A Guide To Creating Thoughtful, User-First SMS Marketing

Text messaging can be a convenient and effective marketing tool. A customer might open every SMS to check when their rideshare will arrive. But the texts from the local coffee shop that come like clockwork every day when they’re looking for a coffee fix? Those texts might raise suspicions about what data is collected and how it’s used to learn about their coffee cravings.

SMS is undeniably a high-intent and high-impact channel, but a wrong move can carry outsized consequences for a company. Today’s UX strategies need to be as sophisticated as they are personalized. No longer is it as simple as sending out short updates; you need consistent, relevant messaging that respects the customer’s time and privacy.

New expectations are driving SMS user experience

Customers are more wary than ever about who’s watching their interactions and why. The privacy-first search engine DuckDuckGo saw a record-breaking 71.9 billion searches in 2024 alone, largely driven by its users’ desire for anonymity across the web. Whether explicitly stated or not, there’s an underlying current of consumers feeling watched for the sake of a corporation’s bottom line. If you want your SMS experience to hit a sweet spot, your campaigns can’t trigger suspicion or irritation. 

Customers expect personalization, not surveillance 

The goal of “invisible personalization” is to create a seamless experience for the customer, one that’s as specific to their needs as it is loyal to the brand’s values. Ideally, the SMS content feels both natural and helpful, and the customer ends the interaction with a positive impression. 

When done correctly, personalization convinces the customer that the overall brand is the right fit for them. They should feel like the company fundamentally meets their needs, rather than feeling inundated by texts based on cursor path tracking or ‘helpful reminders’ about abandoned carts. 

One way to improve your experiences is to focus on better segmentation. When you group customers by the right characteristics, whether it’s their age or their behaviors, it’s easier to decide what to say and how to say it. So, let’s say you know that one segment of customers buys your products because of your eco-friendly policies. You might send additional resources via text message, like a case study link, to add more context to the launch of a new product line. 

Your customer segments should be small and specific enough to create meaningful interactions, but not so small as to elicit concerns. Customers should feel seen without feeling surveilled. 

Consent and transparency are essential for good UX

A simple way to improve the trust and compliance of your text messages is to start with consent. Give customers full control over opt-ins, and create clear, simple consent flows that respect their privacy. For example, you can ask them to check a box to receive text messages rather than prechecking it. 

Good UX also requires relevancy and consistency. If you send unpredictable or irrelevant text messages, even your most loyal customers may feel frustrated or confused. From the first interaction, set clear expectations about how and when you’ll communicate.  

Cadence and consistency are the foundation of a positive SMS experience

Building an SMS foundation starts with establishing meaningful text schedules, whether that’s five messages per quarter or one text a week. You can also tailor the text schedule based on the types of messages the customer wants to receive. For example, you might only send SMS messages promoting new sales—even if you don’t have a consistent sales schedule—if that’s your customer’s preference. 

A predictable cadence creates a positive feedback loop with each new SMS:

• Customers receive a relevant text message
• They appreciate the communication
• They look forward to the next one

And you don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to content—it can be as simple as a funny GIF or wishing them a happy holiday season. 

Over time, your cadence becomes a testament to the brand’s reliability and credibility, helping you avoid the common marketing trap of overwhelming customers with sensational offers. So, rather than sending 20 text messages only before a big event, like Black Friday, you maintain a steady stream of valuable touchpoints throughout the year. Brand consistency can foster customer loyalty, driving stronger word of mouth and higher sales volumes. 

Build trust by matching the expectations you set

Trust starts and ends with matching your actions to customer expectations. If a small business has never sent a customer a text message before and then suddenly starts sending several per week, customers are likely to feel confused rather than excited or grateful. 

Content and consistency lie at the heart of customer perception, so they need to align with how the customer feels and what they’re looking for. If you send a reminder text about a new offer after the customer has already signed up, you may alienate the customer you were trying to help. While your most loyal customers may give you the benefit of the doubt, matching expectations with reality can prevent frustration or unsubscribes. 

Designing SMS content that feels natural through segmentation

Segmentation is a user experience tool that divides your customers into groups. When you understand their unique needs, you can create personalized experiences. Segments should remain small enough to maintain relevance but not so narrow as to feel invasive. Consider how the customer interacts with the company and what motivates them at every step of their journey.  

Segmentation types include:

• Customer type: Divide your customers based on how much they spend and how long they’ve used the company’s services. Tempt new customers to commit to the brand and reward long-term customers for their continued loyalty. 
• Product category interest: Whether you sell SaaS or socks, customers may have very different product preferences based on their needs. Segmenting can establish a category interest baseline, so your texts address and appeal to what drew them to the brand in the first place. 
• Regional differences: Segmentation should consider where the customers live and how their needs are shaped by location. More than just socioeconomic metrics, regional segments can encompass cultural norms and geographic obstacles. 

To segment your lists properly, you’ll need to know who the audience is, where they are in the buyer journey, and what content they’ve already received. Once you know the segments, you can start setting rules about what counts as “valuable” content. So, if you know that customers in the Midwest are primarily driven by your price point, you might focus your texts on how your brand helps Midwesterners improve their quality of life without draining their budgets. 

Having a unified customer profile across departments, including customer service and sales, can also help you align your text messaging with the customer’s ongoing interactions. So, you might pause your SMS communications if the customer opens a service dispute with customer service. 

What “good UX” looks like in SMS campaigns

Good UX can look very different across brands, but it boils down to whether customers find your messaging helpful. Improving the experience may mean taking a risk or two. 

Images, GIFs, and media enhance text messages

Despite the availability and affordability of MMS options, like GIFS and images, brands often underutilize them in SMS campaigns. This is unfortunate, given that multimedia messaging can bring your text messages to life, creating instant excitement or engagement. So, you might send a GIF of a woman sliding everything off a retail shelf to promote a new sale. 

If you’ve largely avoided multimedia in favor of text, first consider how your customer will interact with it. For example, sending a quick software demo to new subscribers that answers a frequently asked question. Whether you’re celebrating a milestone or commiserating about rough workdays, using media can spice up your customer’s day and leave them feeling appreciated or understood.

Testing and experimentation improve the experience over time

A/B testing is a way to hone campaign timing, phrasing, media types, and customer segments. Experiment with new content styles, visual approaches, and product categories to better determine what your customers respond to. 

To avoid overstepping during this phase, run experiments that align with customer needs and values. For example:

• Group A: Text the link to a new product page, accompanied by an animated banner
• Group B: Send a plain-text product announcement without the banner 

Measure which one drives more clickthroughs. By using similar content for customers in the same segment, you can compare whether customers prefer certain types of texts over others. 

3 Practical steps to improve SMS UX today

Improving your SMS UX starts with thinking through each interaction, so that it’s as intentional as possible. The more time you spend planning, the more positive customer experiences you’re likely to create. 

1. Start with the opt-in experience 

During the opt-in process, a customer should know what they’re signing up for. While you can certainly surprise them with clever content or awesome offers, they shouldn’t feel surprised by simply receiving a text. 

Before you make any changes, review your current processes to ensure everything is clear and compliant. This is a great way to catch discrepancies, like a prechecked consent box on a mobile sign-up page vs. an unchecked box on a desktop. 

2. Review and refresh segmentation 

Segment criteria should factor in standard criteria like product interest,  and it would ideally include the customer’s relationship with the company, too. So, if you have a customer segment that hasn’t engaged with the company for more than a year, you shouldn’t be constantly reaching out with ‘exciting’ announcements that may serve to further fatigue them. 

Instead, review your segments and refresh your campaigns based on the customer’s real-time receptiveness. For instance, you might pause text messages to people who have experienced recent customer service friction, like a formal complaint about product quality, until they reach a satisfactory resolution. 

3. Audit message cadence and consistency

Messages don’t have to be precise, but you also don’t want communication spikes or gaps. Content should be accurate, steady, and relevant to create a more natural flow. 

To audit your messages, map texts to the customer journey to see how well they align. You might find that your marketing offers introductory deals to the wrong customer segment or that you’re promoting an upsell offer to customers who have recently downgraded their services. A deep audit can strengthen the brand’s reputation, simplify your messaging, and improve conversion rates.  

How data empowers smarter decision-making

Clear data gives you a better sense of the customer’s likelihood to engage with your content. If you have a large customer base, though, it’s impractical to collect individual stats on every customer’s journey stage and sentiment. What’s more, department disconnects can make it difficult for everyone to agree on whether the data is both accurate and comprehensive. 

The right platform and solution can compile data and quickly identify the inconsistencies that prevent a smooth customer experience. Instead of multiple profiles for the same customer by department, you can unify data into a single cohesive dashboard for greater visibility. Sales, customer service, marketing, and executives can all see how customers respond to different communications, giving everyone more context into both the behavior and what motivated it. 

Better data can help you navigate your general messaging and adjust to shifting customer preferences or concerns. Blast text messages may have been effective in the past, but they’ve faltered as customers increasingly expect one-on-one communications. 

If you can leverage better data to customize your messaging, your customers will receive more relevant information. You can use customer data as the foundation for everything from segmenting to A/B testing to building a consistent communication schedule. 

Tenon empowers marketers to navigate data with confidence

Tenon unifies your data so marketers don’t have to manually piece it all together. Better workflows between departments create more context into each stage of the buyer journey, giving marketers time to intervene before customers break all ties with the brand. 

With Tenon, you also get automated insights and anomaly alerts, such as service disputes, so you can identify red flags like high bounce rates, customer churn, or negative sentiment shift. These insights are key to improving interactions with your customers, and this is true even if your engagement rates begin to fall. 

See how Tenon’s features can improve your SMS campaigns.

Create more compelling SMS campaigns with Tenon

Consistency, relevancy, and transparency lie at the heart of a great SMS user experience. Tenon helps marketers simplify SMS campaigns at scale across all major departments. By unifying data and creating a more intentional customer journey— one that factors in everything from buyer stage to genuine sentiment—it’s possible to simultaneously improve content, consistency, and brand loyalty. 

If you’re ready to orchestrate more thoughtful and impactful SMS campaigns, book a Tenon demo today.

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