Drive loyalty and engagement with keywords
Keywords are single words or multiple phrases that when sent by a subscriber, prompt a certain action and an automated response. For example, a health and wellness brand could add the term ‘relaxation’ and create a text-to-join campaign for their new face mask product.
Learn customer preferences to unlock better personalization and drive more revenue from a more engaged audience.
Use keywords in your SMS strategy to:
- Gain insights into channel preferences.
- Empower subscribers to customize their frequency or opt out of specific holidays.
- Capture product or shopping preferences to tailor offerings.
- Implement activity or interest-specific targeting for more relevant communications.
- Leverage location-based data to deliver location-specific content or offers.
Understand how keywords work
As you determine how you might use keywords in your SMS marketing strategy, you'll need to understand the difference between compliance keywords and subscribe keywords. Each type has their own primary function and nuances that you should be aware of. Additionally, there are some best practices to follow when creating keywords that will set you up for a successful keyword strategy.
Compliance keywords
Compliance keywords allow your customers to receive pre-written responses when they reply to your numbers with a defined keyword. There are also actions associated with these keywords as well.
The most common example of a compliance keyword in use is ‘UNSUBSCRIBE’, which when texted to your business’s number will unsubscribe them from receiving texts from you and send a message confirming the action. However there are many words that can be sent that trigger the same action, including ‘STOP’, ‘CANCEL’, ‘END’, and more.
These keywords are all related to SMS consent, subscription status, and support. In most cases, keywords and the corresponding response text can be edited in your settings to your preference. However, the keywords and text response associated with unsubscribing and resubscribing are restricted from editing.
Subscribe keywords
Subscribe Keywords allow your customers to subscribe to a list by texting a defined keyword. All of these keywords are self-defined in your account. Customize these keywords to align with your brand as well as add specific profile properties to the sender’s profile.
Create keywords to tailor experiences
Keywords are powerful tools that enable you to grow beyond standard use of your SMS channel. Use creative keywords to make your subscribers feel seen and allow them to better engage with your brand through this channel. This will lead to deeper brand loyalty and ease of engagement.
Explore the powerful ways keywords can be used to create more engaging experiences for your SMS subscribers.
Express your brand
Use keywords creatively to express your brand identity.
Incorporate unique keywords that are relevant to your brand to prompt actions from your subscribers.
Key actions:
- Replace the standard ‘JOIN’ keyword with one more relevant to your brand, such as ‘SHOES’.
- Use keywords to opt-in to specific promotions, such as ‘MOM’.
- Use keywords to segment your audience based on your products, such as ‘PRO’ versus ‘BEGINNER’.
Personalize message frequency
Avoids unnecessary unsubscribes by allowing subscribers to opt-down.
Empower subscribers by using SMS to customize the content they receive.
Key actions:
- Send a campaign ahead of major promotional periods or potentially sensitive holidays.
- Use keywords like ‘SKIP’ or ‘SNOOZE’ to identify customers who want to opt-out of specific promos.
- Create segments to include any subscribers who’ve responded with one of your keywords.
Provide a "shopping expert"
Create an automated shopping expert.
Use flows to create an engaging virtual shopping expert and convert browsers to shoppers.
Key actions:
- Target VIPs, engaged SMS audiences, or recent browsers.
- Provide different shopping options, each with a product recommendation.
- Build loyalty and trust with shoppers who need a little help deciding what to buy.
- Log responses as profile properties to identify customers for future promotions based on their preferences.
For complete guidance, check out our guide on how to add, update, or delete custom SMS keywords.
Keyword best practices
Before you begin using keywords, it’s important to outline some guidelines for how to use them properly:
- Never use language related to sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, or tobacco, also known as SHAFT.
- Only use alphanumeric characters (A–Z and 0–9).
- Keep keywords between 3 and 20 characters.
- Stay away from common words that might be used in a normal text conversation, such as “the,” "that," "are," "can," "here," "about," or “and,” which may erroneously trigger an unintended experience.
Note: Keywords are not case-sensitive. If you input the keyword as “DEAL,” Klaviyo will accept “deal,” “Deal,” etc.