Text marketing plans decide how often each group of contacts hears from you by text across a quarter, and why. Without one, the sales team, the marketing lead and the service desk all text the same clients in the same fortnight, and the opt-outs follow. This article answers how to build a written texting plan for a whole firm and load it into the levelpartner.ai platform so the calendar, the segments and the message limits are enforced rather than remembered.
What a texting plan covers
A plan has four parts. The segments you text. The maximum number of marketing texts each segment receives per month. The fixed service messages that run regardless. And a calendar of the campaigns you intend to run, with an owner for each.
It is one page, not a strategy deck. Its job is to stop collisions and to make sure the people most likely to buy again hear from you at the right moments, while everyone else is left alone.
Why a plan matters more as you grow
In a ten-person firm, one person sends every text and knows who got what. At 60 people, texts come from sales, from account managers, from automations someone built last year and from the marketing team. Nobody sees the whole picture.
The cost of that is invisible until a good client replies STOP. They are not objecting to one message. They are objecting to the fourth one that month from three different people. A plan is how you see the total load from the recipient's side.
Before you start
- A list of every workflow that currently sends texts, made by opening each workflow in Automation.
- Your main segments, defined as filters you can build in Contacts.
- Agreement from the heads of sales and service on who owns each segment.
- A shared calendar or document where the quarter's campaigns can be written down.
How to set up a text marketing plan on the platform
The plan has five parts: an audit of every workflow that sends texts, labelled service or marketing; four to six segments, such as new enquiries, active clients, past clients and lapsed quotes; a monthly ceiling of marketing texts per segment; a minimum gap between marketing texts to any one contact, enforced by a condition in each marketing workflow; and the quarter's campaigns on a calendar with dates and owners. The platform part is building each segment as a saved smart list.
- Go to Contacts > Smart Lists and click + Add smart list.
- Choose the filters that define the segment from the dropdown.
- Enter the filter details and click Apply.
- Select AND to add the consent filter and any exclusions.
- Click Create to save the smart list, named after the segment.
How to set the frequency
Frequency depends on how close the contact is to a decision. Someone who enquired this week can take a text every few days while the conversation is live. A past client who bought two years ago should hear from you no more than once a month, and only with something useful.
Service messages sit outside the ceiling. Appointment confirmations, reminders and document requests are expected and wanted. Counting them as marketing would make the plan too restrictive; ignoring the line between the two would make it meaningless.
Say the agency has 11,000 contacts in five segments. Active vendors and buyers get service texts only. New enquiries get up to six texts in their first month, via automation. Past vendors get one market update a quarter, lapsed valuations one reactivation campaign and landlords one compliance reminder. Mapped onto a calendar, a plan like this might show a busiest week of around 2,400 marketing texts and a quietest of 300, which tells you where to move sends. The figures are illustrative.
Choosing between plan types
Some firms use a fixed plan: a set campaign every month, whatever happens. Others use a trigger-led plan, where most texts come from automations reacting to behaviour, and campaigns are rare. Most 10 to 250 person firms do best with a mix: automations for the lifecycle, and three or four planned campaigns a quarter.
The trade-off is control against relevance. Fixed plans are easy to manage but send things people do not need. Trigger-led plans are more relevant but harder to see as a whole, which is why the last-texted field matters. For the triggered side, read about building automated text marketing sequences.
Where the platform does the enforcing
The custom field and the workflow condition are the enforcement. Without them, the plan is a document people forget. With them, a new automation built by a colleague in six months will still respect the gap, as long as it includes the condition. Make that a rule for anyone who builds workflows.
The mistake most people make
Planning campaigns but not auditing automations. The automations are where the volume comes from. A firm can plan a careful one-text-a-month programme and find that an old nurture workflow is quietly sending three more. Audit before you plan. For campaign design within the plan, see the guide on structuring text marketing campaigns.
Time it takes
The first plan takes a morning to write and an afternoon to build the field, segments and conditions. After that, a monthly review takes 30 minutes. That is small against the cost of losing your best contacts to over-messaging.
When a formal plan is overkill
If one person sends every text and you have fewer than a thousand contacts, a written plan adds little. Keep a simple rule instead, such as no more than two marketing texts a month to anyone. Write the plan when a second team starts texting. If cost is the concern rather than collisions, look at keeping affordable SMS marketing within budget.
Troubleshooting
Contacts still get texts too close together. One workflow is missing the gap condition. Go back through your workflow audit and check each one that sends SMS.
The last-texted date is not updating. The update step sits after a branch that some contacts skip. Move it directly after the SMS action.
Segments overlap. A contact can be both a past client and a new enquiry. Decide which segment wins and add an exclusion filter to the other smart list.
Teams ignore the calendar. Give each campaign a named owner and review the calendar in the monthly sales meeting, not by email.
Frequently asked questions
Is a text marketing plan the same as a pricing plan?
No. This article covers your sending plan. The platform itself is one licence with every feature, and SMS usage is billed as used, so there is no separate texting tier to choose.
How many marketing texts a month is too many?
For past clients, more than one or two a month usually drives opt-outs. For live enquiries, more is acceptable while the conversation is active. Your own opt-out numbers are the best guide.
Should service and marketing texts come from the same number?
They can. Recipients care more about relevance than number. If you use separate numbers, make sure the sender name in each message is consistent so people recognise you.
How often should the plan be reviewed?
Monthly for volumes and opt-outs, quarterly for the campaign calendar. Review immediately if opt-outs jump after any send.