How Brands Grow Up On SMS

At the foundational level, SMS is primarily a megaphone—great for getting news out, but not designed for dialogue. Brands at this stage are sending one-off campaigns to broad audiences, usually to drive immediate sales. Think: new product drops, seasonal promos, flash sales or back-in-stock alerts.

There’s nothing wrong with this. Every solid SMS program starts here. Campaigns are revenue drivers, and broadcast messaging has its place. But relying solely on this strategy leaves a lot of opportunity on the table.

Campaigns at this level are typically list-wide or sent to large segments. And if you’re just building your list from the ground up, this makes the most sense, too. Messages skew promotional and discount-heavy. There’s little variation in message types, and personalization is minimal or nonexistent. If you’re sending the same message to everyone, you’re not tapping into the full power of SMS.

Automations are usually limited to the basics—welcome flows, cart abandonment reminders, maybe a post-purchase message if you’re lucky. These are single-threaded, generic, and often feel like afterthoughts. They exist to tick a box, not to enhance the customer experience. They also feel like the exact experience your subscriber might receive over email, which is a big miss.

At this stage, SMS is used as a one-way blast channel. Replies may occur, but they’re not monitored or utilized strategically. This limits your ability to build relationships, gather data, or offer support—all of which reduce friction and increase Subscriber LTV.

It’s a solid starting point, but to unlock the real magic of SMS, you need to transition from blast mode to behavior-driven engagement.

Brands in the Emerging tier have moved beyond the megaphone. They’re using automation to create more tailored, timely experiences—and to recover revenue that would otherwise slip away.

Campaigns get smarter. You’re still running promos and new product drops, but now with better segmentation, more creative formats (hello, MMS), and varied message types that go beyond discount culture. Perhaps you’ve even explored brand storytelling or content-driven messaging. That’s growth.

Automations become more than just default flows. You’re building journeys: multi-step welcome series, branching logic based on customer behavior, and deeper post-purchase engagement. You’ve started to collect zero-party data—asking subscribers what they care about, and actually using that info.

Responses and conversations are no longer ignored. You’ve hooked your SMS inbox into your help desk and maybe started experimenting with keyword triggers or fuzzy matching. It’s still early days, but you’re signaling to your customers that texting your brand gets a real, useful response.

Tech-wise, you’re leveraging a more robust platform that supports dynamic segmentation and deeper automation. AI is starting to show up—maybe in send-time optimization, maybe in early personalization efforts.

It’s a meaningful leap. You’re no longer just sending texts—you’re building a program. But the best is still ahead.

Brands at the Advanced tier have made the leap from SMS as a marketing channel to SMS as a relationship channel. It’s not about what you say—it’s about what you hear, and how you respond.

Campaigns are now built with complexity and nuance. You’re running multi-step, branched messages with wait rules and targeted messaging for every segment. AI isn’t just optimizing send times—it’s helping you test copy, predict performance, and personalize content in real-time.

Automations are expansive. You’re gathering and applying zero-party data at scale, building flows that don’t just sell, but serve. These journeys reflect the customer’s lifecycle, behavior, and preferences, not just your marketing calendar.

Responses and conversations take center stage. Every campaign and automation is a potential conversation starter. You’ve got a human-in-the-loop (like a CX team monitoring responses), or better yet, you’re using a tool like Shopper to handle real-time interactions—recommending products, answering questions, and driving purchases.

The focus shifts to building trust, loyalty, and LTV through dynamic, two-way engagement.

Your tech stack is sophisticated. You’re using a conversational AI platform integrated with ecommerce, CX, and CRM tools. AI does the heavy lifting in personalization, routing, and insights.

You’ve graduated from pushing messages to creating moments. But there’s one more level.

This is the highest form of SMS maturity—where your brand doesn’t just react or respond. It anticipates.

Campaigns here are designed to spark conversations, not just sales. They use AI to create personalized segments, delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. They’re less about promotions, more about connection, context, and conversion through dialogue.

Automations evolve into experiences. Rather than long, rule-based flows, you use intent signals and behavioral data to trigger relevant, personalized messages. A cart abandonment message isn’t just a nudge—it’s a curated follow-up with a product recommendation or contextual offer based on what that shopper browsed.

Conversations are the heartbeat. They make up 10% or more of your outbound volume—and they’re not an accident. These 1:1 exchanges gather data, resolve doubts, and close sales. Your subscribers expect it. Your team builds for it. Your ROI depends on it.

The focus is the shopper. Their needs, habits, and context drive every message. You’re proactively solving problems, recommending products before they're asked for, and optimizing every touchpoint based on real conversations.

The stack? Fully integrated. Your SMS program talks to your site, your helpdesk, your CRM, your analytics. AI isn’t a feature—it’s the engine.

This is SMS at its best: intelligent, predictive, and deeply human. And it’s here at Postscript.