$250K in monthly revenue through text marketing campaigns
About Sono Bello Patient experience is at the center of the Sono Bello brand. As an industry leader in cosmetic surgery, with 60+ locations across the United States, Sono Bello invests considerable resources into ensuring its prospects and patients receive the very best care, customer service, and treatment throughout the patient journey.
Industry: Cosmetic surgery specialists
Location: 60+ locations across the United States
Contact Center Size: 100+ seats
Use Case: Improve low contact rates, speed up agent response time, add text marketing for re-engagement & brand awareness
Problem
Every patient deals with the headache of appointments. Whether a prospective patient needs a consultation, or an existing patient needs to reschedule their check-up, the process of making appointments affects everyone.
In the past, the Sono Bello team relied on phone calls and emails to confirm appointments and to remind patients, make changes, or process cancellations.
Constant No-Shows
Despite sending confirmations and reminders, Sono Bello had an unacceptably high number of patient no-shows. Patients were simply not opening their emails or clicking portal or confirmation links.
With limited staff and time, each missed consultation was a lost opportunity to help someone in need of treatment. “Because our model is based on appointments, it’s critical to communicate easily,” says Tim Surowiecki, Chief Marketing Officer at Sono Bello. “Unfortunately, our patients weren’t picking up the phone or returning calls.”
Plus, phone calls lacked the privacy some patients needed. “Cosmetic surgery is a sensitive topic. Patients don’t want to say their age, weight, and body mass index out loud. They’re in meetings with coworkers. They’re out to lunch with friends. They want a more discreet way to provide this information. Text messages are perfect for that.”
Solution
Business texting enabled across all Sono Bello locations
Convenient, quick support over SMS, where patients can ask questions, reschedule, cancel, and follow up
More efficient, empowering experiences for customer service agents
“We started getting inbound texts before even telling people about SMS support,” says Eric O’Brien, VP of Technology at Sono Bello. “As it turns out, our demographic is texting all the time.”
Today, customers receive appointment confirmations by text, and they can text back to confirm, reschedule, or cancel. Alongside other contact channels such as voice, Sono Bello customer service agents now text one-to-one with patients.
Before, Sono Bello staff could help only one patient at a time. Now, they support multiple customers at once by switching between text conversations. Plus, since SMS isn’t tied to Sono Bello’s open hours, patients can cancel, reschedule, or ask questions whenever they want.
Nothing falls through the cracks, and responsiveness is really great. We have two or three people available that can respond to patients quickly. If we leave our patients a voicemail, we might never hear back from them at all. Textel is a game-changer.
Eric O’Brien, Sono Bello
Result: More Patients & More Revenue
Many Sono Bello patients begin their journey by filling out a web form to get further information or schedule a consultation. From there, the Sono Bello team uses Textel to automatically initiate personalized drip campaigns via text that patients can respond to.
Sono Bello also launched a same-day text confirmation program for current patients. “We always had email reminders a couple of days out. But we felt like a simple day-of reminder would be helpful for patients,” says O’Brien.
As a result, show rates increased by a dramatic 9%, leading to 500 more “patient shows” per month and a $1.5 million increase in monthly incremental revenue. Similarly, Textel-enabled engagement campaigns generate $250K in incremental revenue per month.
“Nothing falls through the cracks, and responsiveness is really great. We have two or three people available that can respond to patients quickly. If we leave our patients a voicemail, we might never hear back from them at all. Textel is a game-changer,” says O’Brien.
About Sono Bello Patient experience is at the center of the Sono Bello brand. As an industry leader in cosmetic surgery, with 60+ locations across the United States, Sono Bello invests considerable resources into ensuring its prospects and patients receive the very best care, customer service, and treatment throughout the patient journey.
Industry: Cosmetic surgery specialists
Location: 60+ locations across the United States
Contact Center Size: 100+ seats
Use Case: Improve low contact rates, speed up agent response time, add text marketing for re-engagement & brand awareness
Streamlined operations and demographic data collection
About 211 HeartLine 211 HeartLine is a non-profit service that connects Oklahomans to essential resources. With a database of 1,141 provider agencies representing 9,864 vetted services across 37 counties, 211 HeartLine’s resource specialists connect community members in need to the help they need at any hour of the day. In the event of emergencies, like the COVID-19 pandemic, 211 HeartLine is available 24/7, 365 days a year, to offer specialized triage and screening services. They also provide an online Community Needs Dashboard that serves as a tool for provider agencies and community leaders to identify trends, needs, and gaps in services.
Industry: Non-profit social services
Location: Tulsa, OK
Contact Center Size: 65-70 seats
Use Case: Increase brand awareness, streamline operations, compliant communications
Product: Textel Conversations integration with NICE CXone
The Problem: 211 HeartLine Needed a Channel to Proactively Share Services and Resources With Their Community
In February of 2020, Eastern Oklahoma, still thawing from a debilitating winter storm that left thousands without water in Tulsa, faced mass shutdowns. Along with the rest of the country, Oklahoma was navigating the unknowns of the early COVID-19 pandemic and an ensuing uptick in unemployment.
More than 100,000 people reached out to 211 HeartLine for help in those first few weeks. Some needed assistance with utilities, and others with rent. And still more needed help accessing medical care.
Michael Coonfield, Director of Strategic Operations, and Ashlie Casey, Program Director for 211 HeartLine, knew they needed to be more proactive in supporting and educating residents about the services that were most relevant to them.
“It’s those instances where we want to notify them of disaster relief resources immediately,” Casey explained.
They needed a way to promote their brand and to get information out to their community through a channel that would actually reach them — via text. And ideally, they were looking for a texting solution that would be able to extend the functionality of their existing contact center platform NICE CXone. They needed to simply add to the workflow they had in their contact center. And as luck would have it, the Textel integration with NICE CXone came to the rescue.
The Solution: With Textel, 211 HeartLine was Able to Spread Brand Recognition While Supporting Their Workflow
Once Textel was implemented, 211 HeartLine began building a texting contact list. They promoted texting at every touchpoint with their customers — on their website, in video, in their IVR messages, and with every caller. They saw immediate results, adding over 20,000 users to their text subscription list and retaining nearly all of them.
“Out of the 20,000 subscribers we send text messages to, we may get 40-50 people unsubscribe each month,” Coonfield said. “That’s only a 0.2% unsubscribe rate, which is fantastic for us. And we still have a whole lot more people sign up to replace the customers we’ve lost.”
To measure the impact of their texts, 211 HeartLine would include unique links for each text message. This helped them know which messages make a difference. Texting their customers was working. They found that anytime they sent out a text message, they would quickly see a spike in web traffic and an increase in call volume. The word was getting out!
“We gained a lot of brand recognition when we added texting,” Coonfield said. “We could send our logo and social media links within a message, so our customers always associated our texts with our logo.”
Textel has allowed us to reach people instantly with information that can positively change their lives.
Ashlie Casey, 211 HeartLine
And with greater recognition, their customers were noticing the wealth of information that 211 HeartLine offered.
“There are a lot of customers subscribing to texts and engaging with our agents more than ever before,” Casey added. “Textel has allowed us to reach people instantly with information that can positively change their lives.”
Textel Helped 211 HeartLine Streamline Their Operations
With the Textel Text Bot integrated in NICE CXone, 211 HeartLine could speed up their processes as agents managed inbound texts. When a customer texts in, the Text Bot gathers the necessary customer demographic information, then routes the text to an agent to help with referrals, making for a smoother, streamlined operation.
“With the integration between NICE CXone and Textel, our contact center agents can easily manage texts in the same window they use for chats,” Coonfield explained. “So, they see no difference between the two skills. It fits right into our workflow!”
According to Coonfield, this lets them also be more strategic with their texts. If agents are slammed with incoming calls, texts can help to drive incoming traffic to the website or relieve agents of the monotony on the phone.
Textel Helped 211 HeartLine Communicate Freely and Stay Compliant
211 HeartLine found ways to strategize their SMS campaigns. With Textel, they worked out a calendar to send blast text notifications so they could strategically reach their users during the busiest seasons.
By segmenting lists for outbound Blast texts, they can target a specific segment of their users, like a specific county, to communicate needs that are relevant to that region.
Then, depending on the text’s importance, 211 HeartLine coordinates their social media marketing (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), newspapers, and news channels to align with the text notification, ensuring customers get the same information on all fronts.
In the meantime, 211 HeartLine could trust that they were staying within TCPA compliance using Textel’s opt-in/opt-out management tools. When a user unsubscribes, Textel automatically removes those customers from the master list, keeping 211 HeartLine legally in the clear.
The Result: With Textel, 211 HeartLine Expanded Brand Awareness and Text Adoption
Gained 20,000 text subscribers.
After they added texting, 211 HeartLine saw their contact list grow exponentially, gaining 20,000 text subscribers. This let them expand their outreach, offering more essential resources and information to their community.
Lowered unsubscription rate to 0.2%.
211 HeartLine noticed the popularity of texting with their customers, seeing only a 0.2% unsubscription rate with their texting list. Using Textel, it was easier for them to offer value to their customers, reaching customers in their preferred channel of communication.
Streamlined operations and demographic data collection.
With the help of the Textel Text Bot integration in NICE CXone, 211 HeartLine could rely on automations to gather essential customer data before routing the customer to a live agent. They were also able to stay compliant using opt-in/opt-out tools to manage their subscription list.
About 211 HeartLine 211 HeartLine is a non-profit service that connects Oklahomans to essential resources. With a database of 1,141 provider agencies representing 9,864 vetted services across 37 counties, 211 HeartLine’s resource specialists connect community members in need to the help they need at any hour of the day. In the event of emergencies, like the COVID-19 pandemic, 211 HeartLine is available 24/7, 365 days a year, to offer specialized triage and screening services. They also provide an online Community Needs Dashboard that serves as a tool for provider agencies and community leaders to identify trends, needs, and gaps in services.
Industry: Non-profit social services
Location: Tulsa, OK
Contact Center Size: 65-70 seats
Use Case: Increase brand awareness, streamline operations, compliant communications
Product: Textel Conversations integration with NICE CXone
About 211 Virginia 211 Virginia has served the Commonwealth for over 15 years, connecting the community with essential resources. 211 Virginia is a free and confidential service offering access to crisis and emergency counseling, disaster, food, health care, insurance, stable housing assistance, employment, veteran, family services, and more to a wide population. 211 Virginia is the Commonwealth’s largest information and referral network available for social services. With an easy-to-remember three-digit dialing code, 211 Virginia connects people with help, 24 hours a day, 365 days in the year.
Industry: Non-profit social services
Location: Roanoke, VA
Contact Center Size: 25-50 seats
Use Case: Reduce call volume, increase text adoption
Product: Textel Conversations integration with NICE CXone
The Problem: Overwhelmed by a Surging Call Volume, 211 Virginia Struggled to Keep Up
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, 211 Virginia was prepared to meet the inevitable increase in community needs. By June 2021, the state of emergency was lifted, but another variant of the virus was on the rise. And the team at 211 Virginia saw an unexpected and dramatic rise in inquiries again. Relief services and eviction and utility moratoriums were set to end, placing thousands of renters in Virginia in a crisis. Then, with COVID numbers continuing to rise with the delta and omicron variants, 211 Virginia was in over their heads.
Their contact center was setting records for the number of inquiries they were receiving; their call volume was escalating.
As a result, abandonment rates skyrocketed, community needs were unmet, and their agents had to ultimately suspend collecting demographic data to keep up. Overall, 211 Virginia saw an 18% increase in call volume and a 34% increase in unmet needs through 2020 and 2021. They needed to find a solution to juggle the intake.
The Solution: 211 Virginia Team Added Texting to Reduce Call Volume & Solve Operational Pains
With such a significant increase in inquiries, 211 Virginia needed to find a way to lower its call abandonment rate and provide its inquirers with an additional, more flexible communication channel. Meanwhile, their contact center specialists were overwhelmed, drained by the endless incoming calls.
They turned to Textel for help. In May of 2021, the 211 Virginia team went live with texting, adding Textel to their existing NICE CXone platform in their contact center. In the first year, they saw an increase from initial inbound texts averaging around 580 texts to receiving an average of nearly 14,000 incoming texts. That bump in volume made texting their second preferred communication channel in just one year.
Specialists think of text as a little bit like a break from being on the phone. They don’t have somebody in their ear, but they’re still doing their job.
Margaret Telsch-Williams, 211 Virginia
Texting Supported Internal Operations and Employee Engagement
Textel’s product integrated with 211 Virginia’s existing NICE CXone platform. This made implementation and adoption simple. The contact center staff, varied in its age demographic, took on the learning curve of the new technology and found texting to be a helpful break from the phone.
Because of the nature of calls 211 Virginia receives, it’s important that their employees are mentally prepared to support crisis and emergency situations. “Specialists think of text as a little bit like a break from being on the phone,” said contact center director Margaret Telsch-Williams. “They don’t have somebody in their ear, but they’re still doing their job.”
According to Telsch-Williams, the community resource specialists look forward to handling incoming texts, avoiding the “wear down” and mental burnout parts of helping customers through crisis moments. Texting gave employees a breather and variety in their day, breaking the monotony of talking non-stop or listening to callers who are upset and stressed themselves.
211 Virginia said their texting inquiries take almost twice as long as a call to resolve. This may sound like an issue operationally, but in reality, the interruptions in a texting conversation made it possible for 211 Virginia to help more people simultaneously. Once they found a workflow, specialists could handle multiple text threads at the same time. And, the 211 Virginia team was able to care for multiple inquirers and support their own employees in the process.
Texting also fixed the problem of collecting demographic data. “We have a series of demographic questions we have to ask incoming callers,” Telsch-Williams said. “But when we got our texting set up so that it automatically asks those questions for us via text, that helped us greatly in terms of the duration of time that an inquiry takes. By the time a caller connects with a specialist, we already have so much information on the caller, allowing us to get to the heart of their needs right away.”
With texting, 211 Virginia was able to relieve some of the stress from their overwhelming call volume and streamline operations, driving efficiency in their contact center.
Texting Met the Unique Needs of the Community
211 Virginia’s mission requires them to be available at all hours in the day, every day of the year, to support anyone who calls. Often, their callers are in distress, navigating homelessness, job loss, and/or financial and emotional stress. Many of their inquirers are feeling ashamed and anxious when they reach out to 211 Virginia. By adding texting as a channel, 211 Virginia noticed how texting supported their community’s unique needs.
“A lot of our inquiries are personal and confidential in nature. And some people are not doing well when they reach out,” explained community engagement manager Amanda Holcomb. “Many are ashamed in their situations, so it’s hard to ask for help. But it’s a lot easier when your identity is a bit more distant than with a voice having to share that information. Some people are more likely to send a text or a chat or an email than they are to call because it feels a little less direct.”
Telsch-Williams added that texting is helping their most vulnerable community members navigate a scary and stressful time in their life.
“We had somebody who was texting us from the bathroom of a hotel room. She was actively homeless, but was staying in a hotel,” Telsch-Williams said. “Her kids were in the bedroom area and she was texting us from the bathroom. She was crying, needing help, but didn’t want to be vulnerable or fall apart in front of her kids.”
“With texting, though, she could reach out for help and could do so quietly with us,” she added. “We were able to give her information on how to find housing and how to fix her situation. She didn’t know what to do. She had never been through this before. But because she could reach out over text, she was able to have that moment away from her kids to breathe, problem solve, and still receive help.”
The Result: With Textel, 211 Virginia Cut Down Call Volume and Boosted Efficiency
Increased text adoption by 400%.
211 Virginia saw their texting skyrocket in just one year. The organization went from averaging 579 inbound SMS messages annually to 13,838 messages annually. Inquirers were eager for a channel that offered more flexibility than live chat or a phone call and more anonymity when navigating crisis situations.
Texting became the #2 preferred contact method, second only to their phone line.
After one year of use, texting became the second preferred communication channel in 211 Virginia’s contact center. With overwhelming call volumes following the COVID-19 pandemic, inquirers could choose texting as a more flexible channel to reach out for help and resources.
Streamlined operations and demographic data collection.
Since Textel is fully integrated into NICE CXone, their existing contact center platform, 211 Virginia adopted the new texting process quickly and easily. And with an added channel relieving their phone lines, the team reduced call volume, giving agents a break from the phones. They also figured out how to streamline data collection, creating a faster and more personalized user experience.
About 211 Virginia 211 Virginia has served the Commonwealth for over 15 years, connecting the community with essential resources. 211 Virginia is a free and confidential service offering access to crisis and emergency counseling, disaster, food, health care, insurance, stable housing assistance, employment, veteran, family services, and more to a wide population. 211 Virginia is the Commonwealth’s largest information and referral network available for social services. With an easy-to-remember three-digit dialing code, 211 Virginia connects people with help, 24 hours a day, 365 days in the year.
Industry: Non-profit social services
Location: Roanoke, VA
Contact Center Size: 25-50 seats
Use Case: Reduce call volume, increase text adoption
Product: Textel Conversations integration with NICE CXone
A few years ago, I worked at a company that built software for dental offices. Our system helped front offices schedule patients, dictate Explanations of Benefits and process insurance. Yes, it was as riveting as it sounds. (I’m lying. It was, of course, boring to market and sell. But it was a vital product that seriously helped people and their dental offices.)
Anyway, one day when my team and I were heads down working on documentation for our up-and-coming self-service portal, there came a massive explosion. In seconds, the building was covered in smoke and everyone learned what the one thing they’d grab if ever they were caught escaping a fire. (For me, it was my gallon of water and lunch box. Most everyone else grabbed their car keys. One guy grabbed the ping pong paddle and shoved a ball in his pocket. Humans are weird in emergencies.)
As we were evacuating, we realized something. No one had a way to tell our customers we’d been unceremoniously thrusted out of our building for the afternoon. Calls, questions and issues were building by the minute and we had to sit idle until we could access our compliant devices again.
If only we had a mass text app.
Mass texting is like sending a bulk email. When you send out a mass text, you’re not starting a massive group text with all of your customers (that would be bonkers!). Instead, a mass text app helps you to broadcast information – like an emergency plan after your building undergoes an extremely unexpected explosion. And, it lets you send out the info to all of your customers, simultaneously as individualized messages.
Maybe most companies don’t endure such dramatics in their day-to-day. But a mass text app is still insanely helpful in more situations than just unexpected emergencies. Imagine this: your site is having some issues and isn’t letting purchase orders go through. You want to protect against your customer service team getting slammed with calls and emails. So you send out a proactive message. You hit them with a text that they’ll actually open (usually within the first three minutes of its arrival). You’re proactively protecting your customers from endless frustrations and saving your agents time and energy in a stressful situation.
These, of course, are just a couple of use cases for mass texting. It’s important that your mass text app gives you lots of functionality for you to use it to the fullest. So to help you get the most out of your mass text app, we’ve gathered a list of six features to look for so you’re getting the most bang for your buck!
6 Must Have Features to Look for in a Mass Text App
1. Scheduling
Automation can be a lifesaver when your customer service team has their hands full. Often, you don’t want to draft and send a text right away. Instead, with scheduling, your team can create text campaigns in their down time and schedule them for a future date.
Plus, by scheduling messages in advance, you can make your mass text campaign more strategic. This way each message gets sent when it will attract the maximum attention from your customers. Send personalized promotions to customers by scheduling texts to send on customer birthdays or for special events. And you can prepare and run automated recurring campaigns to send on a biweekly or monthly cycle.
2. Text Throttling
With text throttling, control and limit the number of text messages sent at one time through your mass text app. This feature can be beneficial when you anticipate a message you send will receive a big response. For example, maybe you have a product update you want to notify customers about, but don’t want to get customer responses all at once. To avoid overwhelming your customer service team with responses, you can select the speed at which you want to send your texts. For example, send:
5 texts per minute
50 texts per minute
500 texts per minute
1,000 texts per minute
So let’s say you were to send an announcement about a deal to 3,000 customers and were expecting a response rate of 10%, you wouldn’t want to receive 300 replies at once. But, if you instead used scheduling to deliver 300 messages every hour, it would throttle the customers’ response rate and relieve your team of being overwhelmed.
3. Mass Text App MMS
The best mass text app lets you send more than just SMS. With multimedia messaging, your service team can include photos, videos, and other files in your messages. Bypass steps and save time in helping your customers by sending out images or how-to videos to multiple contacts to walk customers through the product.
Or use MMS messaging and have your sales team send product demos to select groups of prospects or renewal customers. With more dynamic messages, your texts will stand out to customers and they’ll be more likely to engage with your content.
4. Lists and Segments
A mass text app isn’t really that useful if you can’t guarantee who your messages are going to. Use lists and segmentation to ensure you’re sending the right messages to the right people. As you add to your opt-in list, you’ll start to notice that you don’t want to send every text to every customer. For example, if you’re trying to reach out to customers who haven’t scheduled a hair appointment yet on their usual cadence, you don’t want to also text the customers who are already booked.
You pay for every text you send out, so it makes sense to reach customers with an appropriate message that will deliver ROI and make for a more personal experience. Find a mass text app that makes it simple to sort contacts into subgroups based on purchase history, keywords, interests so you can manage what message goes out to which customers.
5. Custom Fields
Texting should feel personal. One of the biggest benefits of texting your customers is that it gives you an avenue to reach them in a personalized way. To lean into personalization, make sure your mass text app lets you customize your interactions. With custom fields, add personal names, order details or delivery dates into your mass texts. That way, the text a customer receives feels more like it was catered for them specifically, helping your brand stand out even more.
6. Reporting and Analytics
It’s no good to go through the hassle of adding a new communication channel with customers if you have no way of knowing how it’s performing. Whether you use mass texting for marketing purposes, to do proactive customer support, or to reach new sales prospects, you need ways to know how contacts are responding and how your team is performing.
How many of your customers are responding with keywords or opening your links? How many customers are reaching out via text for support? These are the questions that your metrics and reports can help answer. Find a mass text app that provides easy-to-consume, customizable reporting features that give you insight into how your campaigns are working.
To make sure your SMS messaging platform actually adds value to your company, you have to watch the right metrics. Read more about which 5 metrics you should be tracking to find success.
Building revenue for your company is more than just getting customers in the door. It’s about creating lifetime customers. To do so, pay attention to your customer lifecycle. The customer lifecycle refers to the full lifetime of customers from when they learn about your product, to when they make a purchase, to when they become a loyal customer.
The five stages of the customer lifecycle are:
Reach
Acquisition
Conversion
Retention
Loyalty
The customer lifecycle starts with your sales team reaching customers and continues throughout the customer journey with sustained customer support. Once you reach customer retention, your team drives profitability. In fact, increasing customer retention by just 5% leads to a 25% to 95% increase in profit.
So obviously you want to keep customers engaged with your company and continue building revenue, right? You don’t reach the loyal customer stage by chance. You have to first actually connect with customers, and then have to maintain those connections.
Customers expect you to keep them engaged across all channels. In fact, 85% of consumers expect to use a blend of physical and digital channels to connect. For sales and support interactions, customers value you saving time and money or making their lives easier.
Traditional channels like phone or email get a notoriously low response rate. They can be as low as 6% when salespeople try to make contact through a phone call or email! It makes since though, I mean, how many of us answer a call from an unknown number any more? And then, our email inbox is cluttered (I have about 4,000 unread messages in my inbox alone), with nearly 50% of emails being spam.
When you’re limited by traditional communication, other challenges get more complicated, too. Every sales and support team has to face:
Difficulty in Lead Qualification: When email responses get delayed and phone calls go unanswered, your sales team struggles to track down and qualify hot prospects.
Vying for the Competitive Advantage: Odds are, customers aren’t only talking to you. Your teams need tools that give them a competitive advantage and help them stand out.
Managing Administrative Tasks: Sales teams spend less than 36% of their time selling due to manual processes and administrative tasks. They need tools that let them focus on selling.
Maintaining Relationships Post-Sale: Once a prospect becomes a customer, support and sales need effective ways of nurturing a relationship.
How do you meet these challenges? Well, SMS messages have an open rate of 98% (compared to 20% of all emails and 16% of phone calls). So to break through the noise, and connect with customers faster through texting. By investing in texting technology, you can reach customers through the entire customer lifecycle.
Three Texting Tactics to Help your Bottom Line (and how to do ‘em)
1. Send mass promotional texts
The best way to boost sales and start the customer lifecycle is to reach customers through promotions. Once a text has been sent, 95% are read within the first 3 minutes of receipt. So sending out promotional texts to customers is a primary way to draw customers in..
An SMS promotional text may take only five minutes to set up. Let’s say you have a list of prospects that have opted into receiving texts. They responded to an ad campaign in the past and you want to draw them back in. Here are some ways to do so:
Get creative with a text-to-win campaign to start a conversation.
Blast a message about a new product discount that just launched.
Create unique coupon codes for prospects to send via text.
How will this help your bottom line? Let’s take an example: Let’s say a clothing retail company sends one promotional campaign to about 1,200 people a month. After that campaign, they get about $2,500 in additional business for that month. By letting prospects know about possible discounts, they boosted their monthly revenue significantly.
I really struggle to follow through when I’m shopping online. Seriously, I’d be embarrassed to share how many of the open tabs on my computer are from different stores with items just sitting in my cart. I am notorious for abandoning carts. And I’m not alone. Nearly 88% of people never finish the checkout process. How can your sales team help avoid this loss of revenue?
To bring potential customers back into the customer lifecycle, follow up with customers who have abandoned purchases. Use texting to encourage those shoppers (like me) who’ve left products behind to come back and buy.
Let’s say a shopper leaves items behind in your online store. Have either your sales or your marketing create automated messages that send to their phone. It might look something like this:
Perhaps incentivize the customer to follow through on the sale with a small discount on their purchase. This use of texting restores customers who may otherwise walk away from a sale without a second thought.
3. Send date-triggered campaigns
Buying is personal and emotional, right? So, your customers want to feel known and respected by you. Personalized messaging stands out and helps you reach and acquire customers, while also nurturing the relationship. For a more personalized approach with your customers, send date-triggered campaigns.
These kinds of text messages let you text customers at times when they are primed to shop. This may be on their birthdays, anniversaries, or Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale reminders. Who doesn’t want to get free or discounted stuff on their birthday? Here’s how you can do this:
With the help of your texting platform, keep track of customer birthdays or note when customers first joined your company. Then automate date-triggered messages to go to those customers who opted into texts from you. Maybe send a promotional message five days before a customer’s birthday with a discount code or a BOGO deal so they have time to use it. Chances are, they’ll be excited about your birthday gift and will buy something in your store, supporting your bottom line and helping to retain customers.
