Should you translate SMS into the customer's language?

In Belgium this is not a luxury but a basic expectation. The question is how to keep it manageable.

Store the language with the contact

Do not infer it from the postcode or the number — in Belgium that often does not match. Ask for it at sign-up or take it from your customer record.

Work with templates per language

One template per message per language, with the same tags. The content then stays consistent and you manage the translation in one place rather than in every campaign.

Mind the length

The same message is usually longer in French than in Dutch. A message that fits in one SMS in one language can be two in the other. Check per language.

And the characters

French accents push a message into Unicode and therefore to 70 characters. That is precisely where multilingual campaigns become unexpectedly more expensive.

Provide a fallback

If a contact's language is missing, choose a default language rather than sending nothing.