Best text message marketing campaigns and examples to copy

Most "best SMS campaign" roundups give you a screenshot of a coupon text and a claim that it "drove 40% more sales." You can't verify the number, and you can't copy the screenshot because it was written for someone else's list. This post gives you seven campaigns organized by goal. Each one has message copy you can adapt, when to send it, and the one number that tells you whether it worked.

We're not going to paste customer results we can't show you. For each campaign we tell you which metric to measure and give a rough range where an honest one exists. Your first send gives you your baseline. Your second send tells you whether the change you made helped. All examples use a fictional coffee roaster, "Bloom Coffee," and a fictional salon. Swap in your own business.

How to read these examples

Every campaign below follows the same rules:

• It goes only to people who opted in. Marketing texts go to consented subscribers. A phone number collected at checkout isn't marketing consent on its own.
• It names the business first. Carriers and recipients both look for this.
• It stays under 160 characters where possible. That keeps it to one segment. The cost section shows why this matters.
• It has one job. That means one link, one code or one reply. If you ask for two things, you can't tell which one worked.

Here's the overview before the detail:

1. The welcome text

This is the highest-intent moment you'll get. The person signed up a few seconds ago.

Bloom Coffee: Thanks for joining! Here's 15% off your first order: code HELLO15 at bloomcoffee.com/shop. Msg freq varies. Reply STOP to opt out.

That's 144 characters, so one segment. Send it immediately as an automation and not as part of a scheduled campaign. A welcome that arrives the next morning has lost most of its value.

Metric: redemptions of HELLO15 within seven days, divided by new subscribers. A unique code tells you exactly where the order came from. A generic sitewide code doesn't.

If one text isn't enough, our SMS welcome series examples cover a three-message drip campaign that adds a "how to order" text and a last-chance reminder.

2. The flash sale

A flash sale works because the deadline is real. If you run a "48-hour sale" every week, people learn to ignore it.

Bloom Coffee 🔥 48-hour sale: every bag of beans is 25% off through Sunday midnight. Code FLASH25 at bloomcoffee.com/sale. Reply STOP to opt out.

Look at that emoji. Without it, this message is one segment. With it, the whole message switches to unicode encoding and becomes three segments. The cost section works out what that does to the bill.

Timing: send when the sale opens. Then send one reminder 4 to 6 hours before it ends, and only to people who haven't bought. Exclude anyone who already ordered, because texting buyers about a sale they already used makes them unsubscribe. For seasonal timing, our Black Friday SMS campaign ideas cover the busiest week of the year in detail.

Metric: revenue per 1,000 texts sent. This lets you compare sales of different sizes on equal terms.

3. The abandoned cart

Bloom Coffee: You left Ethiopia Yirgacheffe in your cart. It's still there: bloomcoffee.com/cart. Questions on grind size? Just reply here.

That's 140 characters. Notice the copy has no discount. Many carts are abandoned because of a question, not the price. Inviting a reply recovers some orders without giving away margin. If you add a second nudge 24 hours later, that's the place for a small incentive.

Timing: send 1 to 4 hours after the cart is abandoned. Sooner than that feels like surveillance, and much later the person has moved on.

The consent caveat: send this only to people who opted into marketing texts. If someone typed their number into the checkout form without ticking an SMS consent box, they haven't opted in. This trigger is one of the first ones worth building, and our guide to SMS marketing automation workflows walks through how to set it up.

Metric: recovered orders as a share of carts texted.

4. The win-back

Start with your own data. If a typical customer reorders every 30 days, flag anyone at about 45 days without an order.

Bloom Coffee: Your usual Colombia Huila is back in stock, and here's free shipping on it this week: bloomcoffee.com/huila. Reply STOP to opt out.

That's 145 characters. An earlier draft opened with "It's been a while." That pushed it to 164 characters and two segments, and the line added nothing. Cut lines like that.

Naming the customer's usual product is what makes a win-back text work. "We miss you" is weak copy. Naming their actual order shows you know what they buy.

Metric: repeat orders from the lapsed segment within the offer window. Compare against a slice of the same segment you didn't text. Without that holdout group, you can't tell whether these customers would have come back anyway.

5. Reply to claim

This is the campaign most teams skip. It turns a one-way announcement into a conversation.

Bloom Coffee: 40 bags of our holiday blend drop Friday. Want one held for you? Reply YES and we'll text a checkout link Friday at 10 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.

That's 159 characters, which just fits in one segment. When someone replies YES, they're telling you they intend to buy. On Friday, send the checkout link only to the people who said yes.

Metric: reply rate. Engaged, opted-in lists reply to reply-driven texts. Budget for the replies too: on Ready, a reply you receive is billed like a sent text.

6. Review request and rebook (local business)

These two texts work together for any business that runs on appointments, like salons, dental offices, auto shops and cleaners.

Same day as the visit:

Northside Hair: Thanks for coming in today, Dana. Would you leave us a quick review? nsidehair.com/review. Reply STOP to opt out.

Ask everyone. Only asking customers you expect to be happy runs against most review platforms' rules.

Just before the usual rebooking gap:

Northside Hair: It's been about 6 weeks since your cut with Maya. Want your usual Thursday slot? Reply with a day and we'll book it.

The rebook text asks for a reply, not a click. That's on purpose: replying to a text is less work for the customer than opening a booking form.

A registration note: reminders and marketing are different use cases when you register for 10DLC. If you send both, register a campaign whose use case covers both. Don't register for reminders and then send promos.

Metrics: reviews posted, and appointments booked from the rebook texts.

What these campaigns cost to send

Segments are what you pay for, not messages. A message of 160 or fewer plain characters is one segment. Longer messages split into 153-character segments. One emoji switches the whole message to unicode, which caps a single segment at 70 characters and a multipart segment at 67.

Ready swaps curly quotes, long dashes and ellipses for plain versions before sending, so those characters won't change your segment count. Emoji are different, and Ready doesn't swap them.

Here's the flash sale above sent to 5,000 subscribers on Ready's Standard rate of $0.0075 per segment, plus a $0.0045 carrier fee per segment:

• With the emoji: 5,000 × 3 segments = 15,000 segments. That's $113 in segment charges, plus 15,000 × $0.0045 in carrier fees.
• Without the emoji: 5,000 × 1 segment = 5,000 segments. That's $38 in segment charges, plus 5,000 × $0.0045 in carrier fees.

One character triples the bill. If the emoji earns its cost in your own A/B test, keep it. Most of the time it doesn't.

The all-in figure above excludes the optional compliance surcharge. TCPA/DNC scrubbing and landline validation each add $0.003 per segment when switched on, and both are off by default. Pricing is on the pricing page.

Compliance and send-time basics

A few habits apply to every campaign above:

• Mind quiet hours. Ready holds sends that fall outside permitted local hours for the recipient's area, and sends them when the window opens. Within the allowed window, mid-morning to early evening in the recipient's time zone is a sensible default. 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.
• Honor STOP everywhere. When someone replies STOP, Ready records the opt-out across all your campaigns. You don't need to scrub your lists by hand before each send.
• Check the copy before you send. Ready's AI message writer includes a spam-filter check. It flags wording that carriers tend to filter, like all-caps urgency and shortened links.
• Register first. Unregistered marketing traffic gets filtered by carriers. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days.

The practical takeaway

Choose the campaign that matches the goal you have this month, not the one that looks clever. Keep each text to one segment and one call to action. Decide on the metric before you send, so you have a baseline to beat next time. If you want more ideas organized by season and industry, our SMS marketing campaign ideas post continues where this one stops.

To try any of these in Ready, create an account. Your first 20 one-to-one texts are free, so use them to test your copy before you register. Campaigns are billed from the first text, and you'll need a card on file to send.