While there are several methods to get this done, business text alerts have proven to be effective. Research shows that SMS messages have up to 98% open rates, compared to 20% for emails. It also takes a person less than two minutes to respond to a text.
Considering how easy SMS makes it to engage with customers, here are some ways you could harness business text alerts to connect with your customers and grow your business.
Deal Notifications For Customers
If your company is running a promotion or a deal, you can harness business text alerts and their power to help out. SMS is a great channel to send messages in batches, and it can help make your work significantly easier.
The SMS channel works basically like a newsletter. However, instead of putting out fancy alerts, you can go straight to the point. SMS open rates are also relatively high, so you have a higher chance of getting your messages across.
To weigh SMS’s effectiveness with email, consider that about 78% of newsletter recipients don’t even open the emails. A large part of that is because these emails come too late. With text messaging, you can use several tools to schedule your messages and ensure that they are sent at opportune times.
With optimal efficiency, there’s no telling how much you can achieve with business text alerts.
Polls And Surveys
You can use text surveys and polls to get customer feedback. These tools allow you to gain insight into your customers’ opinions about your brand, service, and anything else you can think of.
Note that SMS alerts for polls are quite tricky. You can send a two-page survey via SMS. Instead, try to make the polls short. Alternatively, you could design a simple Google Form and send the link to your customers in a message.
Organize A Contest
Thanks to the high open rates of business text alerts, they can also run successful SMS contests. Today, many companies run competitions and tell users to “send A or B” to a specific number.
Texts are especially great for organizing contests because they are convenient. Unlike logging to a site, a customer could easily send a message with just a few taps. Nothing beats such convenience.
Account Notifications
Companies are in the habit of sending automated message alerts to their subscribers. It could be to confirm a transaction, a login authentication, or to notify of a delivery. When it comes to notifications, you can use business text alerts to do just about anything.
Whether urgent or non-urgent, you can use SMS to send alerts to large groups of people.
Updates On Orders
You can also use texts to keep customers in the loop concerning several things your company is doing. If you run an e-commerce store, you could send messages to customers about when their orders will arrive.
When it comes to online orders, people want to know when their orders will arrive. Text messages allow you to notify them in advance, improving the likelihood that they are available to receive their packages. This will save a lot of stress and confusion, too. The delivery assistant won’t need to waste time, and the customer won’t have to pick the package up somewhere else.
Some e-commerce platforms allow you to take advantage of email when you create your store with them. Others allow you to add third-party APIs and integrate the SMS function directly.
Appointment Reminders
This function works similarly to the order update. However, it is essential for service providers, not e-commerce stores.
When you run a business (say, a hair salon) and a customer makes an appointment, it can be frustrating when they miss it without prior notification. It wastes time for you and your company, and rescheduling will most likely be inconvenient for the customer too.
This is why you should send reminders for appointments, especially those made far in advance. You can help these customers keep track of their time and manage their schedules to ensure seamless service delivery.
SMS allows you to send appointment reminders automatically. You can send messages and encourage customers to reply whether they can still make the appointment. You can also allow them to cancel or reschedule, saving everyone the hassle of missing the appointment.
Step Up Your Customer Service
In addition to the benefits listed in this post, business text alerts can be a viable customer service tool, as well. When you use SMS for customer service, customers can reply, allowing you to build that one-on-one communication. With businesses focusing more on customer service these days, it can be really beneficial to take advantage of communicating with your customers by SMS.
