Everyone who has decided to conduct an SMS campaign wants to receive the best possible results from it. To help you achieve this, before you write out your text, it’s best to think about the target audience. You need to understand who your recipients will be and what in particular might interest them.

There are several universal criteria which can help you to decide what your typical addressee looks like.

First, you have to picture a real person. Yes, at first sight, this is an obvious point, but many people forget it as they begin to send out messages to all available numbers. You need to carry out analysis and check whether the subscriber is really still tied to the number which they left you once. If this number doesn’t belong to the subscriber anymore, then all your efforts will be in vain and the SMS will be lost in the ether.

Secondly, it’s essential to make yourself known to the subscriber. Many people don’t open messages from unknown senders and delete them at once. Therefore, the subscriber has to be sure who the SMS is from. This will increase the chance of it being opened and read.

Thirdly, and this is also obvious; receivers have to be interested in your services. You shouldn’t hope that the subscriber will open your SMS and will become interested in your offer at once. People generally only buy things which they have been interested in before.

Fourthly, your potential client has to have money. For example, it is senseless for a luxury spa to send messages to people for whom their services are out of reach for financial reasons. You will only aggravate them and you will possibly damage your image by seeming too exclusive. Try to only send SMS to those who are in a position to take advantage of your services.

So, we have identified what your target audience looks like. If you have already collected a data-base, then analyse it with the above-mentioned points in mind, and eliminate the subscribers that don’t fit this pattern. If you don’t have a database yet, then let’s figure out how to make one.

The most widespread and reliable method of compiling a database is through questionnaires. When clients use your services, give them a questionnaire to fill in to collect his data. In your questionnaire you need to ask for consent to receive messages(this is called an ‘opt-in’). In this way, you’ll not only get a subscriber’s number, but also their name; this will allow you to personalise the messages which you send them.

Personal data collection little differs from using questionnaires. One place where it could be carried out is in shopping centres where you advertise your services. In this case a subscriber doesn’t need to fill anything in, he just provides the information and agrees to receive messages.

Yet another way of collecting data is by using a special number to receive SMS. You can place it on advertising boards. The essence of such data collection is that your potential client will see your number and send a message to it, providing you with the number and agreeing to subsequent SMS mail-outs.

If you have a website, it can be a good tool for collecting data. You may say that your web-site is not so popular as not many people go to it. If this is so, why did you create it? Your web-site must work for you and your reputation. If users need to register on your web-site, include an opt-in mechanism for SMS mail-outs in the registration form. You should also explain how subscribers can begin to receive messages from you. This can be on your landing page. If you’ve spent time and money creating it, make it work for you.

Don’t dismiss the social media networks. There are a lot of people out there. These sites are a good way to collect a database for SMS mail-outs. Still, you need to think through a reliable opt-in mechanism. This can be a link to your website, where subscribers can confirm their consent to receive messages, or you can leave a special number.

There are many more methods of subscriber data collection, but these are some of the most popular. Whatever method you select, it will have to suit you.

For a successful SMS campaign, you always need to increase the list of client phone numbers in your database. The formula is simple; the larger the number of suitable clients, the more sales.