During holidays and other peak times, your customers may experience delays in receiving your MMS messages from a toll-free number due to congestion across the cellular carriers. This is an industry-wide issue (unrelated to Attentive).
Follow these best practices to reach your subscribers and hit your ROI goals during the busiest times of the year:
Send SMS messages
We expect minimal congestion and faster send times for SMS messages during peak seasons. If you have questions, we can help adapt or adjust your message for maximal results.
Reduce the size of MMS messages
Keeping your media under 200 KB helps to quicken send times. For more information on sizing your media, see FAQs: MMS messages, and Troubleshoot your MMS messages.
Avoid sending time-sensitive messages as MMS
If you have time-sensitive information for your subscribers, such as a "Last Call!" announcement, or cutoff time, we recommend sending this information as an SMS message. This way, subscribers will receive the information quicker during peak sending times.
Send your MMS message early
Typically, congestion begins in the early afternoon (Eastern Time), thus sending earlier in the morning can help. Make sure to use Smart Sending when you do so.
Bookend promotions
Our customers achieve the highest ROI and lowest opt-out rates when they bookend major holiday promotions with "sale's starting" and "sale's ending" messages. These average to be 2-3 campaign messages during the holiday period.
Use segmentation
During your sale period, use segmentation to target subscribers who haven't made a purchase, or who didn't engage with your campaign.
You can also use segmentation to create a targeted segment of your VIP customers.
Give early access to VIP subscribers
Offering your sales to VIP subscribers first gives them an insight to the deals, while reducing the number of MMS messages send at peak hour. Later, you can extend the sale to the remainder of your subscribers.