How do you personalise an SMS without it going wrong?

A message with the right name works better. A message with the wrong name works far worse than a message with no name at all.

Where it goes wrong

Empty fields. Anyone without a first name filled in gets "Dear ," — and that is immediately visible. So always provide a fallback value.

Wrong capitalisation. Address files are full of JOHN and john. Normalise that up front.

Accents. A name with é or ë pushes your message into Unicode and therefore from 160 to 70 characters. For part of your list you then unexpectedly pay double.

What does work

Personalise on something useful rather than on the name: the time of the appointment, the shop where the parcel is waiting, the registration of the vehicle. That is information the recipient actually uses.

Test on yourself

Send every campaign to a few of your own numbers first, including a row with empty fields and a row with an accent. Two minutes of work that saves one campaign in ten.