SMS marketing for small business takes three steps: get permission before you text anyone, register your number with the carriers, and send a few useful texts a month. You can set all three up in one afternoon. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days, so your first real campaign can go out next week.
This guide covers what to put on the sign at your counter, what registration costs, which three campaigns to send first, how often to text, and the per-text math. We make Ready, so the prices below are ours. We also say where something else might suit you better.
What SMS marketing for small business actually needs
You don't need a complicated stack. You need:
- A list of people who agreed to get texts. An agreement to texts is different from a phone number on an invoice.
- A registered number. US carriers filter business texts that come from unregistered numbers. This registration system is called A2P 10DLC.
- Opt-out handling. When someone replies STOP, they must never get another marketing text from you.
- Something worth sending. Reminders, review requests and one good offer a month will get you further than daily promos.
Ready handles the second and third items in the app. The first and fourth are your job, and they matter most.
Step 1: get consent at the counter and online
Consent is the step owners skip, and it is the step that causes legal trouble. TCPA exposure runs $500 to $1,500 per text. That is a good reason to only text people who asked for it.
At the counter
Use a sign-up sheet, a tablet form or a line on your intake card. Put the disclosure right next to the phone number field. Here is an example for a made-up bakery:
"Yes, text me offers and updates from Maple Street Bakery. Up to 4 msgs/month. Msg & data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out, HELP for help."
Keep the signed sheet or the form record. For each person, write down the date, the exact wording they saw and where they signed up.
Online
Add a checkbox to your booking form or checkout. Leave it unchecked by default and keep it separate from your terms of service. Use the same disclosure wording. Save the timestamp and the page it came from.
Who keeps the proof
When you send a campaign or API message, Ready records your attestation: who sent it, to how many people, and when. That creates an audit trail for each send. It is not a consent record for each contact. We don't store the opt-in time, wording or page for each recipient, and a keyword reply doesn't create one. Your form tool or your sign-up sheets have to keep that proof. (A contact who signs up on a Ready-hosted opt-in page is the exception: Ready stores that sign-up, with the time, IP address and exact wording, and support@tryready.com can send you a copy.)
If you have old customer numbers but no permission to text them, contact those people by phone or mail. Don't text them. For more ways to grow a consented list, see how to build an SMS marketing list.
Step 2: register your number
Registration tells the carriers who you are and what you plan to send. In Ready, you do it in the app with two forms:
- Brand: your legal business name, EIN and address.
- Campaign: what you send, with sample messages.
The price works like this:
- At submit: $25, which is your first month. There is no setup fee.
- Each month after that: $25/mo for registration + $2 per number. With one number, that is $27/mo.
Most approvals take 2 to 7 days.
Pick a campaign type that matches what you actually send. If you plan to send reminders and offers, describe both. Carriers check your samples against your real traffic. 10DLC cost: every fee explained breaks down the carrier side.
What you can do before approval
- Free texts: The first 20 texts are free. They must be one-to-one sends, not campaigns. Use them to test before you register, because they end as soon as you pay for registration.
- Texting before registration: You can send up to 500 texts a month before you register, at your normal per-text rate. After that, you have to register.
- If you already bought a number: It sends on our shared registration at the same per-text rate while your own registration is in review.
- Card on file: A card is required to send.
Do you need brand vetting?
Probably not. Brand vetting is optional and costs $79 Standard or $179 Enhanced, one time. It raises your trust score and your daily limits.
A fresh standard campaign sends at roughly 1 to 4 segments per second. Assume 2 per second: a 1,000-segment campaign then takes about 8 minutes. T-Mobile's lowest daily cap is around 2,000 messages. Most shops never come close to that.
The first three campaigns worth sending
1. Appointment reminders
Send them 24 hours before the visit. This is the text customers thank you for, and it reduces no-shows. Example:
"Hi Sam, reminder: your cleaning at Northside Dental is tomorrow at 10:30 AM. Reply C to confirm or R to reschedule."
That is about 115 characters, which is one segment. Appointment reminder SMS has more templates and timing options.
2. Review requests
Send them a couple of hours after the visit, while the experience is fresh:
"Thanks for coming in today, Sam. If we got it right, a quick Google review helps a small shop like ours: [link]. Reply STOP to opt out."
Count the characters once your real link is in. A long URL can push the text past 160 characters into a second segment. Short links keep it to one.
3. One monthly offer
Send one offer, once a month, and make it a real offer:
"Maple Street Bakery: this Saturday only, buy a dozen, get 6 free. Show this text at the counter. Reply STOP to opt out."
That is plain text, under 160 characters, so it is one segment. Watch out for emojis. A single emoji changes the whole message to unicode, which allows only 70 characters per segment (67 per segment when the message is split).
For example, a 175-character promo:
- Without an emoji: 2 segments (153 characters each when split).
- With one emoji: 3 segments.
On a list of 800, that emoji costs you an extra 800 segments.
Curly quotes and long dashes are a different case. Ready swaps them for plain characters before sending, so they don't change your count. Ready also has an AI message writer and a spam-filter check that can help you draft and check these texts.
How often to text
Reminders and review requests are triggered by visits. Customers expect them, so they don't wear people out the way promos do. For marketing texts:
- Start at one promo a month. Watch your opt-out rate for two or three sends.
- Go up to two to four a month only if opt-outs stay low and people redeem the offers.
- Send during business hours. Late morning to early evening is a safe default, for example 10 AM to 6 PM. Ready holds any send that falls outside permitted local hours for the recipient's area code, and only charges for it when it actually goes out. Campaigns, drip campaigns and automations wait up to 24 hours for the window; a one-to-one or API text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours, otherwise it is refused and must be resent; a one-to-one reply to someone who texted you in the last 24 hours goes out at any hour.
Best time to send SMS marketing texts has suggested times for each industry.
Opted-in lists reply, but five texts a week will wear that down fast.
What it costs per text on Ready
Ready's Standard rate is $0.0075 per segment plus a $0.0045 carrier fee per segment. Replies you receive are billed the same way. That all-in figure doesn't include the compliance surcharge. DNC/litigator scrubbing and landline validation each add $0.003 per segment if you switch them on for your account. Both are off by default.
You buy prepaid credits through Stripe, and carrier fees show up as a separate line on your bill.
Worked example: a shop with 800 opted-in contacts
Assumptions: 150 appointments a month, every text is one segment, and about 100 reply segments come back.
| Text | Segments/month |
|---|---|
| Monthly offer to 800 contacts | 800 |
| Reminders (150 visits) | 150 |
| Review requests (150 visits) | 150 |
| Replies received | 100 |
| Total | 1,200 |
Here is the monthly cost:
- Ready's rate: 1,200 × $0.0075 = $9
- Carrier fees: 1,200 × $0.0045 = $5.40
- Registration: $27/mo with one number
- Total: about $41.40 a month
- If the offer has an emoji: the offer alone goes from 800 to 2,400 segments, which adds 1,600 × $0.0075 = $12 in rate plus the matching carrier fees
If you want to scrub your list once before the first send, the standalone TCPA and DNC Litigator Scrub costs $0.005 per contact. For 800 contacts, that is 800 × $0.005 = $4.
Tradeoffs
- Raw APIs and GoHighLevel's built-in texting: A developer API like Twilio, or GoHighLevel's LC Phone, costs less per segment than our Standard rate. If you have a developer, or you already live in GoHighLevel, those are reasonable choices. With a raw API, though, you build consent capture, STOP handling, quiet hours and registration yourself.
- What Ready includes: Self-serve registration, automatic opt-outs, quiet-hours holds, two-way inbox, campaigns and templates, all in one place. We don't offer volume discounts.
- Per-seat texting tools: If your current tool charges per seat or by monthly plan, run the 1,200-segment math above against your actual bill.
Your afternoon plan
- Hour 1: Write your disclosure. Put it on a counter sign and add the checkbox to your online forms.
- Hour 2: Sign up, add a card, and use your free texts to test reminders and review requests on your own phone.
- Hour 3: Submit registration, with sample messages that match those three campaigns.
- While you wait: Draft the monthly offer and count its segments.
The quickstart docs walk through each screen. Current rates are on our pricing page.
FAQ
Do I have to register before texting customers?
For anything ongoing, yes. You can send up to 500 texts a month before you register, and most approvals take 2 to 7 days. Unregistered traffic gets filtered by carriers.
Can I text customers whose numbers I already have?
Only if they agreed to receive texts. A phone number on file isn't consent. Contact the others by phone or mail, and invite them to opt in.
What happens when someone replies STOP?
Ready honors it automatically. That contact is then blocked from every campaign you send. Opted-out numbers are refused before sending and aren't charged.
How many marketing texts a month is too many?
Start with one promo a month and watch opt-outs. Two to four is a reasonable ceiling for most small shops. Reminders and review requests don't count toward that.
Is SMS compliance fully handled for me?
No. Opt-out handling, quiet-hours holds and optional scrubbing reduce your risk. Collecting consent, keeping proof of it, and choosing who to text are still your responsibility.