AI SMS Marketing: Boosting Engagement Through Conversations

Regardless of the medium, marketers have traditionally had two choices to communicate with stakeholders: deploy mass messages that operate as a one-size-fits-all offering, or employ resource-intensive campaigns with more personal one-to-one outreach. Today, advancements in AI are making it possible for every interaction, regardless of your scale of outreach, to deliver a more personalized experience.

If your team’s curious about how AI can enhance your SMS marketing efforts, you’re not alone. In fact, 88% of marketers worry about missing out on AI’s benefits. In this guide, we’ll set you up for success with the main use cases and best practices for AI SMS marketing. We’ll cover:

• What is Conversational AI SMS Marketing?
• What Can You Do with SMS AI?
• AI SMS Marketing Conversations: Lead Response Benefits
• What to Look For When Deploying AI Conversations via SMS
• Mogli for Agentforce: The Top Solution to Open SMS to AI Agents

What is Conversational AI SMS Marketing?

Conversational AI SMS marketing is a form of two-way SMS messaging that allows organizations to communicate with their audience using artificial intelligence (AI). 

Leveraging AI for text messaging and conversations often works in one of two ways, depending on your goals:

• If your task is fairly straightforward and repeatable, it might make sense to use generative AI. For example, say you want your AI tool to send updates to customers about a purchase, and also respond to questions received about that order. In this case, you would give your AI helper specific resources to pull from and guidelines, such as how and when to share information or respond to questions.
• If you have a more complex need, consider using agentic AI, such as Salesforce’s Agenforce. For instance, you may want your AI teammate to follow up with a customer who hasn’t made a repeat purchase in the last 90 days. The agent could review past purchase history, reach out to the customer with a suggestion for their next purchase, and answer any questions they may have.

In both these situations, humans drive the actions and set the guardrails for the AI tool to work within.

What Can You Do with AI over SMS?

SMS marketing already offers diverse cases to explore—and AI widens the playing field even more. Let’s explore a few common use cases your team can leverage:

Automated Scheduling and Follow-Ups

Using AI to schedule meetings or appointments via SMS enables you to meet your audience where they are and find the most beneficial time slots for both parties. Here’s what scheduling via AI might look like for a client consult:

1. A client or donor texts a keyword like “SCHEDULE” to your organization's number.
2. The AI agent instantly replies, asks a simple qualifying question (e.g., “Are you looking to book a demo or a support call?”), and then checks an integrated calendar for openings.
3. It then offers two or three specific, available time slots directly via text (e.g., “We have openings on Wednesday at 2:00 PM or Friday at 11:30 AM. Do either of those work?”).
4. The client confirms their preferred time by replying with their choice.
5. The AI automatically books the meeting on the calendar, sends a final confirmation text, and schedules a reminder to be sent 24 hours before the appointment.

Feedback Collection

It’s easy for surveys to get stuck in your audience’s spam folders if you send them via email. However, SMS has a 99% deliverability rate, meaning you can get more responses and better insights. 

For instance, say you’re a nonprofit following up with event attendees. You might use an AI-powered SMS exchange like this:

• The day after an event, the AI automatically sends a personalized text to an attendee, thanking them for coming on behalf of the nonprofit.
• It then asks for feedback with a simple, conversational rating scale question (e.g., "On a scale of 1-5, how would you rate the gala?").
• Based on the attendee's numeric response, the AI uses conditional logic to ask a relevant follow-up question. A high rating (4-5) might trigger, "That's great to hear! What was your favorite part?" while a low rating (1-2) could trigger, "We appreciate the feedback. Can you share what we could improve for next time?"
• After capturing the open-ended feedback, the AI sends a final thank-you message and automatically logs the responses to the attendee's contact record in the CRM.

Customer Support

Instead of making customers wait in endless queues for phone support or having to scour your website for information, AI can make the process convenient for you and your stakeholders. That might take the form of AI collecting contact information for a human callback, directing the recipient to helpful resources, or resolving frequently asked questions with preloaded responses.

Driving Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty isn’t just about securing the next donation or appointment; it’s about creating a genuine connection that makes your stakeholders feel valued. Instead of only texting when you have an ask, AI agents can determine the best moment to send personalized, value-add touchpoints that build community and make your audience outreach less transactional. 

For instance, here’s how you can use AI to foster loyalty with a long-time donor:

1. On the anniversary of a donor's first gift, the AI sends an automated message like, “Hi, Molly! It’s the team at Mogli Animal Shelter. A year ago today, you made your first gift to save the lives of our rescued animals. Our team—and our animals—are so grateful to have you with us!”
2. The AI follows up with exclusive content, such as, “As a special thank you, here’s a behind-the-scenes video of our newest puppies that only our loyal supporters get to see: [Link].”
3. When the supporter replies, “Thank you!”, the AI provides a warm, human-like response to close the loop: “You’re very welcome! Your support makes all of this possible.”

Re-Targeting Campaigns

If a customer abandons their cart or an important form, it’s up to your team to regain their attention. Instead of letting potential revenue slip away, you can use AI-powered SMS to send them a friendly reminder to follow through on the desired next action. 

For instance, let’s say a higher education institution wants to nudge a donor to complete their unfinished donation. The cadence might look like this:

• A few hours after a known contact abandons an application page, the AI agent knows to send a gentle follow-up: "Hi, David. It's the development team from Mogli University. It looks like you started to donate, but got interrupted."
• The AI provides a direct, secure link to the donation form to reduce friction, saying, "If you'd like to complete your donation, you can pick up right where you left off here: [Donation form link]."
• It also offers a support path with a human involved in case there is a technical issue, adding, "If you ran into any trouble with the form, just reply 'TECH,' and a member of our team can assist you."

Note that more complex retargeting processes, like these, work best when powered by a powerful agentic AI tool such as Salesforce’s Agentforce that has the ability to send SMS when paired with a tool like Mogli. Click the banner below to get started! 

AI SMS Marketing Conversations: Benefits for Tracking Leads

Having AI facilitate conversations over SMS offers many benefits for both your organization and your audience, such as:

• 24/7 engagement. AI works around the clock to provide immediate, helpful answers, ensuring you never miss an inquiry just because it's after business hours. That way, people reaching out to you can get quick responses at any time.
• Automated lead qualification. Your AI SMS agent can be programmed to ask crucial screening questions. This automatically qualifies leads, separating the "just browsing" from the "ready to buy" before a human ever gets involved.
• Real-time responses and data collection. As previously mentioned, AI can often respond faster than a human can. Plus, with a CRM integration, AI SMS chats automatically sync data into your contact profiles so you can tailor outreach accordingly.
• Personalization at scale. Your AI tools can be trained on your data to help tailor interactions based on your stakeholders’ specific needs, using information from their record history. This enables organizations to build stronger relationships and drive engagement.

For example, here’s how a car dealership might use an AI agent to instantly engage a lead and personalize the experience:

What to Look for When Deploying AI Conversations via SMS

There are a number of things to consider when preparing to deploy your AI tools over an external channel such as SMS or WhatsApp. The most basic considerations are your comfort level with the AI tool being deployed and the reliability of your messaging application. 

However, by keeping some must-have features in mind from the outset, you can find the ideal combination for your organization faster. Consider these important features:

• AI agents that are capable of managing complex, multi-step dialogues, qualifying leads, and escalating the conversation to a human agent.
• User-friendly interface that empowers your marketing or sales team to build, launch, and analyze advanced conversational campaigns.
• Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) compliance so consumers are protected from receiving unsolicited marketing calls or texts.
• CRM integration that ensures seamless data transfer and mitigates human error. For instance, if you use Salesforce, choose a Salesforce SMS platform to centralize your conversations.
• Data reporting that allows your organization to quickly collect, analyze, and identify opportunities based on your key performance indicators (KPIs). 
• Personalized bulk messaging that enables you to send mass text messages using merge fields from your CRM.

With those features in mind, let’s explore our top choice in the next section.

Mogli for Agentforce: The Top Solution to Open SMS to AI Agents

Mogli is a mobile messaging app built on and for Salesforce, empowering you to take your Agentforce agents beyond the confines of webchat and your Salesforce org.

Our Agentforce solution makes it easy to insert AI into your existing texting cadences and other Salesforce workflows. That way, you can build and manage AI-driven SMS conversations using the Salesforce tools you already know, like Flow.

Why Mogli Stands Out

• Built on Salesforce. Forget fragile third-party connections or complex integrations. Mogli is built on and built for Salesforce, meaning your team can stay within the Salesforce ecosystem to manage your AI SMS marketing campaigns.
• Complex, logic-based SMS conversations powered by Agentforce. Go beyond simple keyword responses by allowing your agents to interact with contacts over SMS or WhatsApp.
• Enterprise-grade compliance. Working with communication guidelines (e.g., managing opt-in and opt-out status and other communication preferences) adds another layer of complexity to your marketing efforts. However, Mogli’s committed to providing all the tools you need to stay compliant so you can communicate with confidence. 
• SMS and WhatsApp support. WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging platforms. Go beyond basic SMS and start sending WhatsApp messages and multimedia texts directly from Salesforce. Best of all, you can manage cross-platform campaigns on one convenient interface.

Most of all, AI is just a part of what Mogli can do for your organization. Our platform has everything you need to build, grow, and sustain a text marketing strategy—all within the robust Salesforce ecosystem.

Want to learn more about Mogli for Agentforce? Watch the quick video below.

Learn More About Conversational AI Marketing

Whether you represent a higher education institution, a business, a nonprofit, or another type of organization entirely, AI SMS marketing is the future. Get ahead of the curve and provide a better experience for your stakeholders using a powerful AI marketing tool that enables human connection at scale.

Check out our other resources about Salesforce texting:

• How to Create a Winning SMS Marketing Strategy: Full Guide. If you need more general advice about launching or improving an SMS marketing strategy, this guide is the best place to start.
• Tap Into Salesforce SMS: How to Text from Salesforce. Do you use Salesforce to power your marketing efforts? Learn how to implement SMS in your Salesforce instance here.
• Streamline Texting with Mogli’s Salesforce Automation. Learn more about why Mogli is the best Salesforce app for managing SMS marketing campaigns that get results.