SMS is being used extensively by both large and small businesses. It is one of the most effective marketing tools there is, and each day more and more businesses are opening their eyes to how powerful SMS can be. Most companies don’t quite know how to use SMS effectively, though. They may use it to drop a couple of promotional messages here and there, but SMS can be used for so much more than that. This is why we want to share a few ways that you can really unleash the power of SMS. We have a few creative text messaging ideas that we know work.
Happy Birthday Discounts
People love receiving gifts on their birthday, even when it comes from a company. There are many stores (especially places like Starbucks), that offer free products on a customer’s birthday. It is a great way to make the customer feel as if they are cared for, and it often results in some extra cash being made too. Not to mention the wonders it can do for a company’s brand (people talk about Subway’s free birthday cookie promotion all the time).
This is why many businesses are using SMS to wish a customer a happy birthday. They then drop them a voucher code for a discount. A good chunk of the time, this can lead to a sale.
Restock Reminders
If you run a business that specializes in consumable products, then you could drop a message reminding somebody when they may need to stock up. This can quickly boost sales.
In other cases, you could let customers know when products that they love are back in stock.
Appointment Reminders
Missed appointments can be an issue for businesses. Every missed appointment is a time when the business is not making any cash. So, it is in the company’s best interests to ensure that people are reminded of their appointments. If they can’t turn up for the appointment, then they should be given the opportunity to cancel.
While phone calls can help to remind people of their appointments, it is a slow process. This is why many businesses have turned to the idea of automated SMS reminders. Get it set up in the system and the number of missed appointments will plummet.
Tip Messages
This is one of our favorite creative methods for using SMS. A lot of businesses seem to believe that SMS should be about advertising, advertising, and more advertising. We don’t think it should be. While advertising is important, SMS should also be about building up a connection with the customer.
Every so often, send a person a couple of helpful hints related to your products and services. Don’t sell anything. Just try to be useful. For example, if you run a pest control business, then you could send a couple of SMS messages about dealing with certain pests, etc.
This will be beneficial to your brand. Informational SMS reminds people that the company exists (important), and it shows that the company has knowledge about the products and services that they sell. In the long term, this can lead to a boost in sales.
Early Bird Sales
The more people that you have on your SMS marketing list, the better. This is why we encourage companies to have some sort of incentive for SMS subscribers. Early bird sales are one of the best methods for doing this. Let people know that if they sign up, they will have access to all the best offers before anybody else does. You will be surprised at how convincing this is to people. Take Amazon Prime sales, for instance. When Amazon offers an incentive for signing up to Amazon Prime, they get a ton more sales.
Automated Customer Support
Customer support is one of the most time-consuming things for most businesses, especially since the bulk of questions that the customer support team gets asked will be the same ones. So, why not introduce an automated customer support system via SMS? Have automated responses to the most common questions. if the SMS bot can’t deal with certain questions, the sender will be filtered through to a real person. One such app is AutoForward which can forward your text messages to your email or another phone number for automatic replies.
This will save a lot of time and money.
Order Status Updates
If you run an online eCommerce business, then you will know people love to keep tabs on their package deliveries. Why not introduce order status updates? Let people know when you are packing up their products when they have been sent, and when they are about to be delivered. Regular communication can also cut down on the number of people that reach out to your customer support team.
Abandoned Cart Reminders
Again, this is beneficial to eCommerce businesses. Abandoned carts are a real problem in eCommerce. People fill up their carts, get distracted, and they never return to it. If you have their phone number, why not drop them a message reminding them that they still have products in their cart? This could encourage them to continue to checkout, gaining a customer that you would otherwise have lost.
Cross-Product Promotions
If a business keeps tabs on the products/services that a customer buys, then they can offer cross-promotions i.e. “You bought this, so we think you may like this”. Most major businesses do this, and it works incredibly well (this is why Amazon is one of the largest businesses in the world, it has really nailed cross-promotions).
Final Thoughts
Remember, this is just scratching the surface of creative ways to utilize SMS messaging. There are plenty of other ways that you can use this tech. Why not look at your competitors? Get a feel for how they are doing things. Come up with some ideas of your own based on this. Once you introduce SMS messaging to your business, we are sure that you will have no shortage of ideas.