Finding ways to engage and communicate with your audience is an easy way to naturally grow your audience and your business. A technology method such as SMS text messaging can be especially effective. 98% of all text messages are opened, while just about 20% of emails are opened. Even better, 90% of all the text messages sent are actually opened within three minutes. If you want to send your audience a quick, simple message and make sure it gets read, you can’t beat SMS.
Here are five ways SMS can help you grow your business today:
- Run a Contest
Perhaps the best way to build up your customer list is by offering something free. You can kill two birds with one stone by running contests via text message. Have your customers sign-up for a sweepstakes or answer a trivia question by sending a keyword to your dedicated short code. They’ll have a chance to win something and you’ll be able to send messages and be confident they’ll get opened.
- Send Quick Reminders
With life being so busy today, it’s a huge deal to coordinate your schedule with clients and set up appointments. If they miss a meeting; however, it can be a huge hassle to get everything rescheduled. Thats time that could have been spent with other clients or important upcoming projects.
Sending SMS messages is a great way to remind your clients about appointments so they keep them. You can send a reminder a day, an hour, or even fifteen minutes before your meeting. Best of all, everything can be automated to save you even more time.
- Offer Great Customer Service
Providing exceptional customer service builds your relationship with existing customers and gives them a reason to keep coming back. SMS is perfect because more than half of all U.S. consumers say they prefer text message support over other platforms. Having a two-way communication with your customers will not only give them instant answers, but also allow them to have a real conversation until the issue is resolved. Text message support is convenient, quick, and simple for both you and your customer. It also gives your customer a permanent record they can access quickly no matter where they are.
- Create a Loyalty Program
A loyalty program is a great way to drive retention and reward your best customers. SMS allows you to easily facilitate your loyalty program. You can send your most loyal customers exclusive deals, such as discounts or early access to new products. If you don’t want to send too many coupons, you can simply use SMS to send your loyal customers information about future events or company announcements.
- Drive In-Person Engagement
If you have a physical storefront or are meeting with prospects at an industry event or fair, you can use SMS text messages to engage with people nearby. Allow customers to join a drawing or answer surveys by simply texting you. If you want to send notifications or deals to people at your event, you can set up location-based filters to automatically send a message to anybody in a specific radius.
Growing a business can be tricky, but good communication helps. With the right SMS partner, you can run contests, send reminders, and drive engagement.
For more information on how integrating an SMS software can help you grow your business, click here!
Author Biography:
Ken Rhie is the CEO of Trumpia, which earned a reputation as the most complete SMS solution including user-friendly user interface and API for mobile engagement, Smart Targeting, advanced automation, enterprise, and cross-channel features for both mass texting and landline texting use cases. Mr. Rhie holds an MBA degree from Harvard Business School. He has over 30 years of experience in the software, internet, and mobile communications industries.
