What possibilities does SMS marketing open up? And what challenges come with it? We take a closer look at when SMS adds value to the relationship.
1. maj 2026
SMS has found a solid place in the digital channel mix. It lands in your pocket, is read within minutes and is not easily overlooked. That is precisely its strength – and more and more organisations are indeed including SMS in their member communication.
But that is also what, in our experience, can make SMS demanding to handle with care. The closer we get to the recipient, the smaller the margin for a misstep. And it is rarely the technology that fails. It is more likely the judgement of whether the message is relevant to the person receiving it.
When we look at SMS, we do so with the same perspective as the rest of member communication: we see loyalty first and foremost as relational rather than transactional. That comes from a basic respect for the recipient's time, attention and judgement. And with that perspective it makes more sense to look closely at whether an individual message is relevant – and less at how often we can send.
Technically, SMS marketing is simple: a couple of lines of text. No visual devices to hide behind. And the message is received on the phone, in the same format as a message from someone you know.
The messages can take the form of anything from order confirmations, shipping updates and reminders – to campaign messages with offers, launches or exclusive invitations. And legally the framework is clear: the recipient must have given consent, the sender must be identifiable, and unsubscribing must be simple.
The decisive considerations lie elsewhere. With SMS offering limited room for nuance, every word becomes visible. And significant. What is written is all there is. And that makes missteps more noticeable.
Our short answer: relevance decides it.
We see SMS adding value to the relationship when the message is experienced as relevant to the recipient – when it makes a concrete contribution, a confirmation, a piece of information or an opportunity that genuinely matters to them. And where relevance is present, SMS is rarely experienced as intrusive. The recipient has consented to hear from us, and the rhythm of the channel recedes into the background as long as the content hits the mark.
In practice we see it most clearly in the message types we most often work with for our customers: order confirmations, vouchers and one-time codes. These are messages the recipient is waiting for, and where the speed and directness of SMS is a plus. Another obvious example we return to is catching a user by SMS when an email bounces. Here a relevance for getting in touch arises out of the recipient's concrete situation.
And the opposite? That might be a generic offer; a piece of news that does not concern the individual; or a message that could just as well have sat in an email. Our experience tells us it is not necessarily the frequency of messages that wears the relationship down. It is typically the irrelevant message or the misplaced context.
The channel's immediate characteristics are clear: SMS gets read, quickly. But the reading itself does not tell us how often we should use SMS. Rather, how much is at stake in each individual message. And it is when the message is not experienced as relevant – despite being read – that it can wear on the relationship. It wears down through a slow cooling. A gradual distancing that rarely shows up in the reports.
We find, however, that the discussion often turns on how much we are "allowed" to send. Our work with SMS marketing shows us that there is more value in asking: "what do we know about the recipient, and do we have something relevant to say?". That way we can make frequency a consequence rather than a starting point – and let it adjust naturally while relevance sets the frame.
It is also our impression, when we see customers using SMS actively for campaigns, that they are very selective about which segments the messages go to. Partly out of regard for the cost of sending in bulk, partly because the gain from reaching the right recipient stands or falls with relevance.
When SMS is to form part of a member communication that weights the relationship more heavily than the conversion – as is also the case in our collaborations – we notice a different kind of curiosity when the strategy is laid out.
If the focus were primarily on conversion optimisation, the questions might be:
When do most people open?
How many texts can we send without people unsubscribing?
How do we get the most out of the channel?
When the focus is on the relationship, the questions can shift towards:
Does the recipient have a concrete need for this particular message?
What do we know about the recipient that makes the message relevant?
What can SMS do that other channels cannot – and are we using it for that?
The last one points towards a direction for SMS flows that follows the recipient's own rhythm more closely. That will typically involve automation triggered when something actually happens to the recipient. The sender is clearly identifiable and offers the natural next step.
Our experience with SMS comes particularly from the practical, technical setup in the context of the rest of the member communication. The strategy for how SMS best works alongside an individual company's goals is typically something we qualify together with the customer – rather than something we carry around as a finished recipe.
When SMS is the right choice, and what makes the discipline taste exactly right, comes down to what we want out of the member communication – whether that is conversions or loyalty, in the short or the long term.
At Yulsn we work on setting up and automating SMS for our customers as part of their overall member communication. Always with relevance to the recipient as the basis for our advice.