SMS Marketing for Businesses: Attentive vs Textedly

Attentive vs Textedly

This post will examine two premium SMS marketing providers closely and analyze their characteristic features to provide insight into each service’s strengths and weaknesses.

SMS Marketing, also known as text marketing or text blasting, is a form of marketing that utilizes text messages to promote products or services to a targeted audience. This can be done through SMS campaigns, aka text blasts, which are a large volume of text messages sent to a list of contacts at once, or through personalized SMS messages sent to individual customers. Two key service providers with premium text messaging services are Attentive and Textedly.

Text messaging is an exceptionally effective communication tool for businesses across various interactions, including business-to-consumer, business-to-business, and consumer-to-consumer relationships. Studies have revealed that the vast majority of cell phone users, over 95%, promptly read their text messages within 3 minutes of receiving them, with nearly all recipients reading their messages within a mere 24-hour timeframe. These statistics underscore the unparalleled efficiency and immediacy that text messaging (SMS) offers as a channel of communication, showcasing its unrivaled effectiveness in conveying information and engaging with target audiences in the business realm.

Both Attentive and Textedly offer a range of integrations with third-party applications to enhance the functionality of SMS messaging campaigns and provide personalized experiences for customers. These platforms have established integrations with popular tools such as Zapier, HubSpot, and Mailchimp. However, Attentive sets itself apart by offering the option to build custom integrations tailored specifically to your business needs. This means that you have more flexibility and a wider array of options to seamlessly incorporate SMS into your overall marketing strategy.

With the aid of SMS marketing solutions, companies can text message current and potential clients. With the help of this service, businesses may engage with their audience more successfully and effectively by sending targeted, individualized messages to them.

Attentive

Attentive is an industry leader in SMS marketing, with over 5,000 customers and growing. Trusted by businesses around the world, Attentive offers a robust SMS solution that caters to the needs of businesses requiring more advanced SMS marketing features. One of the standout features of Attentive is its AI-powered messaging technology, which sets it apart from the competition. This cutting-edge technology allows businesses to personalize their SMS campaigns based on customer preferences and keyword responses, ensuring a highly targeted and engaging experience for recipients.

Moreover, Attentive goes beyond just AI-powered messaging by offering a wide range of integrations with popular marketing and sales platforms. With seamless integrations with Salesforce, Shopify, Marketo, Hubspot, and more, businesses can easily integrate their existing technology stack with Attentive’s platform. This makes it effortless to streamline workflows and leverage existing customer data for more effective SMS campaigns.

Another strength of Attentive is its wide range of integrations with popular marketing and sales platforms. Attentive has integrations with Salesforce, Shopify, Marketo, Hubspot, and more, making it easy for businesses to integrate existing technology stack. 

In addition to its advanced features, Attentive also provides comprehensive analytics and reporting tools. These tools offer businesses valuable insights and data on campaign performance, allowing for data-driven decision-making and optimization. By analyzing key metrics, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of customer engagement and make informed adjustments to future campaigns.

Attentive offers a comprehensive range of segmentation options to target specific audiences effectively. These options include age, gender, location, language, device, and behavior. Utilizing these diverse segmentation dimensions allows users to create highly targeted and attention-grabbing campaigns. Additionally, Attentive’s user-friendly segmentation tool enables users to effortlessly create new segments with just a few clicks.

Attentive offers pricing plans based on the number of SMS messages sent each month. Their lowest pricing plan starts at $29 per month and includes 500 messages, while the highest plan costs $899 per month and provides for 50,000 messages. Additional credits can be purchased at a reasonable price, ranging between $0.02 and $0.06 per credit. Attentive also offers the option to customize your own plan and select monthly sending limits that suit your requirements. Additionally, they provide a 14-day free trial to test their platform before committing to a plan.

To summarize, Attentive is a top choice for businesses seeking robust SMS marketing features. With its AI-powered messaging technology, extensive integrations, and comprehensive analytics tools, Attentive empowers businesses to connect with their customers on a more personalized level, all while providing a seamless transition and measurable results. 

CONS:

• Higher Price
• Can’t turn off 2 way messaging

Textedly

Textedly is a monthly subscription SMS marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. They do not have any required contracts and let users choose between paying on a month-to-month basis or opt for an annual payment option. For accounts with annual payments, there is an added benefit of receiving 20% more texts per month. With its web-based platform and compatibility with iOS and Android devices, Textedly offers a versatile solution for businesses looking to engage their audience through text messaging. One of the standout features of Textedly is its user-friendly platform, which allows even first-time users to quickly grasp the SMS marketing service and start sending SMS campaigns almost immediately.

But what sets Textedly apart is its focus on meeting the needs of businesses with basic text messaging requirements. For those who don’t require advanced features like segmentation, automation, and unlimited keywords, Textedly is the perfect choice. By streamlining its platform and prioritizing simplicity, Textedly allows businesses to reach their target audience while maintaining a professional appearance efficiently.

The ability for two-way conversations between a company and their audience with a text campaign.

Textedly features contact list segmentation, allowing for tailored deliverability to ensure the right message is sent to the appropriate audience. This segmentation capability provides countless opportunities for companies to leverage its advantages. Whether it’s sending out last-minute sale offers to VIPs or expressing gratitude to recently made customers, the possibilities are endless. By utilizing segmentation, companies can effectively connect with their target market and enhance the results of their marketing initiatives.

Furthermore, Textedly’s segmentation tool offers a range of options to categorize contacts based on specific criteria. Although not explicitly mentioned, the tool provides segmentation options such as name, phone number, group, and status. While these dimensions might be considered more limited compared to SimpleTexting, they can still be valuable for small businesses or those with simpler customer profiles.

One standout feature of Textedly, is the platform’s ability to send texts of up to 300 characters, nearly double the industry standard 160 character text messages. Besides the ability to send longer text messages, Textedly also allows its users to send MMS campaign messages with up to 1,600 characters.

Textedly’s mass texting service has garnered attention regarding its reliability and security measures. They collaborate with a vast network of over 1,800 mobile carriers to ensure that text messages are swiftly delivered to recipients. However, it is notable that Textedly lacks a service level agreement (SLA) and does not offer specific guarantees regarding message delivery rates or latency times. While it’s a common statistic that 95% of texts are read and responded to within 3 minutes, this may not directly reflect the performance of Textedly‘s service.

Regarding security, Textedly employs Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to safeguard the data and information shared on their platform. This encryption method establishes a secure connection between their web server and users’ browsers. Moreover, Textedly emphasizes compliance with privacy and anti-spam policies to meet regulatory requirements. These aspects collectively suggest that Textedly prioritizes data security and compliance with industry standards in its mass texting service.

Textedly also offers flexible pricing options. Their lowest plan starts at $26 per month for 500 SMS messages, while the highest plan costs $2,999 per month and allows for 200,000 messages. It is important to keep in mind that Textedly does not allow downgrading of plans, so it is crucial to choose a plan that aligns with both current and future business needs. Similar to SimpleTexting, Textedly offers a 14-day free trial for all their packages.

Textedly offers different pricing options based on the size of the business. For small businesses, there is a standard charge per message sent per month. Medium to large businesses benefit from a cheaper cost per message due to economies of scale, where high volumes of texts result in lower charges. Whether you are a small business owner or part of a larger corporation, you will not incur any costs for receiving text messages. Medium to large businesses enjoy economies of scale with lower per message costs. Large businesses have a minimum monthly charge that includes keywords and the number of outbound text messages. Additionally, Textedly offers a 14-day free trial for startups, a feature not commonly found among their competitors.

Textedly is best suited for users who require basic text messaging features and do not anticipate any variations in their monthly message sending frequency. This platform is particularly suitable for businesses that do not require advanced features such as segmentation, automation, and unlimited keywords.

Cons

• Web Only Platform 
• Limited Analytics

Ease of Use

When comparing Attentive and Textedly in terms of ease of use, both platforms offer a wide range of features to help businesses effectively engage with their customers. These features include text message automation, segmentation, reporting, and more.

Both Attentive and Textedly provide autoresponders, allowing businesses to send automated messages to customers who subscribe to their messaging lists. This feature helps save time and ensures prompt responses to customer inquiries.

Another important feature is the ability to collect and store customer data using custom fields. Both platforms allow businesses to gather information such as names and locations, which can be used for personalized communication and targeting.

Segmentation is also a common feature in both Attentive and Textedly. Businesses can organize their contacts based on specific criteria, such as location or interests. This allows for targeted messaging, ensuring that the right message reaches the right audience.

Integration with third-party tools is available on both platforms. This enables businesses to synchronize contact information and automate processes seamlessly. However, it’s worth noting that SimpleTexting’s team is capable of creating custom integrations, providing additional convenience and time-saving benefits.

Reporting and analytics are essential for tracking the success of SMS campaigns. Both Attentive and Textedly offer comprehensive reporting features, allowing businesses to monitor the progress of their campaigns and make data-driven decisions.

In terms of specific differences, Attentive offers unlimited keywords and unlimited contacts across all plans. On the other hand, Textedly’s plans have a limit on the number of keywords that can be tracked, with the Silver plan capping at seven keywords.

Textedly has a built-in drip campaign feature, which enables businesses to set up automated nurture campaigns. SimpleTexting doesn’t have this specific feature out-of-the-box, but it’s still possible to create drip campaigns within the platform.

Moreover, Attentive provides more segment options compared to Textedly. This offers businesses greater control over their customer lists and allows for more targeted messaging.

Overall, both Attentive and Textedly are user-friendly platforms that offer similar features for connecting with customers. However, Attentive provides certain advantages such as unlimited keywords, custom integrations, and a wider range of segmentation options. These factors may contribute to a more streamlined and effortless user experience.