The average person checks their phone 160 times a day, and nearly half of people say they have to check in on their device before their feet hit the floor for the day. Text message marketing is the clearest route towards customer engagement.
It may surprise you that business texting has a 209% higher response rate than email, phone calls, and even Facebook messages. This is an unmatched level of customer engagement.
For years, marketers have relied on email to reach customers. Email offers a huge user base, a massive return on investment (ROI), incredible speed, stable costs, and the ability to own the relationship with customers. Why make a switch to text message marketing? Because, text messaging enables companies to deliver fast and convenient service. And, it results in an average of 25x more ROI than email campaigns. Crazy, right?
Read Next: Harness the Power and Potential of Your SMS Marketing Services and Skyrocket Your Customer Experience
Text message marketing can have a big impact on your brand. Let me highlight a few benefits of the channel:
- Text message marketing creates a better customer experience. Did you know that 54% of consumers would prefer to receive promotions via text message?
- Text messaging allows for faster communication in real time between your business and your customers. This supports your customer service team in reaching customers quickly.
- Text message marketing increases sales. People read 95% of all texts they receive, meaning SMS helps you reach a highly engaged audience interested in investing in your company.
That’s all good and dandy. But, how do you know whether text message marketing is right for your company and your customer base? To help you decide, we’ve outlined 6 signs that tell you it’s time to invest in text message marketing.
1. Your IVR is bloated and your abandon rate is sky high.
Research says the average call center picks up ~200 calls per day, ~1,000 per week, ~4,000 per month, and misses 48 calls per month. That’s nearly 50 customers lost each month. No one likes to get stuck in phone call purgatory with holding music on repeat. Most customers in that position just abandon their efforts or spend their time clicking through your IVR system to kill time.
Text messaging gives customers another option. If your IVR is filled to the brim with customers waiting in line to talk with an agent, allow customers to deflect to SMS. Then, your customer service team can help customers within a text thread to answer their questions, provide updates, or schedule appointments fast and flexibly.
2. You want to interact with customers on a human-to-human, 1:1 level.
Text message marketing is a personal form of communication. Think about it: text messages are more relaxed than a phone call and significantly less intrusive. For most people, texting is a form of communication they use with people they know. And, text message marketing is far less stuffy than blasted email campaigns.
For customer service and for marketing teams, text messaging lets you interact with your customers on a 1:1 level. For example, instead of calling your customer to remind them of an upcoming appointment, you can send a quick text message that they can read when it’s convenient for them. Or, send out your promos and coupons via text. This process can even be automated to save you time and money. Then, if a customer responds back, your texting team can be there to help.
Text messaging gives you a convenient way to still maintain a personal relationship with your customers.
3. You need to reach a ton of people, really fast.
Text messages have amazing engagement numbers — we’re talking 98% of customers opening messages within just 3 minutes. Text message marketing is an incredibly effective way to reach a lot of customers fast.
If you’re like me, promotional emails get archived or missed in your email account. Text messages are just hard to ignore. They immediately pop up on your phone screen. And, they sit in the same inbox next to a message from your mom and your best friend. How can you not open it?
Maybe you need to send a proactive blast message about a sale or a promo. Perhaps you want to send out a mass of appointment reminders to customers. Text messaging lets you and it lets you know that you’re actually reaching your customer base.
4. You need to know more about your customer satisfaction.
Your customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is one of the most important indicators of customer intentions and customer loyalty. Knowing your CSAT helps your entire business predict growth and revenue. Your marketing team needs to know where to lean in to best reach customers. And, your customer service team needs to know where there is dissatisfaction with their service level. But, how does text messaging help you track your CSAT score?
Text message marketing, as mentioned earlier, lets you reach a lot of your customers fast. If you’re unsure how your customers feel about your brand, texting customers may be the easiest and most reliable means of collecting that data. Use text message marketing to send out CSAT and Net Promoter Score surveys to customers who have opted into communications from you. Or have your contact center team send them after a customer service interaction.
5. You need a fast and flexible way to chat with customers.
Customers today want fast and reliable customer service that doesn’t interrupt their daily lives. Text messaging allows your customer service team to deliver that kind of service exactly. Texting is immediate, meaning your agents can have a real time conversation with a customer to help them solve an issue.
Over text, agents can answer questions and quickly send helpful self-service articles or how-guides in real time. With texting, customers and agents can send images and videos back and forth to reach issue resolution faster. Yes, the same can be done over a live chat. But, in addition, texting gives customers and agents flexibility.
Customers don’t have to be stuck in front of their computer to get their issue resolved. They can be out grocery shopping or be on a road trip and actively get customer service help. Text message marketing is easily accessible and incredibly fast, pros that no other channel can offer.
6. You need to grow your customer base.
Text message marketing lets you own the relationship with your subscribers. What does that mean? No data privacy issues and no third-party intervention. When you collect a phone number or email address from a customer and have received opt-in permission from customers, you own the information in those text threads. That means you can communicate with your opted-in subscribers at any time without interruption.
Unlike on some email and messaging apps, algorithms can’t get in the way of deciding when or how those customers will see your message to them. With text message marketing, you’re guaranteed to grow your specific customer base and communicate with them specifically.