text messaging

Improve Customer Satisfaction With Better Communication

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Every brand wants to make sure they are keeping their customers as happy as possible. Happy customers are more likely to purchase again in the future, and will spread good reviews to friends and family (which are very likely to turn into highly qualified leads). Better communication can go far in helping improve the relationship between a company and its target audience. Here are a few reasons you should be using SMS mass text messaging to connect with your audience.

Get Real Opinions

Mobile polls and surveys are a great way to get a few quick opinions from your customers. Simply ask your customers what they love or don’t love about your brand. The more you know, the better you can serve them in the future. People are far more likely to complete a short mobile survey than a paper form or click-through to an email survey. Keep in mind that multiple choice (over open-ended) questions are the most likely to get a response and rewards are likely to entice more of your customers to actually complete your survey.

Improve Your Speed

Establishing automatic texts can help you respond to the activity of your customers quickly. People do not want to wait on a brand to respond, but taking too long also runs the risk of losing that customer’s attention. A customer can get a speedy text response when asking a question or a notification when they sign up for a rewards program with your brand. By providing timely interactions, you will help keep your customers better informed and less hassled with the process.

Use Reminders

You want customers to stay on top of their purchases and they won’t want to forget either. SMS marketing can be incredibly helpful for keeping everyone on track and in-the-know. Use quick, scheduled reminders to help customers remember their payment dates. Collections can be one of the most stressful parts of a business, so use your text messages to keep your numbers in the black with on time payments. If you are working with smaller purchases then you can use your SMS alerts to help customers remember their carts and not let a potential purchase go abandoned.

Respect Their Time

Show your customers just how important they are by keeping your messages brief, to-the-point and as non-invasive as possible. Text messages are naturally short, so a text can be less time-consuming than an email. They are often faster and less invasive than a phone call (most of your customers will not be interested in talking to a person unless they are the ones calling you). Cold calling typically annoys people more than it actually sells.

Reduce Effort and Cost

All companies are looking to get the best return on their investment (ROI) and effort (ROE). Reduce the amount of money and time you are spending in your marketing by using mass text services. Text messages are effective, yet they are quicker to write (less content) and require no design. Text messages are not expensive and are likely to be read. The more you can reduce the effort and cost of connecting with your audience, the better you are able to personalize their experience. Plus, you can always pass your savings down to your customer with a lower price point or better rewards to increase satisfaction.

Texting will help you connect with your customer in a way that emails or mail won’t. The large majority of texts are opened, while many emails and mailers are ignored. So, use text messaging to ensure you aren’t fighting for the customer’s attention and you are keeping them in the loop.

For more information on how integrating an SMS software can improve customer satisfaction with better communication, 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.

5 Simple Ways #SMS Can Help Grow Your Business Today!

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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:

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

Customer Connections Are Key

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The business world is constantly in flux, adapting and evolving to match the demand. For your company to remain a success on the market, you need to make sure it feels fresh to new customers. It has to always be the business offering more to customers and going the extra mile. To do this, keep two ideas in mind, relatability and relevance. It’s important you make sure that your business and marketing campaign is running on a connected model. Everything should be tied to everything else otherwise you are losing potential in your business. What we mean by this is that you might get customers to your Twitter. But, if there’s no link to your site, then they can’t buy so it’s a rather pointless follow. Or, you might get one buy from them. But, if they don’t feel a connection with your company, they won’t buy again. As such, it is a missed opportunity. Here’s how to keep customers connected in your business model.

Support Through Live Messaging

Gone are the days when you needed a full room of employees for customer phone support. Instead, you can now give them all the support and services they need online with a live messenger. Live messengers provide customers with instant access to your business. It’s easy to setup, cheap to run and customers will appreciate knowing that support is only ever a quick tap away on the keyboard.

Marketing Through Social Networks

Social networks are an easy, natural ways to make customers and clients feel as though your company is more than a business. It’s something they can relate to and connect with on multiple levels. For instance, with snapchat, fun images and viral videos can gain the attention of the press and the consumer. You should certainly be looking into this possibility, and you can find out more in the following infographic.


Infographic By Interesting Facts About Snapchat

Texting Partnerships Can Open Doors to New Business

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messagesWith just about every type of consumer adopting a mobile lifestyle, there’s never been a better time than now for your business to join forces with a text messaging service.

That’s right, partnering with a texting service can help bring your customer outreach efforts to new heights.

Here’s how:

Pricing Flexibility

Marketing and promoting your business can be an expensive endeavor. Not only does the marketing process itself cost money, but the time it takes to build and distribute campaigns takes a lot of time too, which of course translates to money.

By partnering with a text messaging service, your business can significantly reduce the time and costs involved with marketing.

For starters, most texting services offer flexible pricing plans based on the number of texts you want to distribute each month. Likewise, text message service providers can also manage your text subscriptions as well as when your campaigns are distributed.

Because text messages are brief and easily customizable, it’s fast and easy to create your campaigns, which also saves your business tons of time in the customer outreach department.

Mass Outreach

The goal of any business is to reach as many customers as possible with each marketing campaign.

Although it is possible for your business to reach mass status by going at it alone, partnering with a text messaging service can make the outreach process much easier.

As the following article looks at, if you’re wondering how partnering with a texting service can benefit your business, just think about the outreach potential that going mobile provides.

With the right texting service on your side, you’ll reach more customers than you ever thought possible directly on their mobile devices.

Unparalleled Open Rates

It doesn’t matter how well structured, engaging, or informative your marketing campaigns are if your recipients don’t open them. Fortunately, text message marketing has open rates that far exceed email and traditional online marketing.

Because marketing messages are immediate, personal, and they are sent directly to the palms of your customers’ hands, open rates naturally skyrocket. That’s why it’s so important for your business to team up with a texting service as soon as possible.

Text message service providers will make sure your marketing messages get to everyone on your subscriber list.

Likewise, text services will also keep track of your open rates and let you know which campaigns are effective and which need some more work.

Structured Delivery

Timing is absolutely everything in the marketing world.

Sending a campaign at the most opportune time increases the chances of making a sale. On the flip side of the marketing coin, sending a campaign too early or too late could result in your marketing message never even being read.

By teaming with a text message service, you’ll have the ability to schedule the delivery of your texts. All you have to do is select the date and time as well as which customers receive the message and the texting service will take care of the rest. It’s that easy.

If your business is looking to increase its marketing efforts, then it’s time to partner up with a text messaging service.

About the Author: Adam Groff is a freelance writer and creator of content. He writes on a variety of topics including mobile marketing and campaigning.

Have a Text Messaging Service Go to Bat for Your Business

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smsLong ago, customer service was something to be proud of in many instances. Many small business owners knew their customers; communication, engagement and conversation all existed. Then it disappeared for some. But it’s back.

These days, good marketing techniques employ good communication, and social media and messaging has opened up avenues for any business to revisit customer engagement. It allows small business owners to have a rapport with their customers.

Sure, it may not always be face-to-face, but with social media and text messaging, that communication can come alive again.

Text Messaging Enhances Customer Rapport

Text messaging, like other forms of social media, lets those in a business interact with customers, clients and potential customers.

Because of the personalization that a business owner can employ in a text, it creates closeness between the business and the client. Most texts come from friends, family and coworkers. Clients may text you as well.

To be allowed into those inner circles of texting shows that the customer values you. You in turn can show this appreciation to grow and continue this strong rapport.

Show That Appreciation

You can use your text messaging services to offer a variety of incentives and rewards. Offer a discount for signing up, and then once a week or so, send out a text message with a redeemable incentive.

Depending on your small business, be creative – like $5 off an admission price, buy one cupcake get one free, 10% off your next hair service…

Think about what your customers want. Face it; many customers hate waiting in long lines for a product or service, so give them the opportunity to escape that issue.

When you look at, “Are your customers frustrated with long waits? A text messaging service can help,” send a text that lets them get to the front of the line with that text or code. Offer a contest where by texting a code they can win preferential treatment for a certain amount of time.

Update your clients with first-to-know information. If you are opening a new store or getting a new product, let the ones that subscribe to your SMS be the first to know. They’ll like the feeling of that insider knowledge.

Show Appreciation by Not Overusing Text

It’s easy to get overly involved in SMS marketing. But be careful, too many texts can be a turn off. Remember, they’ve let you into their personal space; don’t take advantage.

A text a week is fine; a text a day is too much. The offers will be likely be redeemed the less you send them, and that’s better for your bank, too. You don’t want to be selling your smoothies for $2 off all of the time.

Remember how things are more special when you don’t overdue them? Employ that technique. You can create some great rapport with your customers through text messages and text messaging services.

Be creative and take some time to get it going and then watch as the benefits roll in, for both you and your customers.

About the Author: Heather Legg is an independent writer who covers topics related to social media, small business and SMS marketing strategies.

Text Your Way to New Gym Memberships

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If you’re trying to increase membership at your gym, text message marketing could be the answer. That’s right; marketing via text can help you effectively reach a massive mobile audience with each campaign you send.

Here are just a few ways your gym can flex its text message marketing muscle and increase memberships in the process:

resized_textingText Message Marketing in Action

Text marketing is taking the fitness industry by storm and a growing number of gyms across the country are already jumping on the text marketing bandwagon.

From increasing memberships to promoting contests and sending general notifications, text message marketing is proving its worth for gyms of all sizes.

Among the examples:

  • Gold’s Gym – As one of the country’s largest gym franchises, Gold’s is continuously increasing memberships by texting free renewal offers to members who get family and friends to join.
  • CrossFit – Although CrossFit is new to the gym game, it already has a huge following in part thanks to its text marketing campaigns. CrossFit gym owners are sending “workout of the day” texts to members and encouraging them to forward those texts to friends and family, which is resulting in increased membership.
  • Planet Fitness – In order to improve customer satisfaction, Planet Fitness uses text messages to survey its members in order to improve their gym experience. The gym’s marketing team knows that satisfied members lead to word of mouth marketing and more paying members.

Now that you have a better sense of how other gyms are using text marketing, here are a few ways your gym can use text message marketing to its advantage:

Optimize the Opt-In

As the following article looks at, if you’re wondering how to increase your fitness center memberships with text message marketing, it’s important to remember that it all starts with the opt-in.

Sure, a standard opt-in message describing the benefits of joining your gym is helpful, but offering up a freebie is much more enticing. To make the best impression with your first opt-in message, optimize it with an offer such as a free enrollment, discounted monthly rate, or free gym service.

Whether it’s a complimentary personal trainer for the first month of membership or free membership for the first month, offering something of value during the opt-in process is the key to increasing members.

Capitalize on Forwarding

Gyms across the country rely on word of mouth for a large part of their new member marketing, which is exactly where text forwarding comes into play. To help increase word of mouth marketing, you can offer current members unique incentives when they forward your marketing campaigns to their friends and family.

Just make sure you make your messages sharable. This includes making the text message short and informative. Likewise, you’ll want to make sure there is an easy to find “Forward” option under your message drop-down menu.

Send Exit Surveys

check_iStock_000016849530XSmallYou can learn a lot from members who decide to end their memberships. In order to do so, use text message exit surveys to find out more about why certain members are leaving.

Whether it’s because the member is moving to another city or they’re dissatisfied with their gym experience, exit surveys will help you improve your gym and increase future memberships.

When it comes to getting more members through the door, it’s time for your gym to exercise its marketing efforts with text messaging.

About the Author: Adam Groff is a freelance writer and creator of content. He writes on a variety of topics including marketing and mobile technology.

Texting and Travel for the Every Day Business Person

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If you own your own small business, you’ve probably realized that work never really stops. Whether you’re trying to relax on the weekend or out of town on vacation, work is with you everywhere you go. As much as you’d like to ignore it, if you run a business, sometimes you just can’t.

cropped-dollarphotoclub_54933137.jpgA survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of the American Psychological Association found some astonishing facts about working while not at work.

Fifty-three percent of adults work over the weekend, 52 percent work before or after the work day, 54 percent work while home sick and 44 percent work while on vacation. And keep in mind this is just for the average working adult, not for the average business owner.

Technology Making Staying in Touch Easier

Thankfully, advanced technology has made it easier to stay in touch with clients and coworkers while away from the office. Instead of having to use the hotel lobby computer and internet connection, workers can now use their mobile devices to check email, stay in touch with clients and finalize meetings.

The article “Texting while flying?” states that passengers are now able to use apps and in-flight Wi-Fi to text and communicate with clients. Technology has gotten so advanced that even pilots are able to text flight details and change altitudes instead of relying on difficult radio calls.

You can use time on the plane to take care of business so you can have more time to enjoy your vacation once you land.

Vacation and Do Some Work at the Same Time

Whether you’re traveling for work or for pleasure, you not being in the office is going to have an effect on employees and clients. Without dedicating your entire vacation to work, there are a few things you can do to maintain contact, including:

  • Let everyone know you’ll be gone – Give a heads-up to employees and clients that you will be out of the office. Let them know you will return all emails upon your return and leave a phone number they can call you on for work-related emergencies.
  • Check emails at designated times throughout the day – Take 30 minutes in the morning to respond to urgent emails and get in touch with clients that may have a question. Then, turn your devices on silent and enjoy your trip! You can check back in around lunch time and once in the evening. This gives you a nice balance of both work and play.
  • Put someone else in charge – Do you have an assistant or employee who you can rely on? It will be in your best interest to designate someone in charge to handle all of the smaller tasks while you’re out of the office. Knowing that your business is in good hands is reassuring and will allow you to focus on what you need to do.
  • Take advantage of your technology – Smartphones have the ability to text, call and even hold a video conference. Technology has made it easy to stay connected while on vacation, so use this to your advantage. If something needs to get done, it’s your job as a business owner to get it taken care of. Technology is here to help!

About the Author: Sarah Brooks is a freelance writer living in Charlotte, NC. She writes on a variety of topics include small businesses, social media and personal finance.