Though SMS marketing is a powerful advertising channel in its own right, it’s most effective when it’s part of a larger marketing strategy that seamlessly integrates other channels like social media and a mobile friendly website. Ideally, your SMS campaign is driving web traffic and social media presence in addition to improving sales directly through promotional offers and coupons. Here are a few ways to make sure that your SMS marketing efforts are accomplishing these aims.

Include links in your bulk SMS messages

If you want to use your SMS channel to drive traffic to your website, then a logical first step is to include a link to your website. It reduces the number of steps it takes for a text message recipient to get to your site. Instead of closing their messaging app, opening their browser and searching for your website by name, a link can take them to any landing page of your choosing. Similarly, you can include links to social media profiles to make it easier for your SMS recipients to find you on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or other popular platforms.

Include incentives in your text message blast

Simply providing links alone isn’t going to drive traffic. You also have to provide recipients with some kind of value in exchange for clicking on the link. In other words, they need a good reason to want to do it. An obvious incentive would be some kind of deal or coupon though even the promise of exciting or interesting information such as a new product announcement can act as a kind of incentive.

Use a good SMS marketing platform

Don’t attempt to run your SMS marketing campaign on your own. Bulk SMS platforms help automate the process of sending text messages. For instance, they allow you to create a message in the present, but time it to be sent at a future time or date. But most important if your goal is to drive web traffic, SMS marketing platforms provide you with good metrics that you can use to gauge the success of your efforts. By looking at the click-through rates on the included links in text messages, you can see what kinds of incentives are getting people to click and which ones aren’t so you can adjust as needed.

Keep your SMS messages short

The first “S” in SMS stands for “short.” Customers expect text messages to be short. Longer texts may be broken up into multiple texts by the recipient’s cell phone providers which may cause them to not read the full text. That means if your link is closer to the bottom, customers may never see it or lose interest before they get to it.

Tell them what you want them to do

Don’t be afraid to be direct with your audience. Don’t just include a link and hope they click on it. Include a call to action—tell them to click on the link and tell them what they’ll get in return when they do.