The good thing about texting is that you can always do it better.
And we’re not talking about adding emoticons either, or lots and lots of punctuation … or exclamation points!!!!! This stuff may be great fun for the younger people in your life or anyone who is equally enthusiastic about punctuation.
In a professional business setting, ‘better’ is more along the lines of finding ways to do things easier, faster, and smarter, and increase one’s opportunity to get the word out and make more sales. In an SMS world, better can mean software to help you keep track of your texts, target fans/customers more accurately, and find new ways for your texts to reach larger groups of people.
The following list shows suggestions how to do all of the above, using some super texting techniques.
- Loyalty program. The concept of rewarding regular customers or making a special club just for them isn’t new. But when you blend texting in, membership can become even more elite – you can send out texts about deals, keep track of points accrued, and send out personalized texts on customer’s birthdays.
- Send different texts to different groups. As your customer database grows, you can learn different things each one wants more of, perhaps by surveys or asking them to complete a profile. Then you can create separate messages for them.
- Connect with many users at once. Rather than individually texting each person, your software can help create and send out a message to all of your customers if you have something good to offer – and without triggering spam warnings from your bulk gateway.
- Easy opt-in. Old-school opt-ins used to required reading (or pretending to read) long lists of terms and conditions and legal blah blah blahs. Today, there are still “rules” from the Wireless Association for making sure someone consents to receiving proper info and promotions from your business and links are built correctly, but now it may just take clicking on a link in a text or a short code.
- Solicit votes. When you’re sending out mass texts, you don’t necessarily want everyone to text you back. But you can still solicit opinions via two-way texting, perhaps something easy like a yes/no question. It’s easy to gather and sort these, and it lets customers feel involved as well.
- Landline texting. If you’re not on your mobile device all the time, customers can still text you, and then you can read and answer as an email. Then, when the email is sent to one or many recipients, it will go out as a text.
- Customer service/assistance. Not all texts have to directly promote your business. An SMS software can aid you in letting customers text you their questions and then you can text back helpful answers.
- Coupons. Since everyone likes saving money, you can text customers a link to a landing page where they can find an online coupon. Your software can help you design these and make sure they can be properly redeemed and tallied, and also which customer group gets them and how many they have already received or redeemed. Customers also don’t worry about hanging onto pieces of paper.
- Incorporate third-party offers. Even mostly loyal customers may sometimes balk at receiving offers from your friends/partners, unless you make the process smooth and well-defined since it requires another opt-in. For instance, Redbox invites its fans to join its Text Club, which includes Redbox news and deals from other partners, up to two texts a week.
- Invitations. Whether you’re planning a party or a Black Friday promotion, you want your customers to attend. This could even be a one-time upcoming special offer, or a larger campaign to make sure people don’t forget what’s coming up with scheduled texts.
- Auto-respond. An SMS software can be set up to send automatic texts to customers, which frees up your staff to focus on larger projects. Maybe a ‘thanks for joining’ message when they sign up, a note on their birthday, or ‘thanks for entering’ during a promotion that requires them to text you back.
As you can see, what you can do with your texting is really only limited by how creative you can be and how well you know – or want to know – your customers. An SMS software can help with much of the heavy lifting/technical details such as configuring databases, while you concentrate on the creative. For more details on how to utilize software effectively, visit Trumpia.com.
Free Mobile Marketing Success Kit
Get Your Copy Today
