How To Use Text Messaging To Reach Customers

Businesses need efficient communication in order to provide good customer service and to increase their sales. While phone calls, physical mail, and e-mailing have been utilized by many businesses today for communication to its customers...

Today, we’ll talk about a better communication channel for businesses.

“Text Messaging” a.k.a. “SMS”.

We have seen tremendous growth in text messaging among the age group of 13-18 years which has typically been utilized peer to peer, however businesses have been adopting it as a way to communicate time sensitive and relevant information to customers, employees, and/or field sales.

Text messages reach people wherever they are, at any time of the day (or night). Due to its very nature, text messaging is viewed with a sense of urgency to which e-mail can’t compare. People carry mobile phones almost 24 hours a day and thus the ability to deliver the message directly to the receiver is done with great confidence.

Consider these statistics:

• 18-29 year old consumers use text messaging more often than voice to communicate.
• On average 94% of text messages are read.
• When given a choice 39% of US consumers — 76 million people — prefer text messages to radio or TV advertising.
• Up to 80% of consumers keep their phone with them all day.

Consumers are numb to the huge amount of advertising that is presented in front of them each day. So much of this kind of advertising has conditioned consumers to ignore almost every advertisement. The organizations that suffer the most are the small and medium size ones because they do not have millions of dollars to spend on marketing like the large corporate sector does. Until now this has been an almost impossible challenge to overcome.

Finally, the advantage has turned in favor of small business owners due to text messaging (sms) technology. Companies, small or large, can integrate texting into their marketing strategies. All they need is the creativity to leverage the texting communications channel.

Here are some examples of how different kinds of businesses use texting strategically:

Advertising: Advertising agencies, businesses, and marketers use texting to build opt-in databases to send promotions and announcements to subscriber’s cell phones.

Education: Schools use texting to send alerts to parents about important reminders, truancy, or emergencies. Communicate with your entire student body in a matter of minutes or do surveys in the classroom to make it more interactive.

Real Estate: Texting gives house hunters instant access to property listings, and easily communicates with clients to setup an appointment or request more information. Related to this, you can send text messages to tenants the 1st of every month to remind them of rent being due.

Retail: Online retailers and mail order houses use texting to notify customers about their order status and when their merchandise is shipped.

Services: Doctors, dentists, salons, and other service companies use texting to send appointment reminders and confirmations.