SMS is one of those channels that looks simple until you start using it.

You’ve got a phone number, a short message, and a link. How hard can it be?

Pretty hard, apparently.

A lot of brands are still getting the basics wrong: collecting the wrong subscribers, sending too often, ignoring high-intent moments, and writing texts people don’t actually want to receive.

So we broke down 10 SMS mistakes brands are making right now, plus what to fix before your next send.

Also inside:

→ This brand couldn't see what its email was doing. A month later it was making $60 for every $1.
→ Raising AOV doesn't always have to mean raising prices
→ Are you skipping out on your best segments?
→ RCS is making branded texts actually look branded, most measurement dashboards are lying to you about margins, and NRF says stop planning and start prototyping.

This brand couldn't see what its email was doing. A month later it was making $60 for every $1.

Win Your Dream Bike had an email channel and basically no idea what it was up to: no attribution, no visibility, no way to tell what was working or why.

So The Email Ace moved them off SendGrid and onto Omnisend in under a day, then went to work with A/B testing, popups, and list-growth plays to reach an audience they'd never been capturing.

The first month:

• $60 back for every $1 spent, well past the $40 industry average
• 100% submission rate on the new popup
• A fresh audience segment that didn't exist before

👉 Read the full story

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👌 The Quick Take: Raising AOV doesn't always mean raising prices.

The fastest way to grow average order value isn't charging more. It's giving shoppers better reasons to add more to their cart.

These three tactics consistently increase basket size without touching your pricing strategy:

10 SMS marketing mistakes brands are still making

SMS can be one of the highest-performing channels in your retention strategy, but only when it’s used with intention.

Right now, a lot of brands are making the same avoidable mistakes: chasing low-quality opt-ins, sending too many messages, underusing high-intent moments, and writing texts that don’t match how people actually engage on mobile.

The result? More opt-outs, weaker engagement, and missed revenue from a channel that should be driving action.

Here are 10 SMS marketing mistakes brands are still making, and what to do instead.

1. Growing your list with the wrong incentives

A big SMS list doesn’t mean much if most people joined for a one-time discount and never wanted to hear from you again.

Discount-led popups can grow your list quickly, but they often attract subscribers who are only there for the savings. That can lead to weaker engagement, higher opt-out rates, and a channel that looks healthy on paper but underperforms in practice.

Instead, give people a better reason to subscribe.

Offer early access, back-in-stock alerts, product drop notifications, VIP perks, post-purchase updates, or genuinely useful reminders. The goal isn’t just to collect phone numbers. It’s to build a list of people who actually want the kind of messages SMS is best at delivering.

2. Saving MMS for “special occasions” only

MMS costs more than a plain text message, so it’s easy to treat it like an occasional upgrade.

But when you’re promoting a product, launch, limited-time offer, or anything visual, the extra cost can be worth it.

A strong image, GIF, or branded visual can make the message feel more legitimate and more compelling. It gives customers instant context, especially when the product itself is the hook.

Use MMS when the visual helps someone understand the offer faster or makes the decision easier. Don’t add creative just to fill the message. Add it when it helps sell.

3. Sending too many texts

SMS is not the place to test how much attention you can squeeze out of your audience.

It’s intimate. It shows up next to messages from friends, family, delivery drivers, and appointment reminders. That means the bar is higher than almost any other owned channel.

For many brands, four to eight well-timed texts per month is a healthier starting point than trying to send every campaign through SMS. The best cadence depends on your audience, buying cycle, and offer strategy, but the principle stays the same: every text should earn its place.

If the message doesn’t feel timely, useful, or worth the interruption, it probably doesn’t belong in SMS.

4. Trying to make every SMS conversational

Conversational commerce sounds great in theory. A customer texts, the brand responds, and the sale happens naturally.

But for a lot of brands, broad two-way SMS is hard to manage at scale. It can create operational drag fast, especially if the team doesn’t have the support systems or automation needed to keep up.

That doesn’t mean two-way SMS isn’t valuable... it just needs a clear use case.

Use it for high-intent moments like reorders, product recommendations, support follow-ups, transactional confirmations, or VIP conversations. When the customer’s intent is obvious, two-way SMS can remove friction. When the use case is vague, it just becomes another channel your team has to babysit.

5. Treating transactional texts as purely functional

Transactional texts get attention because customers are already looking for them.

Order confirmations, shipping updates, delivery notices, and post-purchase reminders are some of the most opened messages a brand can send. That makes them valuable real estate.

The mistake comes in when treating them as purely operational.

Yes, the core update needs to be clear. But once that job is done, there’s usually room for a relevant upsell, cross-sell, product education moment, loyalty prompt, or replenishment reminder.

The word “relevant” matters here. A random promo inside a shipping update can feel tacked on. A thoughtful next step can feel helpful.

6. Segmenting based on old signals

Email segmentation often leans heavily on past behavior: purchase history, customer type, lifetime value, or engagement over time.

Those signals still matter when it comes to SMS, but immediacy matters more.

SMS segmentation should account for what someone is doing right now, or what they’re likely to act on soon. Think:

- Recent site behavior
- Recent product interest
- Time-sensitive intent
- Local timing
- Back-in-stock requests
- Cart activity
- Purchase signals from the past few days

SMS works best when it feels timely. If the segment is too stale, the message can feel random.

7. Ignoring SMS keywords

SMS keywords are one of the most underused tools in the channel.

They let customers raise their hand directly:
- Text RESTOCK for an alert
- Text VIP to join a list
- Text DROP for launch updates
- Text SIZE for product help.

That kind of customer-initiated action is powerful because the intent is already there. You’re not guessing whether someone cares; they’ve just told you.

Keywords can be especially useful for product launches, replenishment, waitlists, in-store experiences, events, creator campaigns, and VIP programs. They also give customers a simple way to self-select into the messages they actually want.

8. Focusing on the wrong compliance risks

A lot of brands think about SMS compliance in terms of basic footer language, opt-out instructions, and quiet hours.

Those things matter. But the bigger risks usually come from more fundamental issues: texting people who didn’t explicitly consent, using purchased lists, burying SMS consent inside broader marketing terms, or failing to make opt-in language clear.

SMS is permission-based. That’s not just a legal requirement. It’s also what keeps the channel healthy.

If someone doesn’t understand what they signed up for, they’re much more likely to opt out, complain, or lose trust in the brand. Clear consent protects the business and creates a better subscriber experience.

9. Launching SMS before email is working

SMS shouldn’t be used to patch a weak retention strategy.

If your email program isn’t performing, SMS probably won’t magically solve the problem. In fact, it may expose the same issues faster: weak offers, unclear segmentation, poor timing, or messages that don’t give customers a real reason to act.

Before adding SMS, make sure your email foundation is solid. Your welcome flow, post-purchase flow, abandoned cart flow, campaign strategy, segmentation, and content calendar should already be doing their job.

SMS works best as an extension of a strong retention system, not a replacement for one.

10. Writing texts that try to do too much

SMS doesn’t have room for the long setup.

It’s not the place for dense storytelling, detailed product education, or multi-paragraph brand messaging. That content belongs in email, landing pages, blog posts, or product pages.

SMS should be short, clear, and action-oriented.

Use it for alerts, reminders, drops, limited-time offers, back-in-stock messages, replenishment prompts, and moments where quick action matters. Give the customer the key information, make the next step obvious, and get out of the way.

The takeaway: SMS works when it earns the interruption

SMS can drive serious revenue, but only if you're willing to respect how customers actually experience the channel.

Because it shows up in such a personal space, every part of the strategy has to work harder: the reason someone opts in, the timing of each send, the segment it goes to, the consent behind it, the message itself, and the action you’re asking them to take.

The goal isn’t to send more texts. It’s to make every message feel timely, relevant, and worth acting on.

Are you skipping out on your best segments?

You know the ones: the engaged shoppers who never bought, the 60-day lapsed, the post-purchase crowd ready for a cross-sell. 

Each deserves its own campaign, and you know what it should say. 

You just don't have the hours to build them all, so they get the generic send, or nothing.

Paid media never makes that trade.

Allan brings that same energy to email. 

Stock the shelf once with your headlines, images, offers, and copy, and it runs set-and-forget campaigns to every segment, building each email per subscriber.

You know those segments were never low value. They were just too much work… until now.

→ Start your 30-day free trial

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🍦 DTC Scoop:

RCS is about to make your text messages look like emails (in a good way)

SMS was never built for branding. Messages show up from random numbers with no logo, no visual identity, and no way to tell if it's legit. RCS fixes that with verified sender info, brand visuals, and rich media baked into the message. Early campaigns are seeing 58% higher click-through rates, and since Apple adopted RCS in late 2024, coverage is nearly universal.

The way most brands measure what's working is costing them money

ROAS, CAC, and conversion rate all live in their own silos. A retail media campaign might look wildly efficient until you layer in trade spend, slotting fees, and operational costs. And most tools still treat online and offline as separate worlds. The founders who've scaled past the early stage all learned the same thing: the dashboard that got you to $5M won't get you to $50M.

NRF wants retailers to stop overthinking and start prototyping

CONTROLTEK ran its 39th design thinking workshop at NRF PROTECT 2026. The premise: retail teams spend too much time analyzing and not enough time building scrappy solutions. One group tackled store manager retention and came out with a flexible scheduling model in under an hour. "You have to show the bad work, or else you never get the solution."

Annnnd that’s a wrap for this edition! 

Thanks for hanging with Chase and me. Always a pleasure to have you here.

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Remember: Do shit you love.

🤘 Jimmy Kim & Chase Dimond

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