Best Practices for SMS Keywords

Last week's episode was about call to action best practices. This week we are going to focus on a specific piece of the call to action - they keyword. Here are keyword best practices.

• I like to capitalize the keyword. It highlights what the user should text in, but doesn’t confuse them with quotes. Any text message vendor should be able to handle capital or lowercase letters, just like a URL.
• Keep the keyword simple. Just use a word. Again, think like an ideal URL and focus on simple and understandable. Sometimes teams want to squeeze their brand message into a keyword. Imagine if Skittles tried to make “Taste the rainbow” their keyword. Think of all the potential for misspellings. The keyword is for response, not branding.
• Use different keywords to track different promotions.
• Similarly, the worst possible misstep is making a keyword that feels like a tracking code. Yes, the keyword can track the promotion channel, but it shouldn’t feel like a tracking code. I’ve seen customers try to make TV2 or RADIONYC their keywords. DON’T DO THIS. No numbers in keywords, no weird combinations. Just a simple word.