When is the Best Time to Send SMS Marketing Messages?

Updated 11/4/2022

There’s no single, perfect time to send or receive a text message — the goal is to stand out!

Key Takeaways:

Timing your SMS marketing messages correctly ensures engagement and that you won’t bother your customers.
The best times to send your SMS messages are noon or on the hour.
Automate your text messages to save time, excessive typing, and to track events.

Why SMS timing matters in marketing

The speed and convenience of texting make it an invaluable tool for ecommerce, but poorly-timed messages can put customers off- or even lose them completely. Things like spamming customers with texts, or even just sending messages at the wrong time of day, are not only annoying — they show the customer that you don’t care enough to get to know them or treat them with respect.

By planning out and monitoring the timing of your campaigns, you avoid undermining your marketing strategy. You take SMS marketing to the next level.

Timing your messages right ensures the most engagement

Different types of messages require different timing for maximum effect. For example, you may organize an upcoming event and implement a text message campaign to get customers interested.

Weeks out, don’t overwhelm customers with messages. But sending a few texts the day of is essential. With TextSanity, coordinating drip campaigns ahead of time engages people with your brand.

You’ll want to send certain messages — including invites to connect on LinkedIn or social media– when an experience is fresh in a customer’s mind. Send others, like announcing a new location, when you’re ready.

TextSanity’s broadcast feature makes it easy to send mass text messages to distinct groups of contacts. If you’re targeting a specific group of customers, select the tag that applies to that group for the message. This feature also allows you to schedule your text message.

Timing your messages right means you won’t bother your subscribers

When setting up a drip campaign, there are a couple things to watch out for.

First is frequency. If contacts receive messages too often, they’re more likely to unsubscribe. Second, be aware of holidays and days of the week (like Friday night or early Sunday morning) that customers don’t want to be contacted.

Knowing your audience is key. Ensure your text marketing campaigns cater to customers.. When in doubt, the middle of the day is the most common and consistently effective time to send out a text.

Don’t forget that some holidays are opportunities for sales! If your company runs promotions for Black Friday or December shopping, let your customers know in a text.

Scheduling messages for events or promotions is where TextSanity’s broadcast service can help. Draft and schedule texts targeted to different groups of tagged contacts in advance. Scheduling a message with the broadcast feature allows you to send a message immediately or set a later date and time for the message to go out.

Remember that automated text messages can only be sent between 8 am and 9 pm (under TCPA laws). This means you won’t be able to schedule a broadcast to blast out at midnight — but it also means you don’t need to worry about breaking the law by accident.

What are the ideal times for sending marketing messages?

The rules set forth by the TCPA in 1991 also apply to SMS messages, meaning you can’t send marketing texts outside of business hours: 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM. You also can’t send anything without a customer’s opt-in. Fortunately, this step is simple with a custom webform.

Stick to these rules, and you won’t have to pay the fully-avoidable price.

Is noon a good time to send marketing texts?

Noon is one of the best times of day to send an SMS marketing message! Even on weekends, noon is a busy time when most people can be reached electronically.

Remember to be conscious of time zones. Noon in New York is 9:00 AM in California. If you want a message delivered at a certain time, you can sort contacts with tags based on the address and add them to subtly different campaigns.

With TextSanity, you can streamline this process by using text message broadcasts. Create unlimited broadcasts with TextSanity that have a distinct send time for each time zone. The benefit of doing this is that, while the content of your messages may be the same, the scheduling for each fits its time zone.

TextSanity also makes it easy to assign contacts to the correct campaign. When contacts opt-in to text message keyword campaigns, assign them specific tags — in this case, you can assign a time-zone tag that distinguishes which campaigns that customer is part of.

Should you send your texts right at the hour mark?

It might sound like the natural thing to do — after all, most appointments and events fall on the hour- but that’s precisely why you should try mixing it up. Texts rolling in at popular times like 10:00 AM might coincide with other morning messages and calls, resulting in a lower open rate.

Varied, random times are more likely to break through a customer’s workday routine and improve your response rates.

Why automate your marketing messages?

SMS marketing campaigns afford business owners a lightning-fast marketing channel to every opted-in subscriber, however, without automation, sending messages is a lot of work. Scheduling ahead of time is a must, especially if you’re sending different messages at different times and to various groups.

Automating marketing texts saves you time

If you’re anything close to an average American, you spend a lot of time on your mobile phone. But that’s good news! It means there’s time to be saved! Voice-to-text technology and developments like the swipe keyboard decrease typing time, and so does TextSanity.

Automating marketing texts helps you track appointments

Schedule a broadcast, or mass text message, to send instantly to hundreds or thousands of contacts, right at the perfect time. Use TextSanity to send a drip campaign message at a specific interval. Here’s a quick rundown of how to work with these features.

Broadcasts

You’ll want to go to the “Broadcasts” page on your TextSanity account and begin drafting your message by clicking the “+ New Message” button above the calendar. You can choose who the message will go to by selecting specific tags or “Audience” (predefined segments of your contact list you’ve set up with one or more tags). From there, you can schedule the reminder.

Drip Campaigns

To get started with a drip campaign, you’ll need to click the “Drip Campaigns” drop-down under the “More Tools” section of the menu. You select the “+ New Drip” button, begin naming and drafting/scheduling messages for the campaign and add contacts and triggers for the drip campaign. Once this is complete, the opted-in contacts will receive messages on the schedule you’ve created for the drip campaign.

Drip campaigns set up time-sensitive messages scheduled relative to the message that was sent previously. In situations where you need to communicate with a large group of contacts in a time-specific way, such as one week after a previous text or the completion of an event, drip campaigns will be the most helpful. But some messages need to be sent to individuals — and you can automate these with broadcasts.

Appointment Reminders

Appointment reminders are the perfect application of automated SMS marketing. Customers who might have missed their window will appreciate a simple text shortly before, whether it’s an important medical appointment or a haircut.

Make sure to include the client’s name and specific meeting information. The best day to send the reminder is the day before. Customers have enough time to change, cancel, or reschedule an appointment if needed.

What to do next

TextSanity currently offers eight levels of subscription plans. Change plans month over month to suit your specific text marketing needs. Once you decide on a plan, pay, create a keyword campaign, tag contacts as they come in, and fill in your templates.

Armed with these takeaways, you’ll learn more and more about which texting times bring your company the best returns. Adjust your texts accordingly, and your customers will never be more than a ping away.