Now when you think of a business using SMS, what do you think of? Sending you a text message about an offer? Yes, that is one of the ways that millions of companies are using mobile marketing, but what if we told you there are loads of other ways that businesses are using text messaging to help them grow and develop as a business.
Below is a list of what SMS can do for your business, with the aim to hopefully help you and give you some new ideas to use SMS to help you grow.
Update: After receiving lots of requests for some examples, we have put together a blog post with an example of each of the below – click here to read all our examples
Marketing/Sales
You can market your business online, on billboards, TV, radio, print, etc. etc. There are hundreds of ways to market your business, but now a lot of businesses are moving towards text messaging, and with a 98% open rate, you can see why.
You can send a text message promoting your website, products, or service. This can be sent in bulk to all your customers or it can be broken down into different demographics meaning you can target your messages to specific customers.
You can also send a message with offers in, and with a link to your website or telling them to pop into the store.
Updates
So, you have a customer who has just bought one of your products online, wouldn’t it be great to thank them and tell them their order is being proceeded, dispatched, being delivered or even cancelled?
Well you can. With an automated text messaging service you can set up your system to send a text message to a customer immediately after they have purchased, even with specific details about their order. This can be carried on throughout the process and right up to a final message after the product has been delivered.
We have found that keeping your customers constantly updated with where their order is, vastly improves customer satisfaction.
Communication
Text messaging can be used for communicating within your company. If you need to tell staff members about a change in their shift, a meeting they must attend or even a staff night out, this can all be done with a simple text message. You can also send out an automated message with an employee’s working hours on.
Surveys
Finding out what your customer thinks of you and your products can be the difference between a customer for life or a lost customer. Sending a survey over text is a fast way of getting feedback from your customers.
It is really simple, send a text message asking your customer to rate you, along with a couple of other questions if you would like to ask and in no time, you will have a response.
Ikea tried out an SMS survey and saw an increase in response rates twice as much as they had when they were using an email service. They also had their Net Promotor Score double (SmartSurvey).
Conversation
Don’t have a live chat on your website? Well, you can now use text messaging to chat with people who have a question. By using an email to SMS service, you can send a message using your email account, it will convert it to a text message, and straight into your customer pocket.
You can use this on your website instead of a live chat system, you can use it as another way of allowing customers to contact you, or use it as part of your customer service. Meaning customers don’t have to wait on hold for hours, but you can send them a text to let them know when someone is available to speak to them, or when the queue is low.
Booking appointments
Using a text message to book an appointment, never heard of it? Businesses are now using text messaging to allow customers to book an appointment, meaning they don’t need anyone on the phone taking appointments saving them money.
One of the ways this can be done is using our Mobile Journeys, which uses text messaging but looks like a professional booking system and will cost you the fraction of the cost of a bespoke booking system.
Reminders
You can use SMS to remind customers of an appointment, and this can be done automatically. If you constantly have people forgetting they have an appointment and not turning up, you could send them a text message prior to their appointment as a gentle nudge to remind them not to miss it.
This helps to ensure that your customer does not forget they have an appointment, meaning there are no lost costs in people not turning up or having to re-book after they have failed to turn up.
Take payments
Some companies use SMS to chase debtors with a great success rate. But if you don’t need to chase anyone you can always use our Mobile Journeys to collect payments.
Again, this means there is no need for someone on the phone taking a payment and does not need a complicated and expensive system to collect payments, it can now be done all through texts.
So, what can SMS do for your business? Well a lot by the look of it, with new ways constantly being developed we are sure that this list will just keep growing and growing over the next few years.
Have you seen one or more of the examples above that you think your business could use? Well sign up for a free account today and take advantage of our Double Credits offer.