For your marketing campaigns to succeed, your marketing messages need to reach your customers, and they need to take action. However, there's a slight problem.
Fourty-four percent of customers won't do business with a company that doesn't use their preferred mode of communication. That means two things: You have to figure out their preferred communication channels and then reach out to them through these channels.
For most people nowadays, that's via text message. U.S. consumers spend, on average, 333 percent more time texting than they do calling people, and it's easy to understand why.
Sending a text is more convenient than making a phone call. More personal than an email. More conducive to building a long-term relationship than just about any communication channel out there.
And we're just barely scratching the surface. In this post, we'll explore the benefits of using SMS to reach your customers. Let's get started.
1. Texting Helps You Reach More of Your Customers
Ninety percent of customers read a text message in the first three minutes after receiving it, but only 21.33 percent open their emails. By simply switching to SMS, your marketing messages will reach more customers.
If you're running a webinar and want to improve your attendance rate, then text messaging is your best bet to remind them at least 15 minutes before you go live.
Given the stats I just mentioned, compare that with what you'd expect if you only relied on email to remind your subscribers to attend your webinars.
The same applies to your offers and flash sales on special occasions. Customers have more than one email address, and even if you ask for their best email address, there's a chance that you won't get it. And if you do, you have to send them whitelisting instructions so that your emails land in their primary inbox.
Since you're unsure if they will whitelist you, your promotion emails will drown in the sea of other emails they receive. That, right there, is a lot of uncertainty to deal with. And it's not good for your business either.
2. Build a relationship on their terms through SMS
Over 50 percent of consumers prefer SMS over email for reminders and notifications. And 89 percent of leads prefer texts over phone calls. By communicating via text message, you eliminate the friction of mismatched communication preferences. Neither of you will struggle to get hold of the other.
Your customers will read and respond to you on their own time, allowing you to engage with them on their terms. On the other hand, let them know when you'll be available to respond to their inquiries so they can set the correct internal expectations and reach out to you during your business hours.
Besides, texting is less formal, so users can express themselves freely (just like they're talking to a friend), meaning that your interactions will be deeper than using email.
3. Automate SMS and include texting in workflows
Most software tools come with integrations, which allow you to incorporate other tools, such as SMS software, and automate your existing workflows.
For example, customer satisfaction surveys are a critical part of your sales process because the feedback you get helps you improve and provide a better buying experience for your customers.
Since mobile e-commerce sales will account for 62 percent of total e-commerce sales by 2027, you might also want to add a survey to your sales checkout process via SMS.
It's convenient for customers, and they're more likely to give you feedback almost immediately if they’re using their phones to buy. Make the service toll-free to entice them to respond to your survey.
Another way to include SMS in your existing workflows is to separate what you send to clients via email and text. For example, you might restrict educational content to emails and send promo codes and other relevant offers via text.
Many sales teams using Close successfully follow up with qualified prospects via SMS.
4. Get a Digital Record of Customer Interactions
Unlike phone calls, SMS communication is already in text form. So, a text conversation with a customer is an easy-to-understand record of customer interactions. You can import this data into your CRM tool to expand customer profiles.
Besides, since your CRM has a digital record of your conversations with your customers, go through them to identify problems that should be addressed. It will help you serve them better.
You can run your SMS interactions through sophisticated sales intelligence tools or enter them into a word cloud tool and see what common themes emerge.
Pay attention to the dominant words because they represent recurring themes that will help you identify common problems you might have ignored so you start paying more attention to them.
In addition, you'll identify common words and phrases that will help you improve the tone and style you use to communicate and connect with your customers through your sales messages.
5. Add a Personal Touch to Service Without Breaking the Bank
As you work toward providing excellent customer service, you might spend money on voice calls and customer service tools such as live chat and chatbots.
However, texting allows you to provide the same quality of customer support at a fraction of the cost.
Here's how to personalize customer service through texting:
Address your customers by their first name: This gets their attention because they instinctively feel like you know them. Your message also comes across as personalized; at the back of their minds, they feel that you care enough because you're paying attention to the details.
Use your CRM data: If your customer has interacted with the customer service team before, you don't need to ask them to describe their issues again. Look at your CRM data to understand their struggles and help them resolve their problems quickly.
Create a smooth transition: If your customer has a problem that only a specific department can handle, let them know you're handing them over to someone in that department. It could be as simple as, "I'm handing you over to George from the developer team. Click this link to reach out to me in case you get stuck."
As you exit the scene, your customer won't feel like you left them hanging because they know who will pick up the conversation to help solve their problems.
6. Speed up the Sales Process and Save Agents Time
You can speed up your sales process by using SMS messages for scheduling and notifications. When running ads, for instance, potential customers who sign up for your offers through FB lead ads are more inclined to share personal information such as their mobile number. Use your SMS texting nurturing sequence to follow up on them immediately once you get their number.
On the other hand, you need your customer service agents to be productive and focus on essential tasks. Automate appointment reminders for demos and sales calls so agents don't have to follow up with customers manually.
7. No Internet Required—Reach Anyone, Anywhere
Unlike email, text messages allow you to reach your customers wherever they are. People move almost everywhere with their phones, and even without an internet connection, the messaging function on their phones will still work.
So, if you're running a promotion, you don't have to put it on hold simply because you're afraid that deliverability will be affected by a lack of internet access or that customers won't read your emails.
Also, if you’re running a campaign and a large number of customers from different geographical regions make a purchase, text them order status notifications such as shipping details and the estimated time of arrival just in case they can’t access the internet.
This is especially useful if you’re trying to make money from podcasting, for example. Think about it. Most people listen to podcasts on the go. By sending an SMS to your listeners with a relevant CTA, you’re more likely to convert listeners to customers.
8. Expand to New Demographic Segments
The newer generations are moving away from email as the first native mobile generation. Text messaging is their preferred medium. Seventy-five percent of millennials prefer text messaging over talking.
This increases your chances of running a successful marketing campaign because you've reached out to them through a channel they're comfortable with when using their phones.
9. Your Customers Will Engage More with Your Brand
Customers engage more with text messages than email and other channels. Compared to email, you're eight times more likely to receive a response from an SMS you send to your customers.
On average, office workers receive 120 emails per day. That's enough to freeze their brains when they think of how they will wade through the deluge of messages and still maintain their sanity. So, they either ignore the emails, delete them en masse, or start considering operation inbox zero. The result? Little to no engagement with your brand.
However, with text messaging, 30 percent of your customers will respond to your messages. This is engagement at its best, which can fully support your B2B SaaS Marketing efforts. Isn't that a good sign if you've had trouble standing out in a crowded inbox?
The money is in texting.
Remember the saying, "The money is on the list?"
That has been true for a while now, but things have changed. With subscribers having to wade through many emails to read your messages, selling anything through email is getting harder.
But that doesn't mean that you've hit a dead end. Your next move should be adapting your marketing and revenue strategy using the right tool to reach your customers through texting because that's where the money is.
Drive Customer Engagement with SMS Communication
You might have heard that integrating texting and other channels with UCaaS is essential to having a unified communication system.
(That's an understatement, but maybe you missed it. Integrating texting and other channels with UCaaS is critical to having a unified communication system.)
Redundancy, inefficiency, and turf wars between departments due to a lack of transparency aren't worth writing home about.
Customers prefer speaking with the agent they first contacted and hate handovers because they'll have to start explaining themselves repeatedly. An experience like this leads to losing loyalty, a bad reputation, and low sales.
So, in addition to helping you run text messaging campaigns without a glitch, Close helps your team improve productivity, enables you to offer better customer service, and reduces administrative work through a unified communication system. Manage all your texts, calls, and emails in one unified workspace.
Do you want to continue engaging with customers? Download our free resource: Talk to Your Customers. Don't let the line go dead.
