It’s 7 a.m. on National Coffee Day, and your phone buzzes. It’s a text from a company you bought something from once, two years ago, wishing you a happy National Coffee Day. The text doesn’t contain an offer or a reason for reaching out. It’s just a reminder that they have your number.
Text-Em-All has been in business messaging for over 20 years, and I see some version of that text constantly. Sometimes it’s a “just checking in!” message with nothing to check in about, or a holiday blast that exists because a holiday exists. I call it messaging for the sake of messaging, and it’s getting worse, because AI and automation have made it nearly free to write a message and send it to everyone on your list.
When sending costs almost nothing, volume isn’t an advantage. Restraint becomes the thing that sets a brand apart.
Your customer’s time is the real cost
Every text spends a few seconds of the recipient’s attention. If the message gives them something back, like a confirmed appointment, or a delivery window, that’s a fair trade. If it doesn’t, you’ve taken their time and given them nothing in return.
People notice when they feel their number is being misused. On a phone, they don’t just shrug off pointless text. They reply “STOP,” because they’ve decided those texts aren’t worth receiving.
Texting isn’t email
A lot of the trouble I see comes from teams that bring their email habits to SMS. Email trained marketers to send often and write long, because an inbox is built for volume. Most of it is skimmed, filtered, or ignored, and everybody’s made peace with that, right?
I’ll be honest, I’m not a big email fan myself. Things get lost there, and I don’t check it as often as I should. A phone is different. Texts, on the other hand, are read, usually within minutes. They end up right next to messages from your spouse and your kid’s school. If you send three a week with a paragraph of copy in each, then you’re not a helpful brand anymore. You’re added “noise” in a place people guard closely.
Marczyk Fine Foods, a specialty grocery store and one of our customers, gets this right. Its messages are short, they go out sparingly, and each one offers the recipient a clear reason to open it. Since moving to RCS (Rich Communication Services, the newer messaging standard that supports verified sender names, logos and buttons), Marczyk is seeing 20% fewer opt-outs.
The smart senders are texting fewer people
We’re a very data-focused company, and one trend we’re seeing is that the average broadcast size on our platform has been shrinking. Customers are sending to smaller, better-defined groups instead of blasting the whole list.
That’s the right instinct. Think about email. Send one message to 200,000 people and your results are low opens, lots of unsubscribes, and no way to tell what worked. Narrow the focus to the people who actually care about that message, and performance improves. Texting works the same way, except you see the penalties for blasting your entire list much faster.
Your opt-out rate keeps you honest
If you want one number that tells you the truth about your texting program, it’s your opt-out rate. Open rates on SMS are high almost by default, so they don’t tell you much. Opt-outs tell you whether people think your messages are worth getting.
By industry standards, anything above 2% is bad. When we see an account suddenly jump to 20% or 30%, that’s a serious warning sign, and we look into it. It usually means someone is texting people who never asked to hear from them.
Track opt-out rates per message, not just per month. Relying on a monthly average can cause you to miss the one send that burned a chunk of your list.
The guardrails are getting tighter
Anonymous texting is over. Carrier registration now requires businesses to identify themselves and describe what they’re sending before their messages go through. Nobody sends at scale without a name attached anymore.
Platforms have a job here, too. At Text-Em-All, we filter for things like hate speech, and we watch send frequency and opt-outs for patterns that suggest someone is abusing the channel. We also turn away 50 to 100 prospective customers every month under our responsible use policy.
Yes, those potential customers could generate revenue. But we know that texting only works if people trust it, and every bad actor who gets through makes every legitimate message a little less likely to get read. We don’t want to weaken the long-term value of text-based marketing for short-term gain.
Where texting is headed
People don’t answer calls from unknown numbers, and you can see that shift in how our customers communicate. Calls still make up roughly 40% of the volume on our platform, but more than 90% of our new customers come to us predominantly for texting.
Over the next five years, I expect RCS and branded sender identity to become standard. When your logo and verified name show up on every message, the reader knows exactly who’s interrupting them. That’s good news for senders people trust and bad news for everyone else. It also means a pointless text can stick to your brand.
Skip the coffee day text
Here’s the test I’d put to any team before a message goes out: if this showed up on your own phone at 7 a.m., would you be glad you got it? If the answer is no, don’t send it.
Save your customer’s attention for the message that actually helps them. They’ll still be on your list when you send it.
Brad Herrmann, Co-Founder and CEO, Text-Em-All
Brad Herrmann is co-founder and CEO of Text-Em-All, a mass texting company that serves more than 16,000 organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to small churches. He launched the company in 2005 and has made healthy company culture a priority from the start.
Text-Em-All became employee-owned in 2023 and is a Certified Evergreen business. Forbes named it one of its 25 Best Small Companies, and it has earned local and national Best Places to Work honors.
Brad is a Texas A&M University graduate. Away from the office, he’s usually in his garden or planning his next trip.
