SMS automation: Strategies, examples, and 5 best tools in 2025

SMS automation can assist you generate extra income, enhance buyer satisfaction, and maximize your advertising and marketing price range. Establishing automated messages which might be efficient in reaching these objectives requires: 

• Choosing the proper SMS marketing platform that matches your enterprise wants.
• Utilizing confirmed SMS templates and automation methods which might be simply customizable to your workflows.
• Having dependable information on prospects’ wants, pursuits, and preferences to make sure your messages are as related as potential.

On this information, you’ll study every little thing it is advisable to find out about SMS automation — together with what it’s, the way it works, confirmed methods, and 5 of one of the best SMS automation instruments for small, midsized, and enterprise companies.

What’s SMS automation?

SMS automation means utilizing automated instruments to set off textual content messages to recipients based mostly on predefined situations, schedules, or actions. 

The thought is to keep away from manually sending particular person messages and as a substitute arrange automated workflows prematurely, so SMS messages are despatched when sure situations are met.

For instance, you need to use SMS automation to welcome new customers, promote merchandise, remind prospects about upcoming occasions, or affirm orders. When arrange correctly, these automated SMS messages can assist you:

• Save time and streamline operations.
• Enhance buyer satisfaction by offering well timed and helpful data.
• Drive buyer engagement and conversions by way of related and contextual promotions.

Confirmed SMS automation methods and flows (& the best way to set them up)

As you’ll be able to see, textual content message automation features a broad vary of methods and techniques that may differ relying on every enterprise’ objectives. Nevertheless, there are some confirmed automations that almost all corporations with an internet presence can leverage, together with:Transactional updates.Transactional SMS is a sort of automated textual content message that companies ship to prospects to ship non-promotional data, like order confirmations, delivery updates, and account alerts. These messages aren’t simply helpful — they’re a should as prospects anticipate to obtain them. That’s why organising correct transactional automation is vital for sustaining buyer satisfaction.

• Customized product promotions. This will embody a complete vary of messages geared toward convincing leads or prospects to purchase a product, like sending bulk SMS messages to advertise flash gross sales and different particular presents. For max outcomes, it’s finest to personalize every promotional message, relying on the recipient’s wants and pursuits by way of manufacturers, costs, sizes, and different related attributes.

• Value drop alerts. These alerts are promotional messages that set off each time the worth of a related product will get lowered. For instance, most eCommerce shops let web site guests mark objects or manufacturers as favorites. Automated value drop alerts ship SMS messages to these customers each time one among their merchandise will get a value discount.

• Cart reminders. One other eCommerce traditional, deserted cart messages remind prospects to come back again and full their buy. They’re often triggered a number of instances — e.g., an hour after a buyer begins their buy with out finishing it after which once more the subsequent day. They will also be mixed with different techniques like reductions to maximise engagement and conversions.

• Occasion and appointment reminders. For instance, these can embody lodge reservations, upcoming flights, physician’s appointments, live shows, and way more. It’s additionally helpful to incorporate related data with every reminder, like reservation numbers. This ensures your messages are as helpful as potential which helps enhance buyer satisfaction and loyalty.

Establishing these and different automations requires using a specialised SMS advertising and marketing software program. There are tons of options on this class, most of which provide some type of drag-and-drop performance for constructing every message and a canvas-based automation software.

For instance, the screenshot beneath reveals how one can create an SMS message with Insider — our omnichannel customer engagement platform. As you’ll be able to see, you’ll be able to simply add components like recipients’ names, beneficial merchandise, coupons, and extra by choosing from an inventory. 

For the automation half, you need to use Architect — our buyer journey builder and marketing automation platform. The method requires choosing a channel (on this case SMS) and selecting varied automation triggers, situations, and wait instances.

For instance, you’ll be able to set off SMS messages based mostly on:

• An occasion, like a buyer opening a web page, including objects to their cart, finishing a purchase order, passing by your bodily retailer, or some other motion.
• An attribute change, like a buyer shifting as much as a better loyalty tier after spending over a certain quantity along with your model.
• A dynamic date, which is a good choice for celebrating buyer milestones (like birthdays or anniversaries) or working replenishment campaigns.
• A value drop or restocking of an merchandise that prospects are fascinated with.
• And extra. 

Once more, constructing every message and organising automation doesn’t require any coding or technical experience.

Nevertheless, there are platforms constructed particularly for builders that allow the programmatic creation and management of SMS advertising and marketing campaigns by way of APIs. For many manufacturers, that is extra of an expectation since most workflows don’t require that degree of management however we’ll nonetheless cowl one platform that permits this use case within the subsequent part.

Under, we discover 5 of the highest SMS advertising and marketing instruments. We’ve included resolution suppliers that serve completely different use circumstances for varied enterprise wants, like:

• Easy autoresponders, follow-ups, and buy confirmations.
• Excessive-volume SMS for sending hundreds of custom-made messages to leads and prospects.
• Two-way messages, both by way of dwell customer support brokers or AI-powered conversational assistants.
• Integrating SMS right into a broader omnichannel marketing strategy spanning electronic mail, WhatsApp, push notifications, and different touchpoints.

The primary two choices — Insider and Twilio — are appropriate for bigger corporations and workloads, whereas the final three — HubSpot, JustCall, and SimpleTexting — are geared in direction of midsized and small companies with less complicated wants.

#1 Insider: Greatest for midsized and enterprise corporations searching for superior SMS options and omnichannel capabilities

Insider is our AI-native omnichannel expertise and buyer engagement platform. 

It allows 1200+ main manufacturers, together with Adidas, Samsung, and Puma, to ship personalised buyer experiences throughout 12+ channels — together with SMS, WhatsApp, electronic mail, push notifications, on-site, cellular apps, and extra.

G2 customers rank Insider as one of the best SMS advertising and marketing platform, in addition to the top solution in 10 other categories like personalization software program, cellular advertising and marketing, and buyer information platforms (CDPs).

Our platform’s in depth SMS advertising and marketing capabilities can allow you to:

• Launch campaigns quick with confirmed templates: You’ll be able to increase your contact checklist by gathering cellphone numbers with partaking opt-in templates, like Wheel of Fortune or Decide a Reward. You even have loads of confirmed SMS templates for varied use circumstances, like confirming orders, informing prospects about supply standing, sending personalised birthday needs, reminding prospects about upcoming occasions, and lots of others.

• Ship promotional, transactional, and bulk SMS messages: Insider lets you take full benefit of SMS’ potential as a advertising and marketing channel. You’ll be able to arrange all kinds of SMS workflows — from highly-targeted automated value drop alerts and occasion reminders to mass personalised messages, one-time passwords (OTPs), account alerts, and extra.

• Section your audiences and personalize every message: Our platform permits you to section audiences based mostly on normal, predefined, and predictive traits, corresponding to chance to buy, chance to interact by way of SMS, and low cost affinity. This implies you’ll be able to ship extremely focused messages to prospects, based mostly on historic and real-time information, leading to higher engagement and better conversion charges.

• Generate segments, journeys, photographs, and replica: Sirius AI™ (our Generative AI resolution) can create buyer segments, journeys, photographs, and textual content based mostly on easy textual content prompts. This can assist you drastically velocity up SMS marketing campaign creation and obtain as much as 60% larger productiveness.

• Have two-way conversations to market, promote, and assist prospects: For instance, you’ll be able to depend on our Conversational AI to have data-driven, contextual, automated conversations that interact leads, drive conversions, and enhance loyalty. You can even arrange guidelines for transferring conversations to dwell brokers when vital for extra complicated queries.
• Entry a plethora of superior SMS advertising and marketing options: These embody end-to-end customer journey analytics, threat mitigation, SMS hygiene, price effectivity by way of short-URLs, and way more.

As we confirmed earlier, Insider additionally presents a buyer journey builder for organising and automating all kinds of SMS flows and campaigns. 

Plus, since Insider is a real omnichannel resolution, you need to use the journey builder to coordinate your efforts throughout all channels, together with SMS, WhatsApp, Fb Messenger, email, and extra by:

• Selecting the right channels and optimum ship instances: Insider can analyze customers’ behavioral banners to pick and robotically set off messages on the channels and on the instances they’re most definitely to interact. This will prevent weeks of guessing and guide testing.
• Operating A/B checks at scale: Insider comes with built-in A/B testing for evaluating topic strains, physique copy, photographs, and channels. Our AI can even optimize your journeys based mostly on the outcomes of every experiment, so that you don’t have to take action manually. All it is advisable to do is choose a profitable metric (e.g., open charges, conversion charges, or income) and a length for the check to you.

To study extra about Insider:

• Book a personalized demo with our team to cowl Insider’s SMS capabilities intimately.
• Check out our case study NA-KD. This model used Insider to consolidate its buyer information, launch its first focused SMS marketing campaign, and create seamless journeys throughout 5 channels. This helped it obtain a 25% improve in buyer lifetime worth (CLTV).

#2 Twilio: Greatest for customizing SMS automations by way of APIs 

Twilio presents communication APIs for SMS, voice, electronic mail, and authentication. It has APIs for tons of SMS use circumstances like constructing alerts, notifications, and advertising and marketing messages, creating commerce options, or sending OTP for two-factor authentication (2FA) and fraud safety. This makes it a particularly versatile platform but additionally one which requires developer experience to make use of accurately.

#3 HubSpot: Greatest SMS advertising and marketing automation with CRM integration for all enterprise sizes

HubSpot is among the hottest CRMs. The corporate additionally presents a widely-used advertising and marketing automation software program, with SMS being one of many predominant supported channels. Its SMS software lets groups create messages with a drag-and-drop editor, ship personalised communications at scale, and extra. By itself, this SMS software isn’t extremely differentiated however its native integrations with different HubSpot merchandise (just like the CRM and Advertising and marketing Hub) make it a lovely choice for a lot of groups counting on the HubSpot ecosystem.

#4 JustCall: Greatest for combining SMS automation with cellphone and different voice techniques

JustCall is an all-in-one enterprise communication platform. It helps channels like voice, electronic mail, SMS, and WhatsApp. Its devoted SMS automation software lets groups arrange varied triggers and situations to ship mass textual content messages, in addition to automate conversations. JustCall additionally allows groups to construct and deploy SMS bots that may reply repetitive buyer queries and assure quick response instances.

#5 SimpleTexting: Greatest for small companies searching for an economical SMS resolution

SimpleTexting is an SMS advertising and marketing companies and texting platform designed particularly for small companies. It has a easy setup and presents every little thing it is advisable to get began with textual content message advertising and marketing (SMS and MMS), together with:

• Auto-replies and pre-made templates.
• Decide-in instruments like net varieties, text-to-win, text-to-vote, and text-to-join.
• Numerous automation choices for scheduling messages, organising recurring messages, and constructing drip campaigns.

The platform has a free trial whereas its estimated month-to-month price begins at $33.20/month for 6000 credit, the place one SMS message makes use of up one credit score and one MMS makes use of three.

Drive conversions, income, and retention with Insider’s SMS automation

Insider is a whole, enterprise-grade SMS advertising and marketing platform that provides every little thing it is advisable to run profitable SMS campaigns — from varied opt-in choices and confirmed SMS templates to versatile automation choices, superior personalization, in-depth analytics, and AI-powered content material technology. 

Moreover, our platform helps a plethora of different channels natively, together with electronic mail, WhatsApp, push notifications, social media and search adverts, and extra. This makes it a super alternative for midsized and enterprise manufacturers trying to:

• Consolidate their buyer information in a real enterprise CDP and get 360-degree buyer views to function a basis for all their advertising and marketing efforts.
• Section their audiences utilizing normal, predefined, and AI-powered predictive traits for exact customer targeting.
• Maximize their advertising and marketing spend by personalizing and coordinating their efforts throughout all channels — together with SMS, WhatsApp, Fb Messenger, electronic mail, push notifications, and extra.
• Optimize web site and cellular all conversion charges by tailoring all components — like product suggestions, banners, classes, site search results, and extra — to every customer’s wants and preferences.

Lastly, our world buyer assist groups guarantee you’ll be able to deploy Insider and see worth from our platform as quick as potential.

Click here to book a demo with our team and learn how Insider can help you reach your business goals.