What is text marketing? How SMS marketing works and what it's for

Text marketing is a business sending SMS (or MMS) messages to people who have agreed to receive them: offers, reminders, order updates, and two-way conversations. It works because almost everyone reads their texts. It only stays working if you register your numbers, collect consent, and honor opt-outs.

This guide covers the mechanics, the three types of messages, what SMS is good and bad at, what a campaign costs, and the setup steps you can't skip. We make Ready, so we use it as the worked example throughout, and we say where another tool is the better fit.

Text marketing, defined

The short SMS marketing definition: permission-based messaging from a business to a phone number, sent through registered business routes rather than a personal phone.

Three things separate text marketing from texting a friend:

• Scale and software. Messages go out from a platform or an API, often to hundreds or thousands of contacts, with templates, scheduling and automations.
• Registration. In the US, business texts from regular 10-digit numbers travel over A2P 10DLC (application-to-person, 10-digit long code). Carriers require the sending brand and its use case to be registered. Our 10DLC explainer covers it in depth.
• Rules. The TCPA and carrier policies govern who you can text, when, and how they get out. Statutory damages run $500 to $1,500 per text, so these rules matter.

How SMS marketing works: from a business to a phone

A text goes through these steps:

1. The contact opts in. They tick a box on a checkout page, text a keyword, or agree on a booking form. You keep a record of that consent.
2. You write the message. A segment holds 160 standard characters. Longer messages split into parts of 153 characters each. One emoji drops the limit to 70 characters (67 per part).
3. The platform runs pre-send checks. On Ready, a number that has opted out or is blocklisted is refused up front and not charged. Numbers Ready has already seen as landlines are refused on every account, free. With landline validation switched on ($0.003 per segment, off by default), any number a lookup marks as a landline is refused too. A campaign or automation text scheduled during the recipient's quiet hours is held and sent later. An API text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours; otherwise Ready answers 409 QUIET_HOURS_BLOCK and queues nothing, so resend it after the window opens.
4. It leaves from a registered number. The message goes out from one of your numbers on your registered campaign, over carrier infrastructure.
5. The carrier filters it. The carrier checks the registration and scans the content. Unregistered traffic and spammy wording get filtered here, even on approved campaigns. This post on content-level blocking explains why.
6. The phone receives it, and replies come back. Replies land in an Inbox (and in GoHighLevel, for connected accounts). Your own software can pick them up through webhooks.

If you're a software platform texting on behalf of your customers, the flow is the same. Each customer gets a sub-account with its own numbers and its own 10DLC registration, and you drive it through one REST API. A single send looks like this:

POST https://api.tryready.com/v1/messages
X-API-Key: <key>
Idempotency-Key: <a new UUID for each text>

{"to": "+12125550199", "body": "Your order #1042 has shipped.", "consent_attested": true}

consent_attested is your promise that the recipient agreed to texts. The Idempotency-Key makes sure a retried request never sends twice. The messages API docs have the full reference.

Types of SMS marketing

Most business texts fall into three types. They carry different consent expectations, and carriers register them as different use cases.

The type matters at registration. Register a marketing campaign when you mostly send reminders, or the reverse, and you can end up filtered or throttled. Our use-case picking guide walks through the choice. If reminders are your main use, the appointment reminder SMS guide covers timing and templates.

Benefits of SMS marketing, and its real limits

What it's good at

• Getting read. A text lands on the lock screen. Email lands in a tab most people skim.
• Getting replies. Opted-in lists reply, and your list, offer and timing will move how much a lot.
• Time-sensitive messages. "Your table is ready," "the tech is 20 minutes out," and "sale ends at midnight" all lose value if they sit unread.
• Short paths to action. One link or one reply ("Reply YES to confirm") beats a page of copy.

What it's bad at

• Long content. Every 153 characters past the first segment is another billed segment. Newsletters belong in email.
• Cold outreach. SMS is for consented contacts and leads who have replied. Cold contact belongs on the phone or in the mail. Texting a purchased list is how businesses end up paying $500 to $1,500 per text.
• Frequency. Text too often and people reply STOP. Unlike an unsubscribe link, that opt-out is immediate and permanent across your campaigns.
• Throughput on day one. A fresh standard campaign moves roughly 1 to 4 segments per second, as an approximation; carriers publish no official rate card. T-Mobile also caps daily volume by brand trust score, starting around 2,000 messages a day at the lowest tier. Big sends take planning. See the best time to send SMS marketing for when to schedule them.

What a text marketing campaign costs: a worked example

Pricing is per segment, not per message, and that's where most budgets go wrong. On Ready, the Standard rate is $0.0075/segment plus a $0.0045 carrier fee per segment. The rate is the same at every volume. Enterprise pricing is custom; talk to us.

Example assumptions: 5,000 opted-in contacts and a 175-character promo.

• With one emoji: 175 characters in unicode means 67-character parts, so 3 segments. That's 5,000 × 3 = 15,000 segments. At $0.0075 that comes to $300, plus 15,000 × $0.0045 = $67.50 in carrier fees, $180.00 in all.
• Emoji removed, trimmed to 160 characters: 1 segment each, so 5,000 segments. That's $100, plus 5,000 × $0.0045 = $22.50 in carrier fees, $60.00 in all.

Removing one emoji and trimming 15 characters cuts the bill to a third. (Ready swaps curly quotes, long dashes and ellipses for plain ones before sending, so those never push you into unicode.)

Add a few more line items:

• Replies are billed like sent texts. If 500 people reply with one segment each, that's 500 × ($0.0075 + $0.0045) = $6.00.
• The standalone TCPA & DNC Litigator Scrub is $0.005 per contact if you'd rather clean a list once.
• Registration costs a monthly fee. $25/mo for registration + $2 per number. There's no setup fee; the charge when you submit is the first month, $25. Our 10DLC cost breakdown itemizes every fee.

Ready's all-in prices per segment include the carrier fee but not screening: Scrub lists and Number validation, the two switches in Settings under Compliance, each add $0.003 per segment when switched on, shown as screening on your bill, and both are off by default. Unless you turn the opt-out footer off, the first text to each contact, and one again from time to time, also gets "Reply STOP to opt out" and your business name if the message does not already have them, so a text close to the segment limit can bill one more segment.

The setup steps you can't skip

These are the steps for any provider. The Ready specifics are in each item.

1. Register your brand and campaign (A2P 10DLC). Ready handles brand and campaign registration in-app, and most approvals take 2 to 7 days. Before you register, an account can send up to 500 texts a month at its normal per-text rate. If you bought your number before registering, you send on our shared registration while yours is in review. Optional brand vetting ($79 Standard / $179 Enhanced, one-time) raises your trust score. It's only worth it for higher-volume senders.
2. Collect and store consent. The opt-in record belongs in your store: the time, the wording the person agreed to, and the page URL. Ready records your attestation on each bulk send and each API send that sets consent_attested (who sent, to how many, when). That builds an audit trail, but it isn't a per-contact consent record. A keyword reply doesn't create one.
3. Handle opt-outs automatically. Inbound STOP and UNSUBSCRIBE are honored, and the opt-out applies across every campaign. You can read this account's opted-out contacts through GET /v1/opt-outs.
4. Respect quiet hours. Ready holds sends outside permitted local hours, based on the recipient's area. 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.
5. Screen risky numbers. Turn on litigator/DNC scrubbing if your list didn't come entirely from your own forms.

None of this makes you immune to lawsuits. Compliance stays the sender's responsibility. These steps reduce risk; they don't remove it.

Where Ready fits, and where it doesn't

We'll be direct about per-segment price. Raw CPaaS APIs like Twilio (around $0.0083 a segment) and GoHighLevel's LeadConnector (around $0.0083 a message, about $0.0128 all-in) cost less per segment than our Standard rate. If you have engineers who want to build registration, opt-out handling and quiet hours themselves, a raw API is a reasonable choice.

What you get with Ready instead:

• Self-serve registration you submit in the app in one sitting. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days, and you can send your first texts the day you sign up.
• The compliance stack described above, built in.
• A CRM, pipeline, automations and a unified inbox.
• A native GoHighLevel install.
• Sub-accounts for platforms that text on behalf of their own customers.

Against per-seat texting tools and subscription plans, the math often goes the other way. Run your own numbers on the pricing page.

The practical takeaway

Text marketing works when four things are true: you text people who asked to hear from you, your numbers are registered, your messages are short enough to stay at one segment, and opting out is instant. Get those right and SMS is the channel people actually read.

To try it, the first 20 texts are free one-to-one sends; campaigns are paid from the first text. To send, you add a card and get a number, which is $2 a month with the first month charged when you get it. Use the free texts before you register, because they end once a registration is paid for. Start here, or read the API quickstart if you're integrating by API.

FAQ

What is SMS marketing, in one line?

Permission-based text messages from a business to its contacts, covering promotions, transactional updates and two-way conversations, sent over registered business routes.

Is text marketing legal?

Yes, with consent. Promotional texts need express written consent, and you must honor opt-outs and send within permitted hours. TCPA damages run $500 to $1,500 per text, so treat consent records seriously.

Do I need 10DLC registration to send text marketing?

For business texting from regular 10-digit US numbers, yes; carriers filter unregistered traffic. On Ready, you can send up to 500 texts a month before registering, and after that registration is required.

Why did my message cost three segments?

It probably had an emoji or other non-standard character, which drops the limit to 70 characters (67 per part). A 175-character message with an emoji comes to 3 segments.

Can I text a list I bought?

You shouldn't. SMS is for consented contacts and leads who have replied. Reach cold contacts by phone or mail, and scrub any list whose origin you can't vouch for.