How to Launch a Product Using Texts

Bringing your product to market can be intimidating and tricky.

There are so many moving parts in the process—which is why you need to prepare well before the launch date.

A product manager survey from Gartner found that only 55% of product launches happen on schedule. This includes nailing down your messaging and positioning, sharing them with your team, listing out your launch activities, creating content and assets, and so on.

Knowing how to create a successful product launch strategy is half the battle. The other half is implementing it. With the rise of text messaging and mobile payments, you can reach a segment of people you might have left out with previous launches.

Text messaging your audience is a cost-efficient and ROI-rich tactic for your product launch for a couple of reasons. Users read text messages within seconds (text messages have 98% open rates), and people click through more than other marketing channels like email.

Here’s a quick guide on how to use texting for your next product launch.

How to Launch a Product Using Texts

What to do Pre-Launch

A comprehensive strategy that uses several marketing channels is good, but texting your audience elicits the greatest return on investment (ROI) by far.

There are several tactics to get people to buy your product. Before you start texting, here are some things to do first:

Define your target audience

• Identify the problem your product is solving
• Understand your buyer’s journey
• Build your audience or a list of folks who are interested

How to Choose a Launch Date

It’s essential to time the release of your product because it can make or break the overall success of the launch.

For instance, timing the product launch around an event like a TV premiere or movie can help generate buzz and jump-start your campaign.

Several factors come into play when deciding on a launch date. For instance, you need to consider your customers’ behavior and when they’re most likely to purchase your product. Avoid days when people start their workweeks, like Mondays.

You’ll also need to consider whether to launch your product on special days of the year, such as Black Friday, Thanksgiving, or Cyber Monday, among others.

Plan as far in advance as possible, so you can decide if you will tease your product via text or socials ahead of the actual launch. During your launch, if you have a team, be sure to involve key team members to troubleshoot unexpected hiccups.

What Types of Messages Should I Send?

There are several types of messages you can send out to your audience. Here are just a few of the ideas that can maximize your product launch:

• Teaser message: send something that doesn’t give too much away but still gets people thinking about what’s coming.
• Product introduction: if your product or brand isn’t known, send messages that introduce the product, drive the value it brings, and notify people about the launch date and any exclusives.
• Countdown: if your customers have been on a waitlist for your product, send countdown messages ahead of the launch day.
• Launch reminder: invite people to click on a link to save the launch day on their calendars.
• Product launch announcement: announce that your product has launched and is available. Tell people how to get it and add a solid call to action, so it’s easy for them to act.
• Thank-You message: thank every customer who ordered your new product. You can also ask them to tag or share about it on their social media pages and refer to their friends.
• Invite reviews/seek feedback: request customer feedback and testimonials for your website, social media, or on third-party review sites. You can use polls or surveys to gauge customer satisfaction with your product.

Important to note, you won’t want to do all of these. Pick a few and don’t overdo it.

How to Build a Campaign

Campaigns must be on brand and valuable to customers—not annoying or intrusive.

Keep texts short, simple, and to the point. Sending lengthy messages bores and annoys people, and they won’t bother reading them. They may also opt-out of receiving your texts in the future.

Grab their attention and communicate your message with a call to action. But avoid bombarding users with every piece of company news or promotion. They’ll simply ignore texts as they do with social media ads or billboards.

A campaign should follow the same theme and be about the same product. If you’re running a product launch campaign, don’t send texts about other things during your campaign. That will confuse people. Don’t send more than one message in a day.

Schedule campaign texts when you think they will be the most impactful and limit the number of texts you send to a specific number of customers. A campaign is a good time to do an A/B test to see when people respond to your texts and buy your product. Note when you schedule your messages.

Remember to provide an unsubscribe option, so customers know they can opt-out of your program if they so choose.

How to Measure Campaign Success

Tracking your text campaign’s success lets you learn about your audience, know and improve on what works, and see more impressive ROI.

Some of the most valuable metrics to measure include:

• Conversion/Clickthrough rate: percentage of subscribers who take a specific action after receiving your SMS.
• Delivery rate: the number of messages that reach a user’s phone divided by the total number of messages sent. It gives you an idea about the quality of your database.
• Unsubscribe/attrition rate: percentage of unsubscribes during your campaign. If it’s consistently high, you need to review your message cadence, send times, and other factors.
• Customer acquisition cost: how much you spend to gain a new customer.
• Return on investment: how much you get out of your texting efforts.
• List growth rate: how much your subscriber list increased over the campaign duration.

Get the Most Out of Your Product Launch

Product launches can be one of the most stressful times, but also one of the most exciting times for brands and indie creators. After everything that goes into creating something great, you deserve to see success when you’re ready to sell it. By making a thorough launch plan and using texting as part of it, you can increase your chances of reaching new audiences and ultimately reaching your sales goals.

Get Parrot and see how you can get the most out of your next product launch.

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