients with a sense of power. When you say things like “exclusively yours” or “don’t tell anyone,” people get that VIP feeling – that they’re special. And, obviously, they like it!

Text messages may only be 160 characters long, but if you follow the above tips, you can make your SMS marketing much more appealing than your competitors’.

Create an account with us now to get 10 free credits for sending up to 5 test messages – and experience the power of text message marketing!

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