SMS IS THE CHANNEL WITH A HISTORY. AND WE MIGHT BE BLOWING IT. 🙁
Our customer can scroll up. And therein lies the problem. It's what makes SMS different from every other channel we run. They scroll up and they see what we said last time. And then your new message lands right below it. And if those 2 things don't make sense next to each other, they can tell. They always notice. WE PRETEND THEY DON'T BUT THEY ACTUALLY DO KNOW WHEN OUR TONE ISN'T COHESIVE.
Email they don't scroll up (ever email sends in a new thead). When an IG ad hits them, they don't see a record of every ad we've served them right in a row.
SMS they can scroll right up and we can't escape what we've said before.
I'm scrolling up on a brand that WON'T STOP TEXTING ME and it doesn't make sense and it's alarming how much the tone is inconsistent within these messages. It's putting me off of the brand entirely.
It all started when I subscribed to SMS for a baby brand that I love to shop. I've never purchased online DTC myself because my husband has or we were gifted from our registry. I subscribed to their list this week because I wanted the welcome discount (I'm not an idiot) but then my husband ended up purchasing it so I never completed the purchase.
And since then a woman named *Michelle (name has been changed to protect the brand because I really do like this brand) has been in my face every single day. *Michelle is not a real person. I know that because I know the brand. Michelle is the name of the AI agent they have running on SMS, that is messaging non-fucking-stop even though my household has ordered and now I'm just watching and seeing how many times it's possible to get a text from a brand in a week.
Michelle (the SMS agent that does not exist) is a mom of 3, by the way. They say that in the SMS copy but again, she's a robot and they are trying to tug at the heartstrings but it's kinda yucky. As mentioned, she has been texting me relentless. With a really casual tone.
"What's up, it's Michelle!"
I know that, Michelle. I can see the text you sent me yesterday that has your name in it. Because I can scroll. What Michelle can't catch is that these texts are wasted as my husband already purchased.
We are no longer in market. Which of course Michelle would have trouble knowing, A) because she's an agent and B) because this is a brand where the path to purchase OFTEN includes multiple people. That's always true of baby brands or brands that have many purchases tied to registries (baby registries, wedding registries, you get it).
And they should know that. They should know that the path to purchase is choppy. That multiple parents could be shopping. That the parent might be on site researching for their future Babylist registry. Basically, they should know that even if a customer is subscribed to SMS, that they don't know the full purchase history or journey of that customer because they know the nature of their brand is EXTREMELY OMNICHANNEL and MULTI-TOUCH.
All the more reason this heavy-handed automation and aggressive flow feels off.
So back to the tone.
Michelle is texting me in a very, very chilled out way. That's how this was programmed. She's relaxed. She's a mom, just like me! (I'm not known to be relaxed, though).
But we have a problem. I'm in Michelle's grip because I'm in their flows where we're relaxed and casual and chill. But outside of annoying as fuck Michelle, there are campaign messages that I'm blasted with that ARE AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT TONE.
These are more formal. And feel like a completely different brand. And the entire thing is agitating because it's sloppy and it's sloppy mostly due to frequency but it's not helped by the fact that every message makes no sense in the series of messages I've found myself in.
Because the flows don't go with the campaigns and the brand is blind to it. But almost every brand is blind to the experience they are delivering on SMS especially if the channel is built out and "optimized".
Which is why I'm writing about it. Set an alarm bell off for me this week.
THE SMS COPY PITFALL
Most brands write campaign copy in 1 voice and flow copy in another voice and AI shopper copy in a 3rd voice and then wonder why it feels like a company texting them instead of a brand.
Brands underinvest in SMS campaigns and therefore campaign copy because they are scared of annoying people. So they hold back on campaigns and flows can get out of hand because they are under less-frequent-scrutiny. But to the customer, a text is a text.
We are sitting on a channel that costs real money per send and using it to fire messages that should be improved.
When Reformation texts me I read it every single time. And no matter the message, it's in a singular tone.
We are not all Reformation and I'm not saying we should copy them. I'm saying we should study our own brands and find the gaps. Map out the most intense SMS journey a customer of yours could fall into.
See how it reads. See if it hurts your eyes. If it does, you might be acting like Michelle. But don't worry, fixable. Rewrite. Take back some control.
More SMS copy coming this week. The good examples and brands to look at. 🙂
P.S. This is Michelle and me.
