These days more and more businesses are implementing text messaging into their operations. Text messaging can be used in a number of ways in all kinds of business settings in order to improve customer service. Proponents of Text Message Marketing claim that it is the single best marketing method for reaching out to your target audience, securing high-quality leads and converting leads to customers. Text messaging strategies can provide great returns on your investment if you implement them in the right way. To help, this article is a guide to how you can use text messaging to improve your customer service and boost your business.
1. Text Messaging is a Great Way to Reach Out to Customers
Text messaging was popularized during the 2000s and is now the absolute best way to engage with customers. Text messaging is the most used form of communication in the world and studies have shown that almost all text messages are opened and over half are responded to. Sending text messages is the most direct channel to engage with your customers and because you receive push notifications every time you get a text message, you know immediately whereas often with emails you won’t receive a push notification. Everybody who has a phone has access to text messaging and knows how to use it.
2. Text Messaging Can Keep Your Customers Updated on Your Products and Services
Text messaging can be used in ingenious ways to alert your customers and keep them updated about products and services. A good example of how to use text messaging is the popular driver service Uber. After you book your Uber driver, you will receive various text messages notifying you that your ride has been accepted and updating you on your driver’s whereabouts. These text messages use a technology called global API and can be used to connect people all over the world. Global SMS API has many other applications and can be used for comprehensive marketing campaigns, to reach out to your customer base and to advertise your business’s new products and services. Text messaging has a very high open rate and according to data analysis, people read 85% of text messages within the first 15 minutes of receiving them. There is no better way to give your customers up to date information about your business than through text messages.
3. Text Messaging Alerts Your Customers to New Content
As well as being used in its own right to reach out to customers and promote products and services, text messaging can also be used as a supplementary method for other customer outreach communications. Because of the uniquely open and engagement rates of text messaging, which we highlighted above, sending text messages to your customers is ideal for notifying them of content that you have sent to them by email. Often when people receive an email, they will dismiss it offhand as spam and won’t read it, even if it is an email that they would be interested in or have requested. You can also use text messages to notify your social media audience every time you post new content on social media. Your audience probably follows multiple social media accounts so it is easy to miss a post from your business. A study by tech experts found that a notification text message increases social media engagement by 65%.
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4. Text Messaging Can Offer Your Customers Exclusive Deals
One great feature of text messaging is that it offers an exclusive customer service experience. In the 2000s when text messaging became mainstream, the sheer number of marketing text messages that were sent out became a huge annoyance to the people receiving them. These days, however, text message marketing is heavily regulated meaning that only customers who have opted in can receive them. If these rules are breached then your business will be forced to pay $500 per text message that was sent illegally. Therefore, when customers receive a text message from you, they know that they are receiving an exclusive offer so they won’t dismiss it as being spam or a scam message. The regulations policing text message marketing are often cited by critics who claim that they are so restrictive that they make text message marketing totally ineffective but proponents of text messaging believe that this is the wrong way to look at it. Because text messaging is regulated, your customers will know that you cannot send text messages out to just anybody so they will feel like a valued customer.
Text messaging can be used in many great ways to provide excellent customer service. Text messaging is the most direct channel for engaging with customers and is ideal for promoting your business and your products and services. Use some of the ideas in this guide to start implementing text messaging into your business today.
