Sending bulk SMS online to thousands of potential customers at once is a solution that can boost a marketing campaign in France. However, for the campaign to generate the maximum number of positive responses, it is important to choose your keywords carefully. We will provide you with some advice to help you select your keywords, along with a few tips to maximize the impact of your campaign for free. It is essential to follow this simple step before sending SMS to potential prospects online using a messaging service.

1) Send SMS to your contacts using impactful keywords

To understand the importance of keywords, you must put yourself in the shoes of a prospect receiving an SMS on their mobile phone. Indeed, although 98% of SMS messages are opened, users only give them a quick glance. The keywords you include in your message must therefore allow your contacts to understand your SMS in just a few seconds. The keyword must be short and, above all, highly representative so that prospects can instantly grasp what you are offering. Whether you are showcasing your products or looking to sell them directly, your success often depends on your choice of keywords.

2) Choose a short keyword compatible with autocorrect

For your online SMS campaign to be a success, prospects must be able to easily remember the keyword that represents your product and be able to type it back if you want a response. It is therefore essential to choose a short keyword, consisting of a maximum of three syllables, that is simple to type to facilitate its use. Only by following these rules will the service be used optimally.

It is also important that the keyword included in your messages is compatible with the autocorrect system found on most smartphones. You have certainly had the unpleasant surprise of realizing that your mobile phone replaced one word with another automatically without you noticing. Autocorrect only accepts common words, which is why we advise against inventing words or using proper nouns, which risk being automatically "corrected" before the SMS is sent online or via email. It is also best to run several tests with different types of mobile devices to test the keyword(s) chosen for the message.

3) In your messages, choose a keyword that does not include symbols or numbers

Using a special character like ? / ! @ #… or a number in an SMS might be a good trick to block autocorrect on certain mobile phone models in France. However, this type of keyword is more complicated to type back because, by default, users only have access to a basic keyboard when writing messages, which does not include symbols or numbers. They would have to switch keyboards or switch to an extended keyboard to retype the keyword from the messages, which complicates things and lowers the response rate.

4) Beware of the subjectivity of the chosen keyword(s)

Reading, understanding, and interpreting a word is entirely subjective. When reading, our brain can replace certain letters to make us read one word instead of another or replace a word to change the meaning of a sentence. Furthermore, the shorter the text, the faster it is read, and the more this phenomenon is accentuated. Obviously, this subjectivity is unique to each individual and is therefore quite difficult to avoid. Unfortunately, we cannot simply ignore this subjectivity. We should therefore avoid abbreviations, spelling approximations, and especially words that sound too similar to others and could be confused.

5) Should you choose one or two keywords for your mobile SMS campaign?

This choice largely depends on your product or service and the type of campaign you wish to run. If we look at television, which is increasingly using SMS, keywords are often composed of two words, such as "VoteAlex." This practice actually offers several advantages:

• Your keyword will have the advantage of being unique, because even if the first keyword of the set is already in use, adding the second word will make the combination unique, which will facilitate the creation of a dedicated website.
• You will be able to associate your keyword with an action verb, which normally helps to boost the results of a campaign for free, leading to a much higher response rate.
• Two-word keywords can be particularly useful for running multiple consecutive mobile campaigns. This allows you to keep either the first or the second word for your subsequent online campaigns.

Of course, this practice also has drawbacks that should be considered before making your choice:

• A two-word keyword cannot be used across all media (email, SMS, etc.). Since it won't be presented as a single word, users will instinctively type it as two separate words when searching on the internet and may fail to find your services.
• Similarly, a keyword consisting of two joined words will not have the same impact across all generations. While younger generations will immediately recognize it as a keyword, older individuals who are less accustomed to online campaigns may find it harder to identify.

To find the solution best suited to your needs, discover our various services for SMS.