iMessage for local retail shops

Retail is the industry where the temptation to blast is strongest and the punishment for it is fastest. Every message you send to your whole list to announce a sale trains people that your texts are skippable. The businesses that win here send fewer messages to smaller groups.

Requests, not broadcasts

The highest-converting retail text is a reply to something the customer asked for. 'The boots you wanted are back in your size.' 'That record came in.' 'We held one for you.' These are not marketing — they are you doing something the customer requested — and the response rate reflects that.

export const shop = {
  backInStock: (c: Ctx) =>
    `${c.shop}: the ${c.item} you asked about is back ` +
    `${c.variant ? `in ${c.variant}` : ""}. Want us to hold one?`,
 
  holdExpiring: (c: Ctx) =>
    `${c.shop}: still holding the ${c.item} for you — ` +
    `we'll keep it until ${c.holdUntil}. No rush either way.`,
 
  // Only to people who explicitly asked about this specific thing.
  preOrderLanded: (c: Ctx) =>
    `${c.shop}: ${c.item} landed today. Yours is behind the counter.`,
};

The one broadcast worth sending

Drops and genuinely limited events. If you get twelve of something and they will be gone by Saturday, that is real scarcity and a text is the honest way to communicate it. Once or twice a quarter, to people who opted into marketing. Manufacture that urgency and customers will spot it immediately.

What not to send

• Weekly sale announcements. That is an email list and it is fine as one.
• Anything to a number collected at checkout without an explicit marketing opt-in — why that matters.
• Holiday greetings. They feel warm to send and read as filler.
• Photos of the whole new collection. One item, one link.

Tag every link so you can see which alerts actually bring people in — restock alerts and drop announcements convert very differently and you want to know by how much. UTM tagging.