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The TL;DR:
Let’s Chat D2C: SMS Marketing Costs and How to Control Them.
What I’m Thinking about this Week: Why I started a newsletter with Beehiiv and why you should too.
The D2Z Podcast: In this week’s episode, I sat down with Mike Begg, Founder and CEO of AMZ Advisers, an Amazon agency that specializes in growing 7-figure brands.
App Updates & Highlights: Superfiliate’s Instagram integration is now live! you’ll be able to discover new creators tagging you in posts, collect all UGC you’re tagged in, DM with creators directly on Instagram at scale, and much more.
Upcoming Events: I’m headed to SubSummit in Dallas June 17-19!
Let’s Chat D2C - SMS Marketing Costs and How to Control Them
SMS is one of the most effective retention channels there is but also one of the most expensive. Far too often, I see brands not following best practices when it comes to segmentation or in the actual copy they’re using (too many characters or emojis), leading to increased costs.
Revenue per Text
Revenue per text is one of the most important metrics you should be tracking, highlighting the effectiveness of your SMS marketing program. Typically, your average campaign revenue per text will be lower than your journey/automation revenue per text. I aim to have both above $1 per text, but it does depend on your AOV.
I’ll use the SMS marketing platform Attentive as an example of how the cost of a text changes.
Calculating Cost
In most platforms, as you compose the message it will show you how many SMS and MMS it’s going to cost. Messages will either be 1 or more SMS (text only), 1 MMS (media with up to 160 characters of text), or 1 MMS + 1 or more SMS.
How each character in messages is counted is based on GSM 7-bit encoding. Most characters will count as a single character but there are a few to watch out for:
Letters, numbers, and most punctuation marks count as 1 character
Extension characters count as 2 characters and include the following: | ^ € { } [ ] ~ \
Simple emojis like :) count as 2 characters (one for each symbol)
Unicode Emojis in Messages
Unicode emojis like 😍 have a significant impact on message segment length as they change the way that sent messages are encoded.
 Without an emoji this message costs only 1 SMS |  With an emoji, the same message costs 2 SMS. |
Different emojis are calculated differently, so make sure to double-check before sending a message.
Personalization in Messages
Personalization in your SMS marketing strategy is a must, but keep in mind that when using personalization, your message cost can vary from one message to another.
For example, if you include a first name in the text message, some subscribers might have a first name like Kate that counts as only 4 characters, but some subscribers will have longer names like Alejandro that will count as 9 characters. That could be the difference between a text message costing 2 SMS instead of 1.
Media in Messages
Including images, GIFs, or videos in your message will change it to an MMS message from an SMS message. MMS messages are always more expensive than SMS messages and can include one media file and up to 160 characters of text. If you include more text or emojis and exceed 1 SMS, the above guidelines will apply here too.
Opt-out Language
When opt-out language is appended to your messages each character is added to the existing character count for your text message.
Segmentation
Beyond the above tactics, you can focus on narrowing the audience you send to in order to reduce overall messaging costs. For example, why would you want to keep sending every SMS marketing campaign you have to someone who hasn’t clicked on one in 6 months?
What I’m Thinking About This Week - Why I Started a Newsletter with Beehiiv and Why You Should Too
Beyond just being personally fulfilling, starting this newsletter almost 2 years ago now has been one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Forced Analysis and Content Creation
By sending a newsletter once a week, I am forced to not only generate content but to seek out and analyze the market—everything from new trends to new tools and technologies. Without this weekly exercise, I wouldn’t be nearly as up-to-date as I am and wouldn’t have set time to deep dive into new trends and tactics for my clients as well as my businesses.
This analysis funnels its way into the agency, setting the long-term direction for what we’re focused on and ensuring the team is at the cutting edge of new trends and technology.
This also forces long-form content creation, which arms me and the social team with a ton of information to split up into shorter, bite-sized chunks for platforms like Linkedin.
Establish Authority
I swear I could literally have zero idea what I am talking about, and this newsletter could be terrible, but just the fact that I have one is a huge advantage when it comes to head-to-head sales with other agencies or consultants. If you google “Brandon Amoroso,” the results are littered with podcasts, awards, content (i.e., the newsletter), case studies, etc. Personally, I don’t think they mean much, but the perception is that “clearly” I must know what I’m talking about if I have a book, podcast, newsletter, etc.
Monetization Opportunities
Who doesn’t like some side revenue? Newsletters can be monetized in various ways, such as subscriptions, advertising, sponsored content, etc.
Lead Generation
The newsletter has been an effective lead funnel for new clients for Electriq through my distribution on Linkedin.
Get Started
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This Week’s The D2Z Podcast
#105 – Amazon Success Secrets
🎧 Listen Now 🎧
In this week’s episode, I sat down with Mike Begg, Founder and CEO of AMZ Advisors, an Amazon agency that specializes in growing 7-figure brands. Specifically, we explored the following:
💰 The “pay-to-play” nature of the platform.
📲 The proliferation of off-platform advertising options.
😎 The blueprint for launching a brand on Amazon in 2024.
🚀 Future growth areas for Amazon
App Updates & Highlights - Superfiliate Instagram Integration
Superfiliate’s Instagram integration is now live! you’ll be able to discover new creators tagging you in posts, collect all UGC you’re tagged in, DM with creators directly on Instagram at scale, and much more. I also heard that some other social platforms might be coming soon 👀
Social Listening
Automatically pull in all UGC across stories, posts, and reels into Superfiliate, including engagement data (likes, comments).
Discovery & Recruiting
Automatically see all creators tagging you on Instagram and send them templated DMs to join any of your programs.
Request Content Rights & Download UGC
Automate asking for content rights directly in IG DMs and download any social content from your creators.
Populate Cobranded Landing Pages
Through one quick-action button, take any post you're tagged in and add it to that Superfiliate's cobranded landing page.
Upcoming Events
I’m headed to SubSummit in Dallas June 17-19!
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