An SMS campaign is a single text message sent to a whole list of customers at once. For a shop it is usually short and practical: the new season's stock is in, the hams are open for orders, the shop is closed on the public holiday, it is pouring and the soup is on. Texts are read quickly, often within minutes, which makes them good for news that matters today and poor for anything long or detailed.
Because a campaign is marketing, the law applies to every one. Each person on the list must have agreed to receive messages, each text must say clearly who it is from, and each must carry a working way to stop further messages. A standard text holds 160 plain characters; longer messages are sent in parts and joined on most phones, and an emoji or certain symbols drop the limit for a single part to 70, so keep the wording plain.
In practice
A pet shop has 380 members who joined its list. Each recipient is one message, so a text to the whole club is 380 messages. The owner sends one text a month, mid-morning on a weekday, always with something useful: a seasonal reminder, a new food in stock, the price included. After each send, two or three members opt out, under 1 percent, which is a healthy sign. When the owner once sent three texts in a fortnight, eleven opted out after the third.
Ask people to come in or ring the shop, not to reply. A reply sent to a marketing number may never be read by a person, and a customer whose question goes unanswered is worse off than one who was never asked.
In Counter Club
Text campaigns are on Local Favourite, sent from a mobile number that belongs to your shop. You write up to 300 characters; the text opens with your shop name and ends with the member's own opt-out link. Replies other than an opt-out word are not shown in the dashboard. See campaigns.