How to use generative AI to write SMS copy in seconds

How to use generative AI to write SMS marketing copy in seconds

Did you know 90% of consumers read an SMS within three minutes of receiving it? Texting is truly one of the quickest ways to reach someone, making SMS marketing programs crucial to successful customer engagement and business growth. Mass SMS marketing can help startups grow a customer base or established enterprises maintain brand loyalty. For example, e-commerce businesses can send personalized order updates and exclusive offers via SMS, or local businesses can leverage location-based targeting to increase local traffic.

However, tailoring text messages to various customer segments can be challenging. That’s where generative AI comes in to help us create compelling SMS content within seconds. Generative AI crafts personalized copy that resonates with consumers by analyzing customer preferences and behaviors. Here, we’ll explore a few generative AI tools available, why you should write with AI, and the best AI prompts to get started on your next SMS marketing campaign.

Understanding generative AI for text messages

At its core, generative AI algorithms learn patterns and styles from a given dataset and generate new content that aligns with those patterns. This process involves training a model on vast data, enabling it to understand context, language nuances, and artistic or creative elements. Since generative AI algorithms incorporate text, images, music, and more, it’s a great writing assistant for SMS copy. Check out this complete generative AI glossary for businesses to learn more.

5 generative AI text tools

1. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is an advanced language model developed by OpenAI that can generate human-like text based on given prompts. It can be a powerful tool for writing marketing SMS tailored to specific audiences. For instance, marketers can use ChatGPT to brainstorm catchy slogans, write product descriptions, or even generate unique ideas for brand storytelling. Its ability to adapt style and tone also makes it effective for crafting social media captions, responding to comments, or writing blog posts. A unique strength of ChatGPT is its conversational capabilities, allowing for dynamic interaction and iterative refinement of content.

2. Writer

Writer is an AI-powered writing assistant focused on maintaining consistent brand voice across all content. Each Writer customer receives an API that allows them to set brand guidelines and train a language model. This tool is particularly useful for organizations aiming to ensure their marketing copy aligns with brand guidelines. Writer offers features such as custom style guides and real-time content suggestions. It also excels in refining text, suggesting edits and vocabulary that resonate with target demographics. It can optimize texts for engagement and adherence to brand personality. Writer's uniqueness lies in its brand-specific customization options, making it an excellent tool for larger companies with complex needs.

3. Jasper

Jasper, formerly known as Jarvis, is an AI content creation platform popular among marketers, writers, and entrepreneurs. Its strength lies in generating high-quality content quickly, with templates and workflows designed for specific types of writing, such as SMS marketing, blog posts, emails, and more. Jasper includes features like 'Compose,' 'Explain It To Me,' and 'Content Improver,' which can improve the clarity and impact of marketing materials. Its AI models are trained to optimize for conversions, which is particularly beneficial for SMS copy focused on driving sales or engagement. Jasper stands out for its flexibility and the breadth of templates it offers.

4. Claude

Claude is an AI assistant created by Anthropic, designed with a focus on safety and alignment with human intentions. It seeks to provide a more ethical and respectful user interaction model. Claude can generate text, answer questions, and assist with various written tasks, much like other AI models, but it emphasizes responsible communication and adherence to guidelines of safety, aiming to minimize harmful biases and inappropriate content. Claude's focus on safe interactions means it can help brands maintain sensitivity and appropriateness in their messaging, particularly important when addressing sensitive topics or diverse audiences. 

5. Perplexity

Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that goes beyond generating text and excels in retrieving and synthesizing information from across the web. While not a direct content generation tool, it can significantly aid SMS content creation by providing insights, data points, and context, which marketers can use when writing. By gathering information quickly, Perplexity helps marketers stay informed and create content that is data-driven and current. Its unique value lies in its ability to enhance the research phase of writing.

Benefits of using AI for text messages

1. Saves time and money

AI helps streamline the content creation process by generating high-quality text based on user prompts–quickly. This significantly reduces the time required to research, ideate, and draft content manually.

2. Sparks creativity and diverse content creation 

Generative AI can open new creative possibilities by offering new ideas and content formats otherwise not considered. When you write with AI, you can diversify the range of tones, formats, and approaches in your content.

3. Enables personalization and targeted messaging

AI tools analyze user input to craft personalized content. For example, when you feed AI consumer characteristics and preferences, it can generate text that resonates with that specific audience. This enables businesses to deliver targeted messages that feel relevant and meaningful. 

How to create prompts for AI writing texts

The key to quality SMS marketing copy is an effective AI prompt. Here’s a step-by-step guide on using generative AI tools and optimizing your prompts for the best content output.

1. Determine your use case

First, decide what you want to communicate and to whom. For example, do you need to summarize, brainstorm, write, or synthesize text? 

2. Structure your prompts

Next, determine how you want to structure your prompts (aka prompt engineering), as it’s key to the type of outputs the generative AI will deliver. Your AI prompt should include the role, task, context, format, and constraints.

• Role: Ask the generative AI to take on a role, such as an expert SMS marketer

• Task: Tell the generative AI what to create for you, such as three text messages about an upcoming sale

• Context: Provide the context for your task, such as a summer sale with 50% off and a final reminder for the sale 

• Format: Tell the generative AI what format to use for the copy, such as a text message

• Constraints: Provide any constraints the AI should follow for the prompt, such as 200 characters

3. Customize and refine the AI prompt 

Now, it’s time to give your chosen generative AI tool a try. In this example, we’ll use ChatGPT to demonstrate how to refine AI prompts by creating text messages for an SMS marketing campaign.

Let’s ask ChatGPT to write three different text messages about a fictional clothing company’s summer sale.

Notice how ChatGPT doesn’t consider any specific discount codes, branding, tone, or character limit. Our input was vague, so it gave us a general output.

Let’s make the prompt more specific to see what happens.

See the difference? It even used emojis! So the more you specify what you want, the better the output.

4. Re-prompt as needed

Finally, as you A/B test the texts in your SMS marketing campaigns, always come back to the tool to improve upon those text messages. Remember, generative AI can act as a writer, thought partner, or a critic of your content. This is re-prompting, and it allows you to engineer your existing prompt to get better and clearer results or start again based on the results of your first campaign.

Best practices for AI SMS marketing

Now that you know which generative AI tool you want to use and how to engineer AI prompts, here are a few best practices to write with AI successfully. 

1. Ensure message clarity

Despite learning new information daily, the content generative AI tools create still requires a human touch. Always review your AI-generated content for coherence, relevance, grammar, spelling, and more to ensure that the content effectively communicates the intended message. 

2. Incorporate personalization 

Do you segment your customers? Generative AI can help you write personalized SMS copy for each unique audience. However, when starting out with these tools, tailor the AI-generated content to match your brand’s tone and style. Then, implement personalization elements for effective customer engagement. Over time, your generative AI tool will learn your brand’s personality and generate content accordingly.

3. Test and refine AI-generated SMS copy

A/B testing is essential for gauging the effectiveness of text marketing campaigns. Marketers can identify which versions resonate better with their audience by presenting variations of AI-crafted text messages to different segments and measuring click-through-rates, unsubscribes, and more. You can then fine-tune your messaging. 

Embrace the future of AI and SMS marketing with Twilio

With the recent developments in AI, marketers have various generative AI platforms at their disposal to help create personalized campaigns. However, businesses must balance automation and human oversight to maintain the authenticity that customers appreciate. Additionally, for the right message to work, it has to reach the consumer on their preferred channel. That’s where we come in. 

Twilio Messaging empowers you to reach your customers within seconds on a single, scalable platform that facilitates SMS, MMS, and WhatsApp. Plus, you can leverage the power of AI with Twilio’s CustomerAI technology, a set of capabilities woven throughout Twilio’s products that couples the power of large language models with real-time customer data flowing through Twilio’s Customer Engagement Platform. CustomerAI will help you personalize customer experiences, transform the quality of your customer service, and surface key insights about your customers and their behavior.

Ready to create your AI-generated SMS marketing campaign? Sign up for a free account today to get started.